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I digress in order to set the stage for what will become fairly obvious (if it hasn't already) in this and columns to follow. My parents encouraged my love of movies and let me watch damn near everything. The caveat was they reserved the right to watch it with me. So I watched G-rated Disney films (Mary Poppins, yay!), NC-17 indie dramas (actress Jane March either naked or getting there, woo hoo!) and everything in between during my stay under their roof. Thankfully, Spanking the Monkey came out after I went off to college. That would have been too awkward for any of us to bear. We often went out to the theater as a family unit as well. It was a rare thing, though, for me to see a film with only dad. Mom yes, quite frequently. But not for horror films. That was dad's territory. And my grandfather, well, bless his departed soul, he just managed to get looped in for the ride when we three generations of Beaches went to see Aliens in July of 1986 (In all honesty, I was certain that this came out in mid-June, which would have made for a great Father's Day story as to why we were all together that weekend. The facts are the facts however, and I imagine it was simply one of the many summer excursions that he and my grandmother took to visit us).

It may have been dumb luck that my grandfather came along, but it was solid word-of-mouth for the quality of Aliens that kept it on top of the box office for a month and led it to become to the highest-grossing ($85 million in real dollars) film in the series, which it still holds today, even when the Alien vs. Predator films are included. Cameron's screen story (co-written along with Walter Hill & David Giler) and his screenplay deserve mention in consideration to this. A number of the director's recurring themes become evident with this film, not the least of which is his fascination with a physically and emotionally tough female protagonist.

Visually and symbolically, the key moment for me in Aliens is when Ripley, after having received training from Hicks on using the plasma gun/grenade launcher, returns to her room to check on Newt (Carrie Henn). Finding the child sleeping fitfully under the bed she sets her gun down and lays down next to her. Yes, I acknowledge it's a dumb move to relinquish one's firearm in the middle of alien central, but it also illustrates Ripley's capacity to be nurturing and caring as well as hard-ass, and it also establishes Weaver as one of the few actresses ever to look convincing carrying large weaponry. (Others include Geena Davis and oddly enough, Scarlet Johansson).

The payoff late in the film, as Ripley rescues Newt from the Queen and torches a plethora of eggs, amplifies Ripley's sorrow from early in Aliens when Burke (Paul Reiser) informs her that the young daughter she had back on Earth has since grown old and died in the 57 years that have passed between the two films. She has lost her spawn and she'll make damn sure the bitch knows how that feels. That fierce, protective maternal instinct is a progenitor for Linda Hamilton's Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Cameron always emphasizes the human relationships at the heart of his films before the action takes off, even in the more parodying over-the-top True Lies and so far hasn't allowed his obsession with state-of-the-art effects to overpower or trump the human element.

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