Watching the special features that were put together for Aliens in the Alien: Quadrilogy box set (thank you optical discs).

Holy smokes. So much insight into the making of. With CGI nowadays you can do anything you can envision. But back in 1985 to do these practical effects took insane work and some wild creativity. How they shot the facehugger running along the floor in the med lab was very interesting. One of the designers came up with a facehugger puppet that worked like a pull toy. When you would pull the cable the extremities would move like the animal was running on the floor. Combine that with shooting the rain droplets in the lab. And also how Jim Cameron came up with the idea of how to shoot the facehugger jumping up on the bar and then leaping at the camera. So fascinating how they came up with these. All of the different alien costumes. Some designed for movement with a human, some for effects shots, some for posing. What chemicals they used when they would destroy an alien so it looked like acid smoke. How Jim came up with the creation and testing of the alien queen. The powerloader design and shooting and how that worked. The designs for the Sulaco and drop ship. How they put mirrors in the hibernation pods to make it look like there are a lot more of them than they actually had. The accidents they had in the APC during filming. How the music was composed by James Horner in only a few weeks. The tension between Horner and Gale Ann Hurd (producer) because Hurd and Cameron were shooting right up to the end and Horner had to keep writing the score for a moving target for a huge orchestra in just a matter of weeks. And there is like 4 hours of these kinds of things into how they did Aliens. Also awesome interviews with the cast. Also the legend Stan Winston was in charge of many of the effects.

TNT could watch these all day.