10 Great Movies You Didn't Know Had A Hidden Symbolic Meaning

8. The Vietnam War - Aliens

On the surface you'd be forgiven for thinking that James Cameron's sequel to Alien is little more than an action packed shoot 'em up about Marines fighting off hordes of xenomorphs - while it's certainly entertaining on the surface level, Cameron intended a deeper symbolic reading amidst the bullets and carnage of Aliens. While Ridley Scott's original is often interpreted symbolically as a metaphor for rape and birth, Aliens was inspired by the Vietnam War. Hugely critical of America's military campaign in Vietnam, the Marines clearly represent the US military occupying an "alien" land in which the indigenous population fiercely resist all odds and fend off a technologically superior force. Just as the Vietnam War was fought for questionable aims, so too in Aliens the marines' cause is ostensibly to further the aims of an amoral corporation. It's perhaps reasonable to question the dubious analogy of the Vietnamese people to the aliens themselves, but at the same time it's hard to argue with the symbolic interpretation of the marines as arrogant and over-confident, while the hubris of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation clearly parallels the political leadership during the Vietnam War, disregarding the lives of innocents and military alike in pursuit of their selfish goals.