Usenet FAQ Archive - http://www.netmeg.net/faq/recreation/sf-and-fantasy/alien/02.html goto -> Usenet FAQ Archive : Recreation : SF and Fantasy MOVIES: ALIEN FAQ part 2/4 The archive was called: movies/alien-faq/part2 Frequency: rare Posted to: alt.cult-movies, rec.arts.sf.movies, rec.arts.movies.past-films, news.answers, rec.answers, alt.answers Version: 3.0 --,_ < <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > _,-- \ / \ ALIEN, ALIENS, ALIEN^3 and ALIEN RESURRECTION / ,_ | | _, `-,__| Information and Frequently Asked Questions |__,-' _______' `_______ VVVV ______,_ Version 3.0 _,______ VVVV \|XXXX|/|/|/|/(_ _)\|\|\|\|XXXX|\ _M_M_M_ PART 2 of 4 _M_M_M_ _) (_ \______\ < < < < < < <<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>> > > > > > > /______/ 8. MEMORABLE QUOTES In some cases, the circumstances around which these quotes occur will be given so the reader can get the "full effect" of the moment. "The entire world revolves around this wretched Alien." - H.R. Giger _ALIEN_ < Kane starts choking, this starts the scene where the Alien bursts from his chest> "What's the matter man, the food ain't THAT bad?!" - Parker "Right... " - Brett, stated all the time < Ripley asks how long it takes the ship to self destruct > "If we ain't outta here in 10 minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space." - Parker "You still don't know what you're dealing with do you? Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility [...] I admire its purity, a survivor; unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality." - Ash _ALIENS_ "They ain't payin' us enough for this." - Drake "Not enough to wake up to your face." - Dietrich "Hey, Hicks, you look just like I feel" -Drake "Another glorious day in the Corps. A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm; every meal a banquet, every paycheque a fortune, every formation a parade. I love the Corps!" - Apone "Hey Sarge, you'll get lip cancer smokin' those..." - Hudson Hudson: "Hey, Vasquez... Have you ever been mistaken for a man?" Vasquez: "No, have you?" Ripley: "Just stay away from me, Bishop!" < Bishop offers some of his meal to her. Ripley hits a plate from Bishop hands > Frost: "I guess she didn't like the corn bread either..." Gorman: "Drake! Check your camera! There seems to be a malfunction." < on which Drake hits the camera to the wall. > Gorman: "That's better." < After Gorman says, "Hicks, meet me at the south lock. We're coming in." > [sarcastically] "He's coming in. I feel safer already." - Hudson "Stop your grinnin' and drop your linnen..." - Hudson < Gorman orders the troops to disarm all their weapons before the first alien encounter > "What the hell are we supposed to use man, harsh language?" - Frost "I say we grease this rat fuck son of a bitch" - Hudson < After Ripley rescues the remaining troops with the APC and suggests that they nuke the site from orbit, Burke tries to stop this plan > "Hey maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our ASSES kicked pal!" - Hudson < Ripley responds to Burke's reservations about nuking the alien-infested site > "They can BILL me!" - Ripley < After the first encounter with the aliens, the survivors are in the APC discussing their next move. > "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit; it's the only way to be sure." - Ripley < When Ripley explains that Hicks is the "one in charge" (after the marines' first confrontation with the aliens > "He's just a grunt! No offense..." - Burke "None taken." - Hicks < After Ripley and Newt are attacked by the facehuggers, and they discover it was Burke's doing > "Allright, we waste him... no offense." - Hicks "How can they cut the power, they're ANIMALS, man!" - Hudson < The dropship crashes > "Well that's great, that's just fuckin' great man, now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now man!" - Hudson "Are you finished?" - Hicks "That's it man, game over man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?" - Hudson "Why don't we build a fire, sing a couple of songs! Why don't we try that?" - Burke < Ripley tells the story of why Burke tried to impregnate her and Newt with alien eggs > "I say we grease this rat-fuck son-of-a-bitch right now!" - Hudson "You know Burke, I don't know which species is worse; you don't see them fucking each other over for a goddam percentage!" - Ripley "Dear Lord Jesus, this can't be happenin' man, this isn't happenin..." - Hudson < Ripley tells Hudson that Newt managed to survive for a long time with no weapons and no training > "Why don't you put HER in charge?!" - Hudson < Hicks says that there won't be any rescue attempt made for another 17 days > "17 days?! Hey man, I don't want to rain on your parade, but we're not gonna last 17 hours against those things!" - Hudson < Bishop says "I'm afraid I have some bad news." > "Well that's a switch." - Hudson "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." - Bishop "Get away from her you bitch!" - Ripley _ALIEN^3_ "I'm a murderer and rapist of women!" - Dillon "Then I must make you nervous..." - Ripley < Ripley's looking for the alien > "Don't be afraid, I'm part of the family!" - Ripley < Talking to something she thinks is the alien > "You've been in my life so long... I can't remember anything else...!" - Ripley "Do we have the capacity to make fire? Most humans have enjoyed that privilege since the stone age..." -Ripley _ALIEN RESURRECTION_ "I thought you were dead!" - DiStephano "Yeah, I get that a lot." - Ripley < After Ripley destroys her other clones > "What's the big deal, man? Fuckin' waste o' ammo!" - Johner "C'mon!" - Christie "...must be a chick thing." - Johner "What's inside me?" - Purvis "I'm so tired!" - Purvis "Sleep when you die, man!" - Johner < After the aliens take Ripley away > "It's not right... !" - Call "I've been saying that all day!" - Purvis < Right before shooting Call > "You really are way too trusting!" - Wren < As Purvis charges towards him, ignoring warnings to stay put > "Why does nobody listen to me?!" - Wren < To Wren, over the intercom > "Father's dead, asshole" - Call "I don't care whether you knew or not! You brought a terrorist onboard a military vessel, and as far as I am concerned, you all die with her! Do you understand?" - Wren "Yeah, I understand... Christie?" - Elgyn < Christie pulls out his guns and starts firing > "Drop your weapon! And YOU! Drop that piece a' shit! Or I BLOW HIS HEAD OFF!" - Screaming Soldier < As the Betty hits earth's atmosphere hard and fire spreads around them > "AAAAAAAAHHHHH... What's burnin'?" - Johner "EARTH!" - Vriess < Johner looks out the window > "Shit! You're right! AAAAAAAAHHH... " - Johner < To Vriess > "Hey, I'm not the mechanic here, Ironsides! I mostly just hurt people!" - Johner < Firing at an alien > "I'll give you holes, you slimy BASTARD!" - Vriess "Earth, man. What a shithole." - Johner < After being searched for weapons > "Nice welcome Perez! What, you afraid the six of us are gonna hijack your damn ship or what?" - Elgyn < Call through the intercom of the Auriga, referring to Wren > "Intruder on level one. All aliens please proceed to level one." