The movie Aliens: The Return of James Cameron (1986) is a great sequel. But… why didn’t they just title it Alien 2?
Ridley Scott’s original film was a perfect combination of horror and science fiction, also introducing the Xenomorph to the gallery of cinema’s biggest monsters. Not forgetting that in 1979 it grossed more than 100 million at the box office with a meager budget of approximately 10 million. But due to extensive marketing costs, the film didn’t actually make a big profit, and there was no rush to go ahead with a follow-up. However, a young James Cameron, who was confident of his recent success with a terminator (1984), was in charge of the sequel titled Aliens. In other countries it was decided to title Aliens: The Return.
To convince the film studio, James Cameron simply wrote the word “Alien” on the blackboard in the room where they traded, and then added an “S” at the end, through which he drew two lines to make a dollar sign. Leaving it as “Alien $”. 20th Century Fox gave the sequel the green light with a budget of $ 18 million, using the title Aliens instead of what would have been the more conventional Alien 2. This means that great self-confidence and confidence in James Cameron’s project was the first step for Aliens: The return to come true.
The producers involved have talked on occasion about how this meeting was one of the craziest they ever had.
Aliens: The return grossed more than 130 million at the box office and from there a whole cinematic Universe with many sequels was generated and made the jump to different formats such as novels or comics. There’s still debate over whether Aliens: James Cameron’s Return is a better movie than the original. Since it pushes the science fiction and horror story into the territory of action.
James Cameron is now known as one of the world’s most successful filmmakers, and part of that comes from his work on Aliens: The Return. But at that time, it was his great ego and self-confidence that led him not to call her Alien 2.