10 Movie Sequels That Avoided Obvious Mistakes

Ridley Scott's Alien is such a perfect cinematic organism that it would've surprised nobody if it led to a glut of more-of-the-same sequels that basically just regurgitated the same space-slasher formula ad nauseum.

But in 1986, a little-known filmmaker called James Cameron rose to the challenge to deliver a sequel, Aliens, which basically sidestepped every last mistake an Alien sequel could possibly make.

First and foremost, Cameron clearly had no interest in just doing the same thing again, because while Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) returns to LV-426 and comes back into contact with the Xenomorphs, the context is very different.

If Alien was a slow and suspenseful horror film, Cameron's film is far more action-centric, with Ripley being joined by the gung-ho, ill-fated Colonial Marines who lend the movie a considerably different energy to the original's Nostromo crew.

Beyond that, Aliens also invests us far deeper in Ripley as a character per her surrogate mother interactions with young Newt (Carrie Henn), ensuring it's anything but a sequel that merely paints within the established lines.

Yet Cameron's film also set such an impossibly high bar for the series - and sequels in general, honestly - that nothing else in the Alien series has been able to touch it.