Ian Nathan waited anxiously for the first screening of “Aliens” in 1986.  A huge fan of Ridley Scott’s 1979 “Alien,” Nathan had consumed acres of articles about James Cameron’s much-anticipated sequel in the pre-internet days.  By the time an army of the slimy creatures terrorized Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and a team of outmatched space marines well over an hour into the running time—an unusually late reveal for a sci-fi monster movie—the then-sixteen-year-old knew he was in the presence of something life-changing.

He was far from alone.

“Both ‘Alien’ and ‘Aliens’ have haunted me in a sense,” Nathan told me over a Zoom call from his home in Hitchin, England, about forty miles north of London.  “It’s something about the aesthetic, it’s something about the power of the direction of both films.  It’s probably not something I could have vocalized when I was sixteen, but it planted the seeds that led to my career.”

Nathan, author of the book “Alien Vault: The Definitive Story of the Making of the Film,” has crafted the second part of his fan letter to the franchise with his long-form documentary, “Aliens Expanded,” now available on demand.  Clocking in at four hours and forty minutes, “Expanded” is perhaps the ultimate companion piece to Cameron’s outer space action adventure, featuring all-new interviews with Cameron himself, as well as Weaver, producer Gale Anne Hurd, cast, crew, fans and historians who discuss why people continue to revisit “Aliens” nearly four decades later.

“We ask one single question: Why do we love it [and] why do we keep coming back to it?” Nathan, who himself appears in the documentary, said.  “What is it about this film that holds this power over us?”

Nathan and executive producer Robin Block started production in 2022, traveling the world for their passion project.  Among the first interviewees was Lance Henriksen, who portrayed the android Bishop.  Each “get” helped spread the word about “Expanded”—a process the director describes as an exercise in patience or perhaps “a slow game of dominoes.”  Other interviewees followed, including creature puppeteer Alec Gillis as well as actors Michael Biehn (Hicks), Mark Rolston (Drake) and Jenette Goldstein (Vasquez).  (Indeed, the issue of a non-Hispanic actor portraying Vasquez is addressed in the film, both by Goldstein herself and a Hispanic PhD who acknowledges the complicated issue of representation while simultaneously praising Goldstein’s tough-as-nails performance.)

“You have to win over people.  You have to convince them of the legitimacy of what you’re setting out to do,” Nathan said of the snowball effect of achieving one yes after another.  “And there was some momentum to the gamble.”

However, Nathan freely acknowledges that he had to nab the marquee names for the documentary to be definitive.

“He’s James Cameron, for pete’s sake [and if] you’re setting out to make a documentary of ‘Aliens,’ you are aware that the director is the biggest…and the most successful director in history,” he said.

However, once Cameron, Weaver and Hurd were aboard, other “dominoes” followed, including Paul Reiser, who played the notorious corporate toady Carter Burke.  Nathan recalls his teenage memory of seeing “Aliens” opening night, watching as Burke locks Ripley and young Newt (Carrie Henn) up with the monsters near the film’s climax.

“This guy at the back of the cinema just lost control of his emotions and went, ‘You bastard!'” Nathan recalls.  “He lost the sense that he was even watching a film.  That’s how powerful that film is.”

As extensive as “Aliens Expanded” is, Nathan remains aware of the people who either wouldn’t appear or simply could not.  The list of “Aliens” luminaries who have since passed on includes director of photography Adrian Biddle, editor Terry Rawlings, composer James Horner, original creature designer H.R. Giger, as well as cast members Al Matthews (Apone) and, of course, Bill Paxton (Hudson).

Among the still-living, Nathan’s wish list included Ridley Scott, “Alien³” director David Fincher and producer Walter Hill, notorious for not discussing his work on the franchise.

“I would love to have had Ridley Scott’s take on [‘Aliens’], but he is a bit resistant to it,” Nathan said.  “[He and Cameron are] mates now, but he is still slightly resistant to ‘Aliens’ being canon.  He doesn’t talk about the queen.”

Nathan said he also would have liked to have found the actress who portrayed the cocooned woman—the one who begs Corporal Dietrich, “Please kill me!” just before an alien springs from her chest.

“She’s only going to be in the film for five minutes, and the producer goes, ‘Is it worth it in the end?'” Nathan said of such hard choices.  “Of course, you stop the traffic for Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd, but you know you have to draw a line somewhere, or it would be six hours long.”

In the film, Hurd discusses the sexism she faced from certain male members of the British crew, who informed the then-30-year-old producer they wouldn’t be taking orders from a woman.  Hurd’s response: “Then you won’t be working on this film.”

While her show of spine is to be admired, the chutzpah demonstrated by Cameron in a notorious on-set incident remains the stuff of infamous legend known as “the tea lady incident.”  Early on, Cameron became frustrated with the slow pace of filmmaking in England and, thanks to the U.K.’s strong unions, the crew’s frequent tea breaks.  Fed up, Cameron tipped over the tea tray and all of its snacks in full view of the entire crew, much to their horror.

“He gives it to me in all its wonderful, wonderful detail,” Nathan said, adding that the notoriously temperamental Cameron now has the hindsight of several decades to—perhaps—criticize his earlier actions.  “There might be more polite ways of going about that rather than kicking over the tea trolley, and he recognizes that now.  But I understand his frustration because he wants to put it on the screen…and if you’re not going to help him put it on the screen, then you’re not with him.  This poor tea lady was in the middle of it all.”

(We also learn in the doc from Cameron that the crew snarkily referred to him as “the American”—nevermind that he is Canadian).

Financing films is expensive at the best of times, so Nathan and Block applied a rather 21st-century mechanism to bring the project to completion. Investors were offered not only a Blu-ray and their name in the credits but exclusive merchandise, offering fans an opportunity to be involved in a product geared specifically to them. During the closing credits, several fan-funders even get a chance to share a favorite “Aliens” memory.

Nathan shares that the final rendition of “Aliens Expanded” isn’t precisely what he had in mind when he started out, but that’s part of the filmmaking process.  The film, he said, will tell you what it wants to be as a documentary’s narrative is often dictated by the footage you capture.  Nathan adds that his editor, Samuel Way, often pushed the director hard to cut out nearly identical soundbites—the “great enemy” being repetition, he said.

The response to “Aliens Expanded” has been positive, certainly from Nathan’s backers.  Furthermore, he said that “Aliens” actor William Hope (Gorman) showed up for a London screening and was rather complimentary.  (In the documentary, Hope shares that military personnel often point to the in-over-his-head Gorman as an example of how not to lead soldiers in combat.)  Nathan awaits a reaction from Cameron, perhaps as he is “jetting between New Zealand and L.A.” working on his various “Avatar” sequels.

“It’s a four-hour love song to this film, so I don’t know how anybody could be unhappy with it,” he said.  “People are obsessive about Aliens [and] I didn’t want to shortchange them.  I wanted to feed that obsession.”

Nathan’s next project is yet another deep dive into “The Thing Expanded.”  He has already filmed an interview with director John Carpenter and imagines that the film will be ready by Christmas next year.

In addition to being a long-form documentary about a film, Nathan also views “Aliens Expanded” as a personal journey about how that sixteen-year-old boy who saw the movie on opening night in 1986 grew up to become a filmmaker.  His own adventure has come full circle.

“It’s been a great journey—a worrisome journey, a stressful journey at times, but a great one,” Nathan said.

Go to https://aliens-expanded.com to order a digital copy of the film.