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. TECHNICAL PROBLEMS _ALIEN_ - The "blurb" on the back of the movie box is wrong. "...the crew of a commercial spaceship make an unscheduled landing on a barren and desolate planet for engine repairs." They did not land on the planet to make engine repairs, rather to investigate the distress beacon. - In the opening scene the camera pans over interior of the Nostromo's bridge and ends with a view on the visor of a helmet. Then we see shots alternated between the helmet and the monitor (readout on the monitor is reflected in the helmet's visor). In the first view on the monitor you can see the screen and some keys on the console. In the second view on the monitor, a plastic coffee cup has appeared to the right of the monitor. UPDATE! This is not an error! After reviewing the movie several hundreds of times, it has been concluded that this was not an error. There is an explanation for this: In the opening shot of the bridge, we see two helmets lying on the bridge. The shot where alternating shots are what the TWO helmets 'see' when TWO DIFFERENT monitors come to life. Watch the backgrounds of the helmets, and watch the monitors intensely: you will notice that we see first helmet one, and it's view (monitor one) then helmet two, and it's view too. Then, when the monitors come to life, the shots alternate between helmet one and it's view and helmet two and it's view. This can be considered as somewhat of an artistic view on a conversation between two subsystems of the hardware of Mother, the Nostromo. - When Kane looks around down in the derelict ship, the camera pans around and we see the eggs from Kane's point of view. On the left, there is an egg which has some kind of 'box' behind it, assumingly left behind by someone of the props division. It's appearance is quite 'human', not anything like the alien's interior. - When the facehugger is cut and starts bleeding, Dallas and the rest of the crew run down and see a hole in the ceiling. It consists of two separate holes, with some 'bridge' inbetween. They go down one level more, and then there is a quick shot of everyone entering the deck, where we see the ceiling quite intact, just a little affected by the acid. Then we see Dallas poke into the hole with Brett's pen. This hole is _exactly_ the same one as one deck up: two holes separated by a 'bridge'. _ALIENS_ - During the inquistion, Ripley cries out: "Kane... Kane said he saw thousands of eggs in there..." This cannot be. When Kane was lowered into the ship, we get to hear and see everything he says and does. He does not mention any amount of eggs. He doesn't even call it eggs, he calls it leathery objects. Then he is attacked and he slips into the coma. When he wakes up, it appears that he cannot remember anything about the planet. Unless he remembered more later, Ripley is making a statement about something she could not possibly have heard from Kane. Perhaps she was confused with something Dallas or Lambert said. (They could've gotten down the hole, too, to get Kane after he was attacked.) - After the Sulaco arrives at LV-426, a computer screen displays the last names and first initials of each of the crew members. Hudson isn't on the list. - During the marines' initial confrontation with the aliens (while Ripley and Gorman are monitoring the situation from the APC), there is a scene where Ripley tells Gorman to pull his men out. The first time you see Ripley in this 20 second clip she is wearing a audio headset. The frame flicks to Gorman who looks unhappy, and flicks back to an irate Ripley with NO HEADSET. The scene flicks back to Gorman who loses his temper, and then back to Ripley who talks into the Headset which has reappeared. (Gorman subsequently knocks the headset off.) - When Frost falls down the stairwell on fire, if you look closely at the last couple of frames before the camera angle changes you can see a boot come out from the bottom left corner. It shows up quite nicely in front of the fire. It looks to be more of a silhouette. It is definitely not a character's boot, nor is it Frost's boot that may have popped off: it looks like someone is about to climb down to Frost, stepping over the fence on a lower deck. This is in both the theatrical and boxed set version. - Adding up the estimated time that Bishop makes (for getting the drop ship down to the planet) gives a total of 180 minutes (3 hours), however the fusion reactor is not going to blow up for another 4 hours. Ripley says "It's going to be close..." but they actually have a full hour to clear the base. [not NECESARRILY a technical problem, but it could be] - In the scene in the dropship where Ripley is preparing to rescue Newt; she's arming herself, there is an editing error. Camera angle 1 (close up of the weapons rack) Ripley grabs a flame thrower and then from angle 2 (close up of the table) she puts down a pulse rifle. Next she grabs a pulse rifle but puts down a flame unit. This is in the theatrical version, but is corrected in the boxed set. - When Bishop gets it from the mother alien, it is said that you can see the string pulling the stinger through the dummy. - In the LD version of aliens, during those split-seconds the camera is NOT on the queen during the fight between Ripey and her, pay attention to Bishop. In one shot, you can clearly see the hole that Lance Henriksen is standing in (to hide the other half of his body) to give the effect of being ripped in two. This is when he reaches out to grab Newt who is being sucked into the loading bay. - In the battle scene between Ripley and the mother alien where Ripley is in the loader, we see the alien pull the loader into the airlock when Ripley tries to drop it. The loader is turned upside down and the cone on top with the spinning yellow caution light is broken when it slams into the floor. In the next scene, however, we see the loader lying on the floor of the airlock with the yellow cone still in one piece. Also, the sharp end of the alien tails seems to be missing, as if it broke off, but the broken part isn't on the airlock floor. - When the queen falls out of the Sulaco you can see the "matte hole" surrounding her in the outside shot. (It is not square as the ones in _STAR WARS_.) (This is only on apparent on TV/video/laserdisc.) - The Pulse rifles are using "standard armor piercing explosive tip, caseless" [Gorman, Aliens] and yet when one is fired, you see shells flying out of it if you look carefully. (Still unconfirmed... where is this seen?) _ALIEN^3_ - Some instances where you can see the "outline" created by the blue screening technique. - The Cryo capsules seen in the escape pod in _ALIEN^3_ are the same design as those seen in _ALIEN_ which is a DIFFERENT design than the capsules seen in the Sulaco in _ALIENS_. _ALIEN-RESURRECTION_ - Christie's guns appear behind his back, then, in the next scene, his hands are at his sides. Then, suddenly, his hands are behind his back again! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. TRIVIA _ALIEN_ - H.R. Giger, the man who created the alien, was also hired to make up some scenery for Dune. This was not used, though. - The facehugger was originally far more large than it turned out eventually. The first drafts of the facehugger showed it about one-and-a-half yards big, with a tail which made it up to (or over) three yards. It embrased the complety head of the victim, instead of just attaching to the front. - The first alien Ridley Scott thought of having marching around in the picture, was a big man with a bunch of children strapped to him, wrapped up in rubber. This idea was thought over, but it gave too many problems. The second idea was a robot 'alien'. This idea was rejected because of safety reasons: there was no way of really being sure that no one would get hurt when the robot would've been armed (during a fight). Then the idea of a insect like alien was brought up. The alien we all know was derived from this idea. - The first draws of the alien showed us an alien with eyes! - Bolaji Badejo, the man who was in the alien suit, was just picked up from a bar by Ridley Scott. He was as big as Scott wanted the alien to be: two metres (6ft, 7in). - There were two alien suits: one for the effect of a HUGE alien, 6ft 7in, and one for the stuntman, Eddy Powell, 5ft 10in. - Only due to problems with materials, the alien was _not_ transparent. Otherwise we would've been watching a transparent alien in the trilogy... - "None of the actors saw the alien before the shootings. This created a genuine reaction on film." [This referring to the chestburster scene. Weaver and Scott have both confirmed this to be true -- Scott mentions it on the DVD release]. Other trivia - H.R. Giger made an alien walking-stick handle. He took this to the Oscar Award ceremony. - According to the _ALIEN_ box set, _ALIEN_ grossed $ 40,300,000.00 - The first half of the movie was based on original ideas and a script entitled "Memories" by Dan O'Bannon, the second half originated from the idea of gremlins on a B-17 bomber, transposed to a spaceship. [source: _ALIEN_ box set] - Notice the similarity between the cocooned gremlins in the movie "Gremlins" and the alien's eggs/cocoon structure. This aspect of _GREMLINS_ could've been inspired by _ALIEN_. - It has been suggested that _ALIEN_ is a rip-off from from an A.E. van Vogt short story entitled "Discord in Scarlet". Van Voght seems to have won a court suite about what appeared to be a rip-off of part of this famous novella. "Discord in Scarlet" is about a castaway alien who plants eggs in the bodies of humans. "Discord in Scarlet" was pasted into a composite novel called "Voyage of the space beagle". - Dan O'Bannon, writer of _ALIEN_, played the role of Pinback in the 1974 movie _DARK STAR_ (by John Carpenter). In this movie, his character is hunting a not-very-lethal alien (basically a large red beach-ball) aboard a space ship. The filming of these scenes certainly served as part of the inspiration for _ALIEN_. (The movie is like a comical version of _ALIEN_ in retrospect.) - "Nostromo" (a novel by Joseph Conrad) pilots a ship hauling ore out of a turbulent South American country. - The name of the shuttle "Narcissus" was taken from the Conrad novel "The Nigger of the Narcissus". The plot revolves around a sailor who brings death on board with him. - The alien's habit of laying eggs in the stomach (which then burst out) is similar to the life-cycle of the tsetse fly. - The images that the computers display during the Nostromo's separation from the Mother ship (as well as some images (ie: the "Purge" message) used near the end where Ripley is setting up the escape pod to blast off) are re-used in _Blade Runner_ (also directed by Ridley Scott) - Substantiated rumour: "Only John Hurt and the camera crew knew exactly what was going to happen during the chest-bursting scene. The actors' only clue as to what was going to happen was from what they read in the script, so reactions are genuine." This rumour is not a rumour anymore! In "Giger's Alien" it says that this scene was shot three times. So everybody knew perfectly well what they were getting into after the first shot. They had to change their blood stained shirts every time after a shooting. Veronica Cartwright told in an interview, that they didn't know what was going to happen at all (the first time this scene was shot!), only 'Kane' and the crew knew what was about to happen. Sigourney Weaver also told us: "Well, I had seen the pictures but in fact when the Alien was born -it was a very funny day. In fact Ridley wouldn't let any of us see it. As I walked on the set I remember everyone was wearing rain-coats which should have given me a hint that something horrible was going to happen, and they never rehearsed it. John Hurt started screaming and because he's such a good actor, all I could think of was what's happening, not to John but Kane, and out of nowhere." (from "An Interview With Sigourney Weaver" part 1, from The Alien War Official Society Magazine, No. 1) Ridley Scott further confirmed this info on the DVD release. - In the scene from ALIEN where Dallas, Kane and Lambert are leaving the ship, the actual actors walking past the Nostromo's landing struts are 3 children (two of which were Ridley Scott's children) dressed in scaled down spacesuits. This has the effect of making the ship look even bigger. The same thing has been done with Dallas, Kane and Lambert in spacesuits walking near the Space Jockey, to make the creature look larger. This scene was also done with three children. - Watch the scene where Kane gets attacked by the facehugger frame-by-frame. You'll see (through Kane's eyes) the facehugger jump out of the egg, attach itself to his helmet, break through the glass shielding and stick out three tubes through the glass, poking around inside the helmet. This is only 21 frames long, and is quite easy to miss during this action scene. - Watch the scene in which Brett get 'eaten' by the alien frame-by-frame too. You can see the alien's 'inner mouth' punch through the front of Brett's 'Nostromo' hat and retract and partially pulling out something red -- Brett's brain. It is quite gruesome actually. - An over-turned ice cube tray is on the side of Ash's motion tracking device. - A sex scene between Dallas and Ripley (!) was in the script, however was not filmed. [source: _ALIEN_ box set, "The Book of Alien"] This was supposedly to take place in a glass 'bubble' on top of the ship. During the intimicy, Kane was supposed to float by, dead, disturbing the love couple horridly. - The front (face) part of the alien costume's head is made from a real human skull. [source: _ALIEN_ box set, "Giger's Alien"] - Although it has nothing to do with _ALIEN_, Sigourney Weaver's real name is Susan Alexandra. [source: Who is Who in America, 47th Edition] - A good deal of the music that Jerry Goldsmith wrote for Alien never made it into the movie. Several tracks on the CD soundtrack don't appear in the film, and most of them that are in the movie apparently weren't used in the scenes they were written for, judging from track titles. The movie uses some classical music, plus music from an earlier Jerry Goldsmith score entitled "Freud." [refer to section [7], MERCHANDISE for more soundtrack information]. The original score can be heard on the DVD release in an isolated audio track. - In Mel Brooks' Sci-Fi spoof "Space Balls" there is a scene near the end where John Hurt (Kane) and a group of other actors made up to resemble the crew in _ALIEN_ are enjoying a drink at a space diner. Hurt suddenly starts choking and a chestburster erupts from his chest. John Hurt (Kane) says "Oh no, not again". The creature then dawns a top hat and dances across the bar while singing "Hello my baby". < the next two points are quoted from the Blade Runner FAQ with permission > - Notice that both _Alien_ and BladeRunner have "artificial persons", and there is ambiguity as to who is/was a real human. _Alien_ and BR are perfectly compatible, the only problem being that Ash should have been a replicant, as opposed to a robot. - When Deckard enters his apartment at the end, the background hum is the same distinctive hum as in parts of _ALIEN_. _ALIENS_ - Look closely at the readouts about the Nostromo crew in back of Ripley during the Inquest. There is, if you look closely, some interesting (and accurate) detail about the characters. (any information about this is appreciated) - In the Special Edition, we get to see Ripley's daughter, Amanda Ripley McClarent, on a colour printout of a computer. The woman protrayed in this picture is in fact Sigourney Weaver's own mother Elizabeth Inglis. (from an interview with S. Weaver) - James Cameron was offered, after Terminator, two film projects - one was a futuristic version of Spartacus, the other was what was then called Alien II. He chose the latter. - When, in the Sulaco, the Marines are being thawed out - look at the screen - nearly without exception, the names listed have as the character's first initial, the actor's first initial. - Tip Tipping, who played Private T Crowe, was actually a stuntman and stunt coordinator. He died about two years back in a tragic parachuting accident... - Also there's a wonderful visual pun - when the Mother Alien "stings" Bishop, "Queen takes Bishop!!" - "Peace Through Superior Firepower" is written on Frost's T-shirt. - "El Riesgo Siempre Vive." is written on Vasquez's chest plate armor. In Spanish, this literally means "the risk lives forever", and figuratively means (it's a saying) that taking risks is necessary to survive. - Hudson's line, "Stop your grinnin' and drop your linnen" is a quote from an AC/DC song entitled "Shake a Leg". [album: Back In Black] - British Aerospace was [secretly] contracted to design the weaponry and spacecraft for Aliens. The dropship is a composite of the cockpit from the Apache helicopter, and engine cowling from old British planes - also the Sulaco is based on the pulse rifle. - "...It was [Jeanette] Goldstein's (Vasquez) outside that needed an overhaul, largely because blue eyes and Huck Finn-style freckles didn't quite fit the job description. 'The makeup took an HOUR,' she sighs. 'The makeup woman said I had the most ornery freckles she had ever seen.'...They also gave her dark contact lenses, and rather unceremoniously, whacked off most of her waist-length hair." [from STARLOG #115, Feb.1987] - "The introduction to the marines, [...], as they awoke from hyper space and gnawed on breakfast, was filmed at the production's end. That way, the cast had several months to get acquainted." [from STARLOG #115, Feb.1987] - "Loco" is written on the back of Vasquez's shirt. [from STARLOG #115, Feb.1987] - Goldstein : "'It's never mentioned in the film, but in the characters' background, she and Drake are recruited from juvenile prison, where they're under life sentences. 'Therefore, they were different from the others, who were on a time limit. Hudson was supposed to get out of the marines in four weeks, which is what made him flip.' That also explains the back of Hudson's vest, tailored by actor Bill Paxton to read, 'Contents under pressure. Do not puncture.'" [from STARLOG #115, Feb.1987] - Ferro has "Fly the Friendly [Skies]" written on her helmet. You can't read the last word, as it's covered, but presumably she is making a joke with the United Airlines motto. - On the side of the first drop ship is an insignia of an eagle with big sneakers on, sort of completing a jump. Just above this is the text "Bug Stompers" and just below is "We endanger species". - The second drop ship is called "Smart Ass" and just below is "We aim by P.F.M." (ie: Pure Fucking Magic) - "Adios" is painted on Vasquez's smart gun. - The smart guns used by Drake and Vasquez are mounted on them via set of hydraulic arms. These arms take most of the load of the guns and keep them stable. Virtually the same technology is used by camera men on outside broadcasts, where they are used to keep the cameras steady. The hydraulics absorb most of the energy created by a camera man running down the road leaving a very steady picture. - An ammunition clip for the M41-A pulse rifle holds 95 rounds. Comment: Looking at the size of the magazines being loaded into the pulse rifles, this may not be possible, unless the mags have 3 rows, which is unlikely looking at their width. If the rounds are each 10mm in diameter, a staggered magazine (like those found in most modern military weapons) including the spring or some similar feed mechanism would be about 90cm long! Even a triple stacked mag would be 35cm and it would present a few engineering challenges concerning the feed mechanism. - The mechanism used to make the facehuggers thrash about in the stasis tubes in the science lab came from one of the "flying piranhas" in one of James Cameron's earlier movies: Piranha II - The Spawning. It took 9 people to make the face hugger work, one person for each leg, and someone for the tail. - Hicks was originally played by actor James Remar, but Michael Biehn replaced him a few days after principal photography began, due to "artistic differences" between Remar and Cameron. - Partly as a joke and partly to leave the ending open for subsequent sequels, James Cameron added the sound of an egg opening/face hugger scuttling about at the end of the film credits. [Which one is the sound? This remains uncertain. Some say different sounds are attached to different versions of the movie.] - "She thought they said 'illegal aliens' and signed up..." - Hudson This quote (directed towards Vasquez) was an "inside joke" to the actors of the movie. (quoted without permission from an interview with Jeanette Goldstein [Vasquez] that appeared in STARLOG magazine) ''...she answered an ad for a film role in the local trades. It read simply, "Genuine American actors, British Equity, for feature film, ALIENS, 20th Century Fox," she relates, over lunch near the old homestead in Beverly Hills. "I had seen ALIEN, but I had NO idea this was a sequel. It had been so long ago, it didn't even occur to me. "I thought it was about actual aliens, you know, immigrants to a country. I was wondering why they wanted Americans. I figured the movie was about lots of different immigrants to England." Since she didn't have an agent at the time, she answered the ad on her own, with rather surprising results. "I actually came in wearing high heels and lots of makeup, and I had waist-length hair," she says. Other auditioners, who had advance notice from THEIR agents, were decked out in military fatigues --- Goldstein's first inkling she would be reading for the role of a marine...'' - One track of music from Goldsmith's CD for _ALIEN_ appears near the end of _ALIENS_, during the final chase where the queen follows Ripley up to the landing pad where Bishop [she thinks!] is waiting. Even though this music was used in _ALIENS_, Goldsmith's name was not mentioned in the closing credits. - Ripley's shoes are Reebok sneakers. You can see this when she's driving one of the cargo loaders. - In Aliens, Bishop said Ash was one of the Hyberdyne Systems 120-A/2. In the first draft of the script, the name 'Cyberdyne' was used. Terminators are from Cyber Dynamics, also called 'CyberDyne'. Maybe James Cameron threw in a little connection between the two. - Adrian Biddle, the cinematographer for Aliens, has had a longtime collaboration with Ridley Scott. Apparently, Biddle was not the original cinematographer. In Alien3, Jordan Cronenweth was slated to the the cinematographer, but poor health forced him to turn the task over to Alex Thomson. Biddle had already worked on _ALIEN_, although only as a focus puller. - To get an idea of the wonderful attention to detail that was paid in the Alien films, freeze when Hicks is programming the Sentry guns. The screen depicts exactly what such a futuristic weapon would have -interrogation modes, choices of "soft, hard, semi-hard" targets, and IFF options - which means "Identification, Friend or Foe." - The actor who played Newt's brother Timmy is her brother in real life too, judging from his name. - Hudson's "game over MAN" was used as a sample when you died in the game Test Drive II by Electronic Arts. At least in the Amiga version. - It was also imitated for the SNES version of the "Alien 3" game, and the Sega Genesis version of the "Robocop Vs. Terminator" game. Obviously, both played when your game was over. - It was also imitated by Robin Williams at the end of the credits to the direct-to-video animated sequel "Aladdin and the King of Thieves," where Williams raves (in his best Bill Paxton voice) "We're not gettin' outta here, man! We're not gettin' outta here! Game over, man!" - The Powerloaders were supposed to have been built by Caterpillar Tractor. If you look at the scene in Aliens where they're using the Powerloaders to load the ammo, you'll notice a very brief view of the Cat logo in one of the closeup shots. It's only a few frames long, so it's easy to miss. It's probably one of those corporate promos that Hollywood likes to use to add authenticity. - Though Ash and Bishop are considered to be androids, this is not the case. They both are robots. This can be deducted from the observation that their heads can operate seperately from their bodies. This cannot be the case with androids. Androids and cyborgs are essential holistic systems: the head wouldn't function on it's own. The fact that bits of both Ash and Bishop can be re-activated suggests that they are robots, not androids. _ALIEN^3_ There were at least 12 "scripts" for _ALIEN^3_ (derived from the May 1992 issue of PREMIERE). On top of this, the pre-production time was lengthy and hellacious for all involved, involving many changing directors, story factors, etc. : It all began when ALIENS was still attracting moviegoers to the big screens. Roger Birnbaum, president of Fox's worldwide productions, declared the series to be "the franchise" and everyone around Fox felt confidant that they had discovered a sci-fi series that could go on into infinity in the stylings of Star Trek. After all, Cameron had laid it all out for them -- they had Sigourney, Michael Biehn, and Lance Henriksen all available to be potential leads, and, when the time came for them to retire, the Newt character could be aged and brought to the forefront. The third film was pushed forward due to the box office success of the first two, but when Walter Hill and David Giler, the producers of all of the series' films, tried to come up with an original approach to the series, they realized that there wasn't much of an option left. Time and again they ended up going back to the ideas behind the first two films and the modern "cyberpunk" genre pushed into the limelight by Cameron's THE TERMINATOR. And that wasn't what they really wanted to go for. Giler and Hill threw around a variety of ideas like having Ripley and Newt chase one particularly mobile alien around a BLADE RUNNER-esque off-world metropolis, or letting the aliens invade New York, where they could fuse together to create one gigantic alien beast to smash buildings in a GODZILLA-esque fashion. Not particularly satisfied with these ideas or any of their others, they agreed to return to what worked before -- a dark, isolated, labyrinthian setting. And, soon, they turned to Sigourney Weaver to help out, and she got a co-producer credit years before the film would ever roll. Hill and Giler slaved over various concepts before finally settling on a two-part story that would feature the evil Company facing off with an agressive, militaristic culture of humans whose socialist views caused them to separate from Earth society basically, evil corporation vs. evil futuristic Soviet Union. The idea behind the two-part story was that Ripley would take a back seat to Corporal Hicks in the third film, but would return to the lead in the fourth. 20th Century Fox was wary of pushing Ripley to the sidelines, but reluctantly agreed, on two conditions: first, the producers had to try to get Ridley Scott to direct ALIEN 3. And second, ALIEN 3 and ALIEN 4 had to be filmed back-to-back, so that production costs would be less. The producers agreed, but Ridley Scott proved to be unavailable. It was September 1987 when Giler suggested hiring sci-fi author William Gibson to write the first script for part three, based on his and Hill's own treatment. 1. William Gibson wrote his based on a brief treatment given to him by Walter Hill, David Giler and Gordon Carroll. It was set in a military space station/shopping mall and a Communist space station ("It was sort of like a Cold War in space, with genetic manipulation of the alien replacing nuclear war," says Gibson). He got it in before the 1987 writers strike interrupted the process, but Giler and Hill weren't crazy about his script. They offered him a chance to rewrite it, but insteaad, Gibson returned to his novels. "Only one detail survived. 'In my draft, this woman has a bar code on the back of her head,' he says. 'In the shooting script, one of the guys has a shaved head and a bar code on the back of his head. I'll always privately think that was my piece of ALIEN^3.'" The script ended with separate cliffhangers for Ripley and Newt, and Hicks and Bishop intending to seek out and travel to the alien's homeworld and destroy the creatures at the source. "The impression I had... was that budget parameters argued against introducing the aliens into something that was the equivalent of the BLADE RUNNER set, which I admit would have been my natural impulse," Gibson stated. [Gibson's script is available online! Check the "Frequently Asked Questions" section for more!] It was at the end of Gibson's writing process that Giler and Hill hired director Renny Harlin (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4, DIE HARD 2). The first director who wouldn't make it the end of the lengthy production. When Gibson declined a rewrite, Harlin suggested hiring Eric Red to do the job. 2. Eric Red was hired for a "five-week" job to convince Fox to dole out more development money. He collaborated with Renny Harlin. According to Red, "HE came up with the gene-splicing idea. 'In the third film, you needed a new alien. I suggested doing genetic experiments on the alien.' Red says that Hill and Giler were disorganized and irresponsible. 'They had no story or treatment or any real plan for the picture,' he says. Hill and Giler say the problem was Red's script; when Harlin read it, he quit the project." Sigourney Weaver and David Giler both declared that the rewrite was "...a real disaster, absolutely dreadful." That script reached them on Febuary 7, 1989. Nearly three years after starting production, ALIEN 3 still had nowhere to go. Giler and Hill finally realized that filming two ALIEN sequels back to back was unlikely -- they had enough problem getting just one. So they turned back to Gibson's script. It wasn't exactly what they wanted, but they felt it was a good start. They handed the script over to David Twohy and gave him instructions that he was to add scope and characterization to the tale. Fox reluctantly agreed to pay for ANOTHER rewrite of the first script, but at the time, that was based on the idea that the script would be timely and contemporary -- something that was about to be blown out of the water. At this point, "it was a Soviet Union ship versus Gateway," the space station that Ripley awoke in at the start of ALIENS, according to Giler. Midway through Twohy's rewrite, though, the Communist bloc collapsed, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union no longer existed. Oops. Twohy quickly went back and rewrote the Cold War-themed story to take place at a prison colony, an idea that would be dredged up again in the final stages of ALIEN 3's production. The powers-that-be at Fox found the rewrite surprisingly solid. But there was one problem. No one had told Twohy that there was no longer going to be two sequels back-to-back, so the script didn't star Ripley! 3-4. David Twohy had a draft set in a penal colony in space without Ripley in it. But Joe Roth (head of Fox) insisted that he wouldn't make the film without Weaver. Twohy had just started to write Ripley into the script, when "one of the most transparent bits of studio treachery I've ever heard of" took place. At the same time Twohy was working, Fox got interested in Vincent Ward to direct, on the basis of the strength of his movie THE NAVIGATOR: A MEDIEVAL ODYSSEY. While flying to the American west coast, he came up with an all-new idea for the film. "Sigourney would land in a community of monks in outer space and not be accepted by them." He wanted the film set on a wooden space station (!!!) that would look like something Hieronymous Bosch would dream up, complete with windmills, glass-blowing furnaces -- and no weapons. He pitched his idea to Giler and Hill, who sat astounded and extremely pleased. Ward had brought a unique vision to the project, something they had struggled to find in all of the other various scripts. "It was a little far out, " admitted Giler, "but that's what we wanted, to push this thing a little bit." 5. Ward was immediately hired as director and collaborated with John Fasano to develop the script involving a community of monks (remember the seven dwarfs? If not, check the "Frequently Asked Questions" section!). The script got turned in and Giler and Hill found it pretty good, except for the obvious problem -- how do you get around the sheer ludicrous nature of a WOODEN space station??? [Fasano's script is available online! Check the "Frequently Asked Questions" section for more!] When a Los Angeles Times reporter called Twohy about "competing drafts of Alien^3", Twohy quickly finished his script, and went off to do his own film. Fox insisted that Ward's script was for ALIEN 4. Whether they knew that Giler and Hill had ditched that idea is unknown. Regardless, Twohy still declares that, "The old adage is true: Hollywood pays its writers well but treats them like shit to make up for it." 6 - 10. Greg Pruss was hired next to rewrite Fasano's script and attempt to make the wooden station plausible. Pruss did "five arduous drafts". Everyone moved to London where the crew was already beginning to design and build sets even as the script was being written. But the studio began having trouble with Ward, "who was less interested in Ripley or the alien than in his monks. 'The movie's called ALIEN because it's about the alien,' says Pruss. 'I couldn't get that across to Vincent.'" Pruss finally left to co-write ANOTHER 48 HOURS. 11. Pruss quit and Ward was fired due to his insistence on ridiculous ideas and focusing on monks causing the producers great frustration. Once David Fincher signed on as director (mostly a desperation decision based on his strong music videos), Fox hired Larry Ferguson (BEVERLY HILLS COP II, HIGHLANDER) to do a "four-week emergency rewrite." Ferguson continued more or less with Ward's ideas and hence, the horrible idea with the seven dwarfs and Ripley as Wendy, telling the monks stories. Weaver and Fincher hated the script and the movie "almost fell apart". On top of that, Ferguson stepped beyond his original scripting instructions and tried to fix character development problems. But that wasn't met with much enthusiasm either. According to Sigourney Weaver, Ferguson wrote Ripley so that she sounded like "a very pissed-off gym instructor." Ferguson was promptly fired. 12. Hill and Giler were paid $600,000 to do another emergency rewrite. They moved the story back to Twohy's prison and the religious element evolved into what exists in the final draft. The studio and Weaver liked the script but Fincher had a few reservations -- primarily a fear that audiences were going to hate him and the movie due to the death of Hicks and Newt. 13?. After much bureaucratic bickering over the budget and schedule plus the firing of key participants, Rex Pickett was hired to collaborate with Fincher for yet another rewrite. This occurred when Hill and Giler were going on vacation. "It all blew up when Pickett wrote a memo savaging Hill and Giler's script," said Fincher. And back to Hill and Giler's script they went -- which became the final draft. In the end, Vincent Ward would get sole story credit, and Hill and Giler would get all of the scripting credit. FOX freaked out at the last minute, and desperately tried to undermine Fincher, but Fincher fought back. They gave him conflicting demands, telling him to make the movie "'Hobbit' in space," and, quickly after, demanding an "E-ticket ride of a movie," according to Weaver. Fincher and Weaver were both a little pissed at the way FOX tried to fight their progress, but forged ahead. Actor Charles Dance vehemently defended Fincher to the last, declaring him to be an utter genius, that he trusted Fincher "implicitly," and would "jump off of London Bridge" for the young director. Fincher seemed to know that the movie wouldn't be accepted and desperately struggled to make the film a unique and exciting vision to offset the possibility. In the end, the movie was still perceived as a failure, and Fincher left films... until he made SEVEN years later, and, since then, his works have been hailed as genius. Go figure. - Prior to its release, _PREDATOR II_ came out in the theaters. Near the end of _PREDATOR II_ we see a trophy case of different skulls, one of which is the skull of an alien. - Boss Film campaigned hard to win the effects job for Alien3. They did all of the miniatures, space scenes, and even created a way of superimposing a rod-puppet alien into the film. This is most visible when after killing Clemens the creature scurries after Ripley, straightens itself out, and then (in close-up next to her face) we see the subtle change in the texture of the creature, that tips us off to the transition from rod puppet to latex model. - In Alan Dean Foster's novelization of Alien3, the "rescue" ship that Bishop II arrived in was called the Patna, From the novel Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad. _ALIEN RESURRECTION_ With Joe Roth replaced by Tom Rothman as 20th Century Fox's president of film production, Rothman was free to contemplate the nature of their film franchises when the summer of 1994 hit. DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE was about to enter production, the third film in that successful series, and the question for Rothman became, what viable products do we have that we can continue to make money with? That summer, SPEED had given them a new franchise to work with (one which would, the same year as ALIEN RESURRECTION's release, be given a sequel that would fail much worse than the new ALIEN film would), and the new STAR WARS prequel was still in gleam in Lucas' eye. ALIENS VS. PREDATOR had been considered around the time of ALIEN^3's release, but that option was looking more and more like a last-ditch resort. It was then that Rothman decided that the franchises should be attempted to be continued separately before an ALIENS VS. PREDATOR movie was made. And so, Rothman started to seek out scripts for PREDATOR 3, while announcing to the public that ALIEN 4 was entering early development. The scripting reigns were given to Joss Whedon, who had just helped give them the successful SPEED, with the instructions that Sigourney Weaver would probably not be returning. At that point, whether the movie would ever be made all depended on the strength of Whedon's script. "Blind panic is what I sat down with originally," Whedon said. "Seriously, being asked to do an ALIEN move was like being offered the Grail. I happen to be one of those diehard ALIEN fans. I grew up on them and when I got the go-ahead to write one, I panicked, I was paralyzed. Eventually, you just say, 'Okay, I've got to tell a story, get over yourself.'" "The mandate from the head office was 'Loved ALIENS, loved the first movie, not so sure about the third. Can you make us a soup here?' I was looking at the first two movies as my templates, trying to find the suspense and the uncertainty about what we were going to see physically from the aliens and the absolutely non-stop 'I can't believe this is still going on' action sequences of the second. But then I thought, 'No, actually, it just has to be a good yarn.'" Whedon first handed in a treatment that didn't include Ripley, and in fact included an interesting, yet illogical, suggestion for another lead -- a cloned adult Newt. "We just thought we'd go with another hero," Whedon shrugged. Fox gave him the go-ahead on a full script -- with Ripley included. The only stipulation to Ripley's return was that ALIEN^3 couldn't get the write-off. No easy outs like declaring the third film to be a dream were going to be allowed, which was fine with Whedon, who knew that that was the only valid way to handle it. "I really had to figure out two things: What on earth can I do that's new with an ALIEN movie and remain true to the genre, and, two, how on earth do I bring Ripley back? The last part, creatively, was the hardest, and most important thing," Whedon explained. "I figured the most realistic way to bring her back, if you will, was to clone her. But, I also knew that I had to deal with it very in-your-face. I knew that in the first portion of the movie, I had to address the rather disgusting process of creating this human being. It wasn't going to be like, oh, hey, it's Ripley. Look, she's back. We had to acknowledge that we know she died in the last movie and the pain and confusion that is involved in bringing her back. I didn't realize for a long time that this resurrection was not going to be a part of the movie, but its central issue. Because I can't write it until I know what it is about, emotionally. So, I spent a lot of time thinking about resurrection and what it meant. Finally, I realized that the emotional arc of the story rides on her feelings as she goes through this resurrection. Her story, for me, is about her accepting her own kind of humanity, on her own terms even if she doesn't necessarily fit the description of 'human.'" "I was heavily into [writing] the movie before I realized it was THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE," Whedon laughed. "You know, there is this group trying to get from one end of the ship to the other once the aliens have taken it over, so that basically, it's the journey through the dark and into the woods, and the question is, 'What's next?' There's even an underwater sequence, the only difference being that in this underwater sequence they're not alone. There are some problems in the water and more problems when they get out. There are just problems, problems, problems. Structurally, that really helped me because once I realied that it was a journey, mythically, it made sense to me." Fox ended up liking his journey, and the film was greenlighted. The script was sent to Sigourney to secure her involvement, but Weaver didn't jump right in. She did, however, genuinely like the script, and write down some notes, sending it back to Fox and Whedon. "I certainly thought it was over for me," said Weaver, commenting on what she obviously felt was the end of her involvement with the franchise after Ripley's death in ALIEN^3. "The idea of a fourth ALIEN movie just seemed ridiculous. My question was, How are they going to bring me back in a way that I won't laugh out loud? I think the thing that drew me to the part was the idea of waking up and suddenly existing with a clean slate, only to quickly discover that she is part alien. That's very liberating, as a character and an actor. In this movie, I'm not in the position of having to do the right thing, to stand up for the good and the right, for justice, all the things Ripley has done in the past." Although it's quite clear that Joss Whedon wrote the script with director John Woo (BROKEN ARROW, FACE/OFF) in mind, due to his usage of all of Woo's trademarks and the fact that he wrote a part specifically for Chow Yun-Fat, an actor that Woo frequently uses, it's interesting to note that no one ever attempted to get Woo for ALIEN RESURRECTION. As to why, we can only speculate. Initially director Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING, SHALLOW GRAVE) was sought to bring his unique vision to the series. However, he eventually decided that he didn't yet feel comfortable with a big budget Hollywood film, and opted to go back to his smaller films. Shortly thereafter, Rob Bottin, a makeup effects artist, was briefly considered, but that idea was nixed as quickly as it came up. Fears of a lengthy ALIEN^3-like pre-production phase started to creep into some of the execs. Then, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director of French sci-fi films like THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN and DELICATESSEN talked to Fox. Weaver flew to Paris to talk to him, and Jeunet flew to Los Angeles to talk to the executives behind the alien. Finding them surprisingly open and responsive to his vision for the film, he agreed to take on the role as director. Weaver, who stated that "All the elements I cared about were there again," signed on shortly thereafter, for $11 million dollars, $6 million more than she received for ALIEN^3, making her, at the time, the highest paid actress in Hollywood. "The story seemed smart, the studio was behind it, J.P. seemed like a genius. Even the alien was cool again. It wasn't a creature that eats you like a big tiger, which gets so boring." Meanwhile, through all this, the script's character of Call became a concern. This was really the first time that the series would have second primary lead, as Call had much screen time and played a huge role in the story. But who to play her? Even before Jeunet was cemented as director, this concern had been quickly raised, and resolved just as fast, thanks to some good timing and luck. As Jorge Saralegui, the studio's vice-president of feature production, explained, "We had been meeting with Winona about developing a sci-fi vehicle for her because she knew she was a fan of the genre. We were kicking some ideas around at a meeting and about halfway into it, I said, 'Hey, you know, there's this part in the ALIEN movie that might interest you. Do you like the ALIEN films?' She said she loved them and loved the script and said she'd do it." "Somehow, when they first approach me, I thought they wanted me to REPLACE Ripley," Ryder commented, disbelieving. "All I could think was, 'No way. You can't have me at the helm. ME? I'm 5 feet 4 inches tall. HELLO.'" Initially, Fox saw that a few other roles had a potential for lending themselves to big-name supporting actors, but, despite such attempts as trying to get Ed Harris for the role of Vriess, nothing panned out. The cast DID start to take shape, though, and, as it did, it became obvious to Fox that the script Whedon handed in would cost them well upwards of $100 million to produce. Considering that the last film in the series hadn't exactly been a great success, spending that kind of money seemed unwise. So they decided to ask Whedon to rework some of the script to cut down costs. As a result, one entire, particularly-expensive action sequence was cut out, and others were trimmed here and there to make them work a little easier. Regardless, the movie was looking to cost roughly $70 million, a figure that would turn out to be the final budget of the film. Fox agreed to that amount and off the movie went again, rocketing towards filming. Whedon then started playing with the ending, trying to make it cheaper and more character-driven instead of over-the-top. It changed from a giant battle on the cliffside by a snow-filled forest to: a hospital maternity ward, a giant junkyard, a desert, and, finally, completely off of Earth, and onto the Betty itself. This version was also dependent on the fact that the Newborn was revised shortly before filming. Whedon originally scripted the Newborn creature as a four-legged, eyeless, bone-white creature with red veins running along the sides of its head. It had an inner jaw, similar to the all the other aliens. It also had a pair of pincers on the sides of his head. These pincers were used to hold its prey still as it drained the prey of blood with its inner jaw. The creature was also larger, nearly the size of the queen alien. Of course, none of this made much sense for a creature that was supposed to be an alien/human hybrid, so the Newborn was revised into a more believable version of such a concept. So, the movie filmed, test screenings were held, the movie came out... and then what happened? Well, the movie was a smash internationally, but, in the domestic U.S. box office, made only $47 million dollars, $8 million less than even ALIEN^3 managed to get! The question is, why? Nearly every early review raved about how wonderful the film was (although it's worth it to note that one or two of those reviews were planted on the internet by Fox... though that doesn't change that nearly all of the other reviews were screamingly positive. There was even a huge load of Oscar-talk for Sigourney Weaver, and Fox was so confident from the early reviews that they had a hit that they began talking about ALIEN 5 long before the film was even released. True, many American professional reviewers savaged the film, but, unlike with ALIEN^3, which received essentially no positive reviews, the critics in the states were largely divided on the film -- those that loved it, really loved it, and those that hated it, really hated it. With both films, however, European critics heaped on adulation and praise. So, what went wrong? There's really no way to guess, as it seems that, going by the test reviews, the average moviegoer that went to the film should have liked it (but did they? Fan reactions seemed as mixed as the critics'), and reviews shouldn't have been a huge factor in helping or hindering the box office. Perhaps the best explanation is the easiest, and saddest, one: after the disappointment that many fans felt at ALIEN^3, no one was really all that interested in seeing another ALIEN film. Still, as the years have gone by, more and more critics and fans have come out and declared that ALIEN^3 was an original and intelligent vision and a damn fine film. Perhaps the same will come to pass for ALIEN RESURRECTION, and, if so, maybe we'll finally get our ALIEN 5. Just don't hold your breath. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. PLOT PROBLEMS AND LOOPHOLES This section contains plot problems that are SO BIG that there is no plausible explanation for it. If a good theory comes along, the point will be moved to section [11] frequently asked questions (at my discretion of course). _ALIEN_ - None are yet known. _ALIENS_ - Several times we see aliens spewing acid that does not seem to damage the "sets" (or at least doesn't damage the "sets" as severely as the few drops that eat through 3 layers of the Nostromo in _ALIEN_) This is MOST evident in the air-duct chase scene. _ALIEN^3_ - How did the eggs get on the Sulaco? (refer to section [13]) - Why is the escape capsule so poorly designed? Hicks is killed when a SAFETY beam impales him. _ALIEN-RESURRECTION_ - None are yet known. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS This section has been extended to allow for theoretical answers, the responses that aren't based on solid facts (yet provide a plausible answer) start with "[possibly]". If you believe you have a better explanation, don't hesitate to say so. Any questions that seem to have more than one plausible answer will appear in section [13] frequently discussed topics. _ALIEN_ Q: Is there a fan club I can join? A: Depending on when you read this FAQ, these clubs may have dissolved: The British Aliens Fan Club The Dropship PO Box 11 19 Compton Crescent Liskeard, Cornwall Northolt, Middx PL14 6YL UB5 5LS England England Q: What is the "Narcissus" ? A: The Narcissus is the name of the shuttle Ripley uses to escape from the Nostromo. Q: Who is the "Space Jockey"? A: This is the name given (by the technical staff) to the remains of the creature found on the derelict space craft. Q: What is written on Brett's cap? A: USCSS NOSTROMO 180286 Q: Why is there a "self-destruct button" on the Nostromo? A: This question refers to the control panel (labeled "Emergency Destruct System") that Ripley uses to cause the destruction of the Nostromo. [possibly] the "emergency destruct system" exists to protect company secrets in case the Nostromo is hijacked by a competator. (this would be a similar principle to espionage: when an enemy spy gets caught, he takes poison to kill himself so he cannot be tortured into giving away secrets). Or, a 20 million ton ship flying through space at very high speed tends to become a great danger when it gets off course by some malfunctions. If it's on collision course to some space station or colony, and there is no possibility of redirecting or stopping it, it would be very reasonable to put it on self-destruct and get away with the small shuttle. Q: The crew is awakened early out of their hypersleep to explore the planet from which the beacon is being transmitted, HOW early are they awakened? A: 10 months as indicated by Lambert (after the shuttle returns to the Nostromo) Q: Did the entire crew go down to the surface of LV-426? A: Yes. The Nostromo is a towing device for the 20,000,000 tons of ore. The entire crew went down to the planet's surface in the Nostromo (which detached itself from the cargo it was towing). Q: After the Nostromo blew up, and Ripley discovers that the alien is on board the escape capsule, why does the alien take SO long to attack her? A: [Possibly] the alien was coming to the end of its life cycle, when Ripley happened to disturb it. It was slow to attack because it was dying. This theory is supported by an older version of the _ALIEN_ script where Ash reveals that the alien had made a nest and ensured the continutation of its species (cocooned Dallas and transformed Brett into an egg) at which time the alien itself would approach the end of its lifecycle; curl up and die. Giger's original conception of the alien incorporated this idea that its exoskeleton would get darker with age because it was bruising and dying, and at the end the alien would be at its darkest in the Narcissus. Q: Does the alien have eyes? How does it see? A: No. The alien was designed (by H.R. Giger) to "see" entirely by instinct. The chase scene in _ALIEN^3_ would appear to contradict this as it shows the chase through (what would appear to be) the alien's eyes. However, it is likely that this cinematic technique was used to show the chase, not through the aliens eyes, but through its "perception". (it is also possible that this alien, being so different from the ones we've already seen, has some kind of eyes). In addition, the original script for _ALIEN RESURRECTION_ suggests that the aliens see like bats, emitting high-frequency sounds that reflect off of objects around them. This is somewhat supported by Ripley being able to "hear" the queen that no one else can in the finale. Q: How could I get a longer version of _ALIEN_ ? A: Not easily. You'll need a laserdisc player with frame advance, a 4-head VCR with frame advance (frame advance allows for nice editing), the _ALIEN_ box set (on laser disc of course) and a 160 min tape (130 min would work too). Now, all you need is to know where the "extra" scenes (on the 3rd disk) can be re-added into the movie: - Kane prepares breakfast - don't bother, there's a fade between the hypersleep chamber and the breakfast scene... this is where you'd place the scene, but the fade makes it impossible to do a good job. - Crew listens to alien transmission - right after Parker agrees to going down to the planet's surface, and right before the shot of the ship approaching the planet. - Lambert confronts Ripley - some of the scene already exists, just cut THAT part out, and replace it with the longer scene. - After the acid - add this scene right after Dallas tells Brett to get back to work, and right before the scene where Parker and Brett are repairing the ship. - Ripley radios Parker - Add this right after the "post-acid" scene. Place it right before the scene where Parker and Brett are repairing the ship. - Discussion of what to do (after Kane's death) - originally, this scene was right before Kane's funeral, but it makes alot more sense to put it in immediately AFTER Kane's funeral. - Brett's death - difficult to place, you have to replace some of the film, all you miss out on is a few cuts back to Jones. (if you're really skilled, you can re-integrate them). Put it right before the scene where Parker is drinking coffee. [WARNING: the suspense building heart-beat sound in the background is not present in the extended death scene] - Alien in the airlock - don't bother with these two scenes, they don't fit in the movie very well. - Ripley talks to Lambert - add it as Ash walks out of the room (after Dallas's death). But before Ripley looks at Lambert (you'll have to cut that bit out.) - Lambert's death - too bad, there's no sound, don't add it in. - Cocoon scene - originally, it was after Ripley started running for the shuttle (no wonder it created a pacing problem). If you add it in after she discovers Parker and Lambert's bodies, but before she starts running, then it doesn't affect the pacing. That's it. The movie is now about 2 hrs and 8 minutes long. Q: I recall seeing extra scenes in the movie when I saw it in the theaters, am I imagining things? A: Probably. However, during December 1978 a rough cut of _ALIEN_ was screened in London, England (it was 2 hours & 45 minutes long) and it included ALL of the completed "cut" scenes (as described earlier in the FAQ). Q: When the crew first sets out to search the ship for the alien: * Ash has made a "detection" units (motion tracker) * Ripley asks "how do they work?" * Ash VERY hesitantly replies "micro changes in air density" * when searching, Ripley detects something on the OTHER side of an airtight door (after all, they ARE in a spaceship) which turns out to be Jones. * Ripley makes the comment "micro changes in air density my ass" This point never gets raised again in the film, what is its significance? A: [possibly] Ash's hesitation in explaining the operation of the motion detector was because the "real" mechanism would be difficult to explain and he was assuming that she wouldn't understand him anyway... so he pauses before he finds the words to form an "adequate" but not very detailed description. The tone of Ash's voice in response to Ripley's question was somewhat condescending. Ripley's later