Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Aliens Expanded’ on Shudder, a Lovingly Lengthy Documentary on the Making of James Cameron’s Classic Film

Anyone who’s ever said “Game over, man! Game OoOveR!” needs to fire up Aliens Expanded (now strraming on Shudder), a ridiculously in-depth making-of/legacy documentary about Aliens that will occupy nearly five hours of your life. Director Ian Nathan crowdfunded this insane project, and managed to rope in participants ranging from director James Cameron and superstar Sigourney Weaver to the chief dubbing mixer and the son of the guy who was the special effects makeup artist (this is not a joke!). It covers everything from the infamous Cameron Tea Time Tantrum to how they designed the big power loader to the inflection Sigourney (may I call you Sigourney?) used when delivering the GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH line. So of course, this is by fans and for fans, but I know there’s a lot of you out there, so here we are, nostrils-deep in wonderful, nigh-ceaseless minutiae. 

ALIENS EXPANDED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “And then some bullshit happens.” That was on a page of a rough early treatment of Alien 2 when James Cameron took the gig at 20th Century Fox. That meant the writer/director could interpret “some bullshit” how he pleased, and he turned “some bullshit” into a sci-fi/action/horror barnburner that was a top-10 box office hit in 1986 and, contrary to genre-movie snobbery in Hollywood, landed seven Oscar nominations, including one for Sigourney for best actress, and winning two (for visual effects and sound editing). But more importantly, it also became an enduring, timeless classic that’s highly quotable and as rewatchable as any movie of its era, and is guaranteed to blast adrenaline into every last atom of your anatomy even if you’ve already seen it 25 times. 

Surprisingly but perhaps not surprisingly considering the length of this behemoth doc, Nathan interviews nearly every primary contributor to Aliens who’s still alive to talk about it: Cameron, Sigourney, producer Gale Anne Hurd (and Cameron’s wife at the time) and a bevy of anecdote-spouting supporting cast members including Marines played by Jenette Goldstein, Michael Biehn, William Hope, Ricco Ross, Mark Rolston, Colette Hiller and Cynthia Dale Scott; Carrie Henn, who played the little girl Newt, her one and only acting credit (“If you’re only going to be in one movie in your life, this was the movie to be in!” she says, and I don’t disagree); Paul Reiser as corporate slimy guy Burke; and Lance Henriksen, who played the heroic “artificial person” Bishop. 

Numerous crew members contribute nuts and bolts from the technical side of things. Adding to the general commentary are various obsessive-fan podcasters, novelization writer Alan Dean Foster and even an astrophysicist and a psychologist, both of whom sure sound like obsessive fans too. Notable absences because they aren’t alive: score composer James Horner, editor Ray Lovejoy, cinematographer Adrian Biddle, actor Al “Assholes and Elbows” Matthews (who played Sgt. Apone) and scene stealer extraordinaire Bill Paxton, who gets a seven-minute tribute, and leaves the biggest hole in fans’ hearts. Also absent for obvious reasons are the Tea Lady, who almost certainly didn’t get paid enough for that shit, and actor James Remar, who was fired for getting busted buying an eightball of cocaine while filming in London (the ’80s!), and had to be replaced by Biehn at the last minute. Let’s hear it for juicy trivia!

Every detail gets exhumed and analyzed: Cameron shares how his dreams influenced some of the visual design, and how Vietnam War narratives informed the military portions of the film. Hurd gets into casting and various problems that had to be solved on-set. Sigourney offers typically thoughtful commentary on the film’s feminist themes. There’s lengthy discourse about the supporting cast’s preparation to play military warriors, and everyone whose character dies in the film talks about their death scene. Behind-the-camera experts share how all the sets and creatures were built, and how they worked around some of the limitations of the then-standard practical effects in order to keep them convincingly frightening. And there’s much to do about Cameron’s vision, fearless bravado and fiery personality, which was the foundation of Aliens’ success. “I was born to make this movie,” he says, and that’s saying more than just a lot. He made Titanic and Terminator 2 and Avatar after this, you know.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: RoboDoc: The Creation of RoboCop emerged from a similar fundraising effort, and beats Aliens Expanded in length by about nine minutes (although it was broken up into four parts like we’re a bunch of wussies or something). Nathan’s currently working on The Thing Expanded, for John Carpenter’s classic. And it’s worth noting that these megabloated docs are the visual version of written oral-histories, so someone NEEDS to make a documentary version of Kyle Buchanan’s book Blood, Sweat and Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Performance Worth Watching: It goes without saying, perhaps, that Sigourney (sigh heart emoji heart emoji) offers endlessly thoughtful commentary. But Hope and Henriksen are close runners-up in this particular sweepstakes.

Memorable Dialogue: Creature effects coordinator Alec Gillis nails the thesis of the doc: “Everything supports the story. Everything tells a story.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: One of the major takeaways from Aliens Expanded is that only a director with the brash confidence – or ego, if you’re a little less delicate – of Cameron could make Aliens the cinematic benchmark that it is. The film offers plenty of evidence: He looked at director Ridley Scott and artist/designer H.R. Giger’s work on Alien, a forever classic, and said, “We can beat that.” It’s no major revelation that Cameron has big onions, but it’s crucial to remember the context of his decision to helm Aliens – he was fresh off The Terminator, which was a shot across the bow, and Aliens established him as the Hollywood juggernaut who’d blow our heads off with Terminator 2: Judgment Day five years later. 

So, did he? Did Cameron “beat that”? Maybe, but comparing Alien and Aliens is like comparing apples and oranges grown on the same farm. Despite his hubris and tendency for blunt criticism – “I wouldn’t sand off one corner,” Henriksen says of his longtime director friend – he took cues from Scott, and we see proof in Aliens Expanded with some supercool nerd shit like side-by-side comparisons of shots from the two films that illustrate visual continuity, inspiring further discussion about how Cameron leaned heavier toward making an action movie than another horror outing. 

The perusal of Cameron’s shall we say driven personality takes up but a handful of minutes in this doc, and I’ve spent two paragraphs on it. Such is the density of Aliens Expanded, which packs every moment with anecdotes and trivia and tidbits ranging from Paxton’s rampant scene-stealing to the film’s parallels with Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (which was shooting concurrently, with actors auditioning for both films) and Sigourney’s disappointment at the decision to cut scenes that established Ripley as a mother whose child died while she was in suspended animation after the events of Alien (those scenes ended up in the director’s cut, another topic plumbed in great detail).

Unsurprisingly, fan culture feeds this type of obsessive project, which didn’t exist prior to internet forums and crowdfunding platforms, which exist to bolster enthusiasm for pop culture artifacts great and small – and Aliens is undoubtedly a great one. Sigourney says the film has “incredible momentum and drive,” an observation that applies to both its all-guns-blazing narrative and its longevity. It’s a by fans/for fans endeavor, and speaking as someone for whom this film was a defining moment in my appreciation for cinema, there were only a few moments watching Aliens Expanded when I uttered, you know, this is a bit much. The bit-muchness is absolutely the point. Ludicrous as it can be in its length and fanperson obsessiveness, do not nuke this documentary from orbit. It’s eminently useful for fans looking to verify their diehardedness by watching every last second of it. It’s the only way to be sure.

Our Call: Aliens Expanded is mostly highly enjoyable! Mostly. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.