Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) Written November 17, 2015 -- "In space no one can hear you scream" is the iconic tagline for Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror film Alien released in 1979, the film's main plot was about the seven crew members of the commercial space ship, the Nostromo, being awoken by a foreign distress signal from an unknown planet yet to be explored. After exploring the planet, the Nostromo crew now have to deal with an alien parasite that attacked and killed one of their members, Kane (played by John Hurt), and quickly grows into a more larger, powerful, and intelligent form that slowly kills off all the other crew members one by one. The film ends with Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) being the only survivor of the Nostromo throwing the alien out of the escape pod and entering a long period of hibernation, hoping to return to Earth. Seven years later in 1986, a sequel called Aliens is released in American theaters, this time being directed by James Cameron instead of Ridley Scott. The sequel starts off where the first movie left off after Ripley went into hibernation, she finally arrives onto Earth but immediately finds out that she has been asleep and drifting in space for nearly 57 years and during that time period, its revealed that the planet the Nostromo crew members originally explored (now named LV-426) now homed a fairly small human colony called Hadley's Hope which recently lost contact with Earth.When given the offer to join a group of Colonial Marines to investigate the colony, Ripley at first refuses as she was still traumatized by her last encounter in Alien, but eventually agrees. While exploring LV-426, Ripley meets a young girl named Newt who she quickly forms a paternal bond with, and encounters a large colony of aliens (now called Xenomorphs in this film) who nearly kill almost all the Colonial Marines by order of the Xenomorph queen.Both Alien and Aliens have done very well in the box office upon opening weekend of their theatrical releases with Aliens having an overall gross of $85,200,000. By then the series has become popular enough for two more sequels to be made (Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection) however neither of these films ranked that well among it's first two predecessors. Since Alien and Aliens were made by two different directors, quite a lot of people draw comparisons and differences between the two. A major key difference between the two films is their genres, while Alien is a science fiction B horror movie, Aliens while still maintaining the sci-fi horror genre has much more action thrown into it due to the bigger budget James Cameron was given. Another major difference is with the main characters (excluding Ripley and the Xenomorphs since both of these characters didn't go under major changes between films). In Alien, the audience given a fairly small cast of characters which were easily forgettable as the film would shine their spotlight on them for a moment or two before going straight back to Ripley. Then once Aliens came along, there was now a bigger cast of characters that were more depth and given interesting personalities that made them more likable. Some examples of these new characters are Newt (played by Carrie Henn), Private Hudson (played by Bill Paxton), Bishop (played by Lance Henriksen), and Private Vasquez (played by Jenette Goldstein). One notable similarity between both films is that they have a nearly identical storyline. Both films start off with a simple buildup while introducing the main characters, nothing interesting happens in the first 2/3rds of both films until a major event takes place (i.e. the "chestburster" scene in Alien and the hive ambush in Aliens) which completely shifts the next chain of events that take place in the last 1/3rd of each movie. Both films end with one last final showdown between Ripley and the Xenomorph alien. Another similarity is within the setting, both Scott and Cameron are known to be visual in their filmmaking and art, Ridley Scott gave Alien a hazy backlit imagery mainly consisting of blacks and blues with the Xenomorph presented as a silhouette which gave the setting a dreamy yet eerie feeling. James Camerson preserved this dim and hazy setting in Aliens in order to stay consistent with the first film and the alien, although now being seen in its full body rather than seeing parts of it, is still shown as a shadowy figure or backlit silhouette. One last interesting thing to point out is while the Xenomorph only went through some very minor changes in appearance in Aliens, there was now the inclusion of the Xenomorph queen. This was mainly because Ridley Scott originally wanted the alien to have a more femenine appearance as he thought the idea of female human and alien fighting each other would have great connotation, but it never came to be in Alien as at the time they were unable to find a woman with the proper height and athletic skills to fit the role.