15 movies with extremely interesting hidden meanings

11. Aliens (The Vietnam War)

Aliens is the 1986 sequel to the 1979 movie Alien. It sees action heroine Ellen Ripley returning to the planet where her crew encountered the titular hostile Alien creature (the Xenomorph) the first time around, but this time she’s accompanied by a unit of space marines.

In addition to merely being a science-fiction horror movie with the above plot, it is also said to be a metaphor for the Vietnam War. The parallels include the dehumanisation of soldiers, the use of booby traps, the feeling of claustrophobia, the underestimation of opponents and moments of extremely incompetent leadership. Even the posters for the movie came with the accompanying tagline “This Time It’s War!”