Aliens was a rip off, mostly

There was an interview with Cameron either in the 80's or 90's where he was talking about "Them", and how much it affected him as a kid!

I don’t care if he copied it it was worth it. As you get older, you realize everything is a copy of something else and there are very few original ideas.

I view this as a homage to old cinema. Many directors pay respect to their inspiration by doing things like this. Very common.

THEM! Was a influential movie. But if they had released it in COLOR and 3D it might have been a flop and forgotten the B/W made it more interesting I'm certain James Cameron was influenced one of my favorite movies I was sad when WHITMORE gets killed

Gasp you mean media is inspired by other media???? Like ai ??? Ai ai ai ai ai ai

My stance that Alien was the better of the two has now been set in stone.

Supposedly, James Cameron would write movie scripts for fun when he was younger and he kept several in a drawer. He remember hearing how he wrote a script called "Mother" about a bunch of space marines that get stranded on an alien planet with a hive of alien bugs with a queen. The story goes, Cameron got a call from Fox asking if he had any ideas for a sequel to Alien. He pulled out the script for Mother, changed the title to Aliens and changed some of the names of characters to include Ripley, and turned in the script. I know David Giler and Walter Hill are also credited as writers, but I'm not sure what they contributed.

Aliens is a symphony of classic sci-fi and action tropes. "Everybody's Dead Dave," "Action Girl," "Sole Survivor," etc.

Aliens did it better, mostly