Whenever a director goes back to change an earlier movie, as James Cameron is thinking about doing with his 1986 classic Aliens, people understandably get nervous. Cameron, who has proven just how popular his 3D work is with the Avatar franchise, believes he can update one of the best sci-fi movies of all time AND one of the best horror movies of all time with his 3D technology, and I’m all for it. Usually, I’m one of the people who doesn’t want to see perfection messed with, but that’s not the case here, because I think Cameron has made smart moves with Aliens.
It Looks Like This Is Happening
More than any other director in Hollywood, James Cameron has leaned into 3D technology. The success of the Avatar series is proof-positive that he knows how to create a movie with it, and he doubled down on that with the concert film he made with Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft, which came out earlier this year to rave reviews. While promoting that movie, he spoke with Letterboxd about converting Aliens to 3D. Cameron said:
We’re probably going to wind up converting Aliens, which will be a fun experience. That film seems to be evergreen. People still go back to it a lot. If people remember a movie that I did 38 years ago, I think I’ve already won [an] argument.
He said that converting the film could work today because of where the technology is today:
Aliens is a creature of its time. We are thinking about converting Aliens [to 3D], because I know now that the tools are so much better than they were for creating depth maps.
If anyone knows just how far the latest 3D technology can go, it’s Cameron, as he’s been largely responsible for pushing the new tech forward with Avatar. It’s one reason I really trust his idea here, but it’s not the only one.
The Last Time He Tweaked Aliens, It Really Worked
A couple of months ago, I wrote about how I’d never seen the director’s cut of Aliens. When I did finally watch it, I loved it. That’s not always the case for me, either. In fact, it’s way more common that I love the original theatrical version over any director’s cut of a movie I love. While there was one added scene I didn’t care for in Aliens, overall, I do think Cameron’s director’s cut is a better movie. And that’s really saying something about a movie that I think even surpasses the first movie in the series.
It’s for that reason that I trust Cameron here. I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of the Avatar films, and I don’t always love 3D movies, but I don’t think Cameron would mess around with Aliens if he didn’t believe that this could work. He’s a master of film technology, so I have to believe he’s going to do right by the film and its legions of fans like me.