Which Alien is the true Alien ? It has to be the first movie, right? You’ve got the snappy Dan O’Bannon script, the atmospheric Ridley Scott direction, and the killer cast putting across a simple plot in which a ravenous, seemingly unkillable monster stalks a spaceship crew. If you’re navigating your way through any new Alien story, the 1979 original has to be your lodestar, right?

But wait! What about Aliens ? That massive 1986 box-office hit, written and directed by James Cameron, turned the haunted house horror of the first film into a masterpiece of militaristic Reagan-era blockbuster filmmaking. If you want your Alien project to have mass appeal, you must follow in Cameron’s heavy bootprints, right?

I could go on. There are cases to be made — weaker cases, but cases noneth

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