Popverse's top stories

• DC has unveiled a major new Wonder Woman villain over two years in the making, co-created by one of James Gunn's top writers
• Simon Kinberg on writing X-Men movies, producing Glenn Powell's The Running Man remake, and co-creating Star Wars Rebels [Popversations]
• Livestream Monster Hunter Wilds, Borderlands 4, Magic: The Gathering x Spider-Man, and more PAX West 2025 panels live

Welcome, Popversians, to another edition of The Coldest Open, the column where I, your humble horror host, examine the history of scary cinema through the first moments of its standout entries. Now I don’t know about you, but my horror to-dos this summer have largely revolved around being free every Tuesday night, when a new episode of Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth debuts on FX. We’ve already tackled the sparkling cold open for Ridley Scott’s Alien, but with xeno-fever informing so much of what I do these days, I figured we could continue our little jaunt into deep space with that film’s follow-up: James Cameron’s Aliens.

The way Coldest Open works is this: I'm going to be breaking down five different hallmarks of every great cold open in horror, then judging whether the movie in question pulls them off. If so, that hallmark will get ranked with a "Cold" verdict; if not, it'll get ranked with a "warm." At the end, we'll tally up those verdicts and determine a temperature, ranging all the way from Lukewarm to Absolute Zero.

If that makes sense to you, then I don’t see why we shouldn’t strap in, give ourselves a shake to ward off that hypersleep, and dive into one of the greatest science fiction sequels ever made.

Aliens' Cold-Blooded Killer

To understand the monster’s introduction in Aliens, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of a viewer from 1986. It’s been a full seven years since the xenomorph first terrified audiences everywhere, and with no internet around to keep track, there was a chance that viewers returning to Ridley Scott’s distant future might’ve forgotten what kind of beast the titular alien really was (to say nothing of moviegoers coming in having not seen the first movie at all).

So what does director Cameron do? Like any band trying to please current fans and win over new ones, he plays the hits. Not ten minutes go by before Cameron threatens to make us relive one of the most horrifying images ever to cross this franchise - and maybe even the horror genre in general - a chestburster. Yes, for just a second, we, the viewers, are convinced that our hero Ripley (more on her in a sec) is going to go the same way poor Kane did in the prior film. But even if we know nothing of Kane, the creature FX of that awful thing in Ripley’s gut is enough to hook us from the jump.

Another quick note here - there’s a lot that’s been written about screenplays and cats, and Cameron’s usage of returning survivor Jonesy is a brilliant way to convey terror to audiences. Ripley and Jones’s reunion after their hypersleep bond is such a safe moment in the movie’s opener - to see the cat absolutely lose his shit while Ripley undergoes some physical horror is enough to tell us that that safety was an illusion.

Verdict: Cold

Aliens's First Person to Get Iced

Speaking of that physical horror - it will turn out, very shortly after we see that chestburster threatening to live up to its name, that much of this opener is, in fact, a dream. Everything from the moment Ripley is “rescued” by those space salvagers up to her conversation with newcomer Burke and beyond is an imagined nightmare brought on by fitful dreams. But here’s the thing - and I feel like I’m gonna get flak for saying this - the audience might already not be buying it.

I know, I know, you’ve got your pitchforks and torches at the ready, but I don’t think that Aliens does a great job introducing its main character. Remember, Ripley is a final girl, the kind of survivor who spends all her blood, sweat, and tears, and still just barely makes it through the story. Yes, she’s a badass (maybe the biggest ever put on film), but she’s also still fully human - and a human that goes through the trauma she did in the first film would be, well, traumatized.

So even though I appreciate the fact that Cameron was setting up a 'safe space' to lure you in before the movie’s first scare, I still feel like it’s odd that Ripley doesn’t wake up in her Weyland-Yutani hospital bed with all the terror of the first film still on her mind. I know we eventually get that from her, but in my opinion, it comes up a little too late - Ripley comes off questionably comfy with her situation as the movie begins.

Verdict: Warm

Aliens' Polar Plot Intro

What’s not a dream, however, is the introduction of Carter Burke - a human face for the thus-far faceless Weyland-Yutani Corp. Burke’s intro is a great set-up to the eventual villain we’ll meet in his character (he gives Ripley her cat back! He can't possibly be bad, right?), and it’s an excellent way for Cameron to get us off to the races, plot-wise, without the need for overly expositional dialogue.

We get the sense that Burke - while maybe not caring about people, per se - honestly doesn’t like sharing bad news. So when Ripley wakes up and no one has told her what’s going on, Burke gives her an explanation that is short and vague, which happens to be exactly the right kind of plot intro for this film. He gets right to the core info and leaves the horrific details in the shadows - which is both a great way to open a horror movie and exactly what’s expected from a corporate explanation.

Verdict: Cold

Aliens' Frozen Snapshots

Here’s where I have to come clean, reader - I let a little bit of my modern appreciation of the Alien franchise influence how I rewatched this opener for this piece. Usually, I try to come at it exactly how a first-time viewer would, but when I saw the above transition, I couldn’t help but think of my previously mentioned summer watchlist - FX’s Alien: Earth.

The snapshot pictured above is a transitional pic between Ripley still in hypersleep and the planet Earth - the curvature of her face and the curvature of the globe matched up perfectly. With this single transition, Cameron erases the last bit of safety you could feel after watching the original 1979 Alien - that is, that at least all of this scary shit was going down in some far-off quadrant of the solar system. The Alien could never come here, right?

In case you haven’t been following the new Alien TV show, that’s a huge part of the premise, and as a concept, it’s one of the scariest that the franchise has ever done. Believe me, I’m not accusing Noah Halwey or the FX gang of stealing from Cameron in any way - I’m just saying that both artists have a grasp on what makes this monster so terrifying, and like any good director, they both know how to convey it through even the simplest of images.

Verdict: Cold

Aliens' Bone-Chilling Music

I went back and forth over the usage of music in Aliens’ opening sequence for a while, and I’ll tell you why. The opening flutey tones are full of a kind of 2001: A Space Odyssey wonder, a feeling of exploring all the wild and weird mysteries that the cosmos has in store…

Which is, if you’ll remember, exactly what the first Alien opening music did.

James Horner’s Main Title is markedly similar to the Jerry Goldsmith piece of the same name from the first Alien soundtrack. Eerie, cold, distant, and, well, alien, you can’t blame the filmmakers for wanting a kind of narrative flow from the first movie into the second one via the music. Which is why, with an eyebrow raised, I have to admit that these opening tunes do work.

If it ain’t broke and whatnot.

Verdict: Cold

Aliens' Cold Open Temperature: Frozen Solid

Here’s a little (potentially obnoxious) fact about me: while I like this movie a lot, I’m not a fan of how far it will eventually stray from being an actual horror movie. By the time we get to the Space Marines going toe-to-toe with the xenomorph hordes and Ripley using the power of construction tools to duel the Queen, this film plants its flag deep into action territory. However, you can’t deny that there’s some excellent horror in the movie’s opening moments. Within the first eight minutes of this movie, Cameron proves that survival, no matter how badass, is never final.

Perhaps that’s why, almost 40 years after this movie came out, the Alien franchise is still considered a product of the horror genre, and why I’m still watching Alien: Earth between my fingers.

In the immortal words of Danny Elfman, "Life's no fun without a good scare." Join Popverse's weekly explorations of the best opening moments of horror cinema in The Coldest Open, and then check out:

• The best horror movies of all time, according to horror aficionado Greg Silber
• The most underrated horror movies from the past couple years
• All the new and upcoming horror movies for 2025 and beyond

And much gore. Er, more. Much more.