Aliens,
My all-time favorite movie of that time period. Remember being like eight and my mom taking me to see it at the Drive-In with a couple of cousins. Was blow-my-mind-awesomeness at the time, and looking back, is no doubt responsible for my macabre compassion-free interest in human suffering and the many, MANY ways the human body can be brutalized.
Good times, good times. I hope you showed him the uncut version with the intact scene with the two automated gun drones wiping out Xenoforms by the dozens-per-second, as Ripley and the Marines nervously watch the ammo counter for the two drones rocket downwards, one going empty, and the Xenoforms withdrawing with like 12 rounds left in the remaining gun-drone.
To my mind, it's one of the VERY best scenes in the movie, but its CUT from damned near every version you see on cable. Sad. A whole generation has an incomplete perception of the answer to the question "Why didn't the space-marines just find a defensible hallway and mow down the aliens by the hundred before they lost all their gear?"
That scene explained in ways no movie since has just how relentless and implacable the prowling enemy is. It gave the Xenoforms an even more insect-like character to their aggression as you watched them rush headlong into gory obliteration by the hundred without pause or hesitation of any sort. At the end, you're clearly left with the impression the only reason they stopped was because the Queen decided there was a more effective way to pry the Potential Hosts out of their "den".
It gives context and character to the scene where the Aliens come at them through the overlooked roof-tunnel above the medical bay. Demonstrating that this attack was different than the last. That the Xenoforms had "learned" from their previous failure and adapted their strategy accordingly.
The most perfect element was they didn't ruin the gun-drone scene when it would've been so easy to. Many movies would've had the drones run dry, followed immediately by alien vs marine conflict. Instead they perfectly preserved the sense that powerful as they are, the Xenoform Hive is not infallible.
It's the one time and ONLY one time in the movie where we see a major failure on the part of the Xenoforms in their conflict with the space-marines. Without that scene the Aliens seem far more all-knowing and even too-perfect. Without that scene you lose the feel that no matter how deadly they may be to humans, the Xenoforms are simply highly intelligent animals, as opposed to the malevolent hive-mind that seems intellectually on par with human levels of strategic forethought and problem solving.
Ultimately, that's exactly WHAT makes the Xenoforms so terrifying. That for all our centuries of progress, and all our advanced technology, the Xenoforms that massacre us every time humans and Xenoforms cross paths are "only" bugs.
That's it. Just bugs. H.R Geiger once said about them that he imagined in the environment the Xenoforms involved, they occupied the same approximate niche as ANTS.
Terrifying to consider, especially for an overly thoughtful child who COULD imagine a world where exponentially more powerful/dangerous lifeforms probably ignored Xenoforms in much the same way we ignore Ants unless they coincidentally happen to make a nuisance of themselves, then we/these more frightening life-forms simply crush them.
Several times over the years I've tried to write a science fiction or Sci-Fi/Survival Horror story that vividly captures the kind of environment where something like the Xenoform would be the bottom rung of the food chain. I've always failed miserably, because nothing I cook up ever seems to measure up to the World of Living Nightmares I envisioned as a child raptly watching Aliens on the big screen.
Sorry for geeking out on you all. Didn't think I'd ever have another opportunity to express my thoughts about this movie to individuals who could "get it".
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Originally Posted by DjfunkmasterG
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). I enjoyed the hell out of it when I saw it, so you watch, he'll probably have an expression of "WTF?!" after he sees it. 
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