Chris McPherson

Published Aug 29, 2026, 12:07 PM EDT

Chris is a Senior News Writer for Collider. He can be found in an IMAX screen, with his eyes watering and his ears bleeding for his own pleasure. He joined the news team in 2022 and accidentally fell upwards into a senior position despite his best efforts.

For reasons unknown, he enjoys analyzing box office receipts, giant sharks, and has become known as the go-to man for all things Bosch, Mission: Impossible and Christopher Nolan in Collider’s news division. Recently, he found himself yeehawing along to the Dutton saga on the Yellowstone Ranch.

He is proficient in sarcasm, wit, Photoshop and working unfeasibly long hours. Amongst his passions sit the likes of the history of the Walt Disney Company, the construction of theme parks, steam trains and binge-watching Gilmore Girls with a coffee that is just hot enough to scald him.

His obsession with the Apple TV+ series Silo is the subject of mockery within the Senior News channel, where his feelings about Taylor Sheridan’s work are enough to make his fellow writers roll their eyes.

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Few directors have a filmography that can go toe-to-toe with James Cameron’s. The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Titanic, Avatar and Aliens have each left enormous marks on popular culture, while Cameron remains responsible for three of the highest-grossing movies ever made. Picking his greatest achievement is therefore easier said than done. Michael Biehn, however, has a particularly informed opinion.

Biehn’s relationship with Cameron stretches back more than four decades, even since he was cast as Kyle Reese opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton in The Terminator, before reuniting with him for Aliens and The Abyss. Biehn also appeared as Reese in footage restored for the Special Edition of Terminator 2.

Speaking exclusively with Collider while promoting Onslaught, Biehn revealed that one movie stands above the rest of Cameron’s extraordinary body of work for him: Aliens. Discussing his working relationship with Cameron, Biehn explained that Cameron didn’t need to direct him thanks to the fact the material gave him everything he needed:

“I don’t remember him directing my performances very much. We’d do two or three takes. He might nudge me one way or the other, but it’s such good material. Aliens, I think, is the best movie that Jim has ever done. That’s my opinion. I’m obviously biased, but I did do The Terminator. When you get those kinds of roles, the words are what’s most important for an actor, and that’s really what makes it easy to play.”

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.

The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.

You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Biehn’s admiration for the film isn’t just because he was involved in it, though. As we all know, Cameron inherited Ridley Scott’s Alien and turned its sequel into a dramatically different kind of movie without just trying to be a retread of what came before it, and Biehn believes Cameron achieved something similarly impressive with Terminator 2, while pointing out that debates over which instalments are superior have continued for decades.

“He did two sequels. He did T2, and he did Aliens. People will argue until I’m gone, well gone and in the grave, about which is a better movie, Alien or Aliens, and Terminator or Terminator 2. But I can tell you one thing: it’s very hard to follow Jim Cameron. Fincher had to do it with Aliens, and then somebody else had to do it for the third Terminator, and it’s just not the same to have expectations that somebody else is going to write something, and they’re going to direct it. People talk about, ‘Well, this guy didn’t play a very good Kyle Reese.’ He didn’t have Jim Cameron writing Kyle Reese. He didn’t have Jim Cameron creating it. That actor who played Kyle Reese didn’t have the words that I got to say.”

Biehn certainly isn’t alone in placing Aliens near the top of Cameron’s career. Released in 1986, the sequel was a significant commercial success, earning approximately $131 million worldwide against a reported budget of around $18.5 million.

The movie was also a major awards contender, earning seven Academy Award nominations and winning two, for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Effects Editing. Most notably, Sigourney Weaver earned a Best Actress nomination for her performance as Ellen Ripley, an unusually significant piece of awards recognition for the lead performance in a sci-fi action movie.

For Biehn, Cameron has made plenty of great movies. Aliens is the great one.

Onslaught is in theaters on September 4.

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Science Fiction

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Sigourney Weaver

Decades after surviving the Nostromo incident, Ellen Ripley is sent out to re-establish contact with a terraforming colony but finds herself battling the Alien Queen and her offspring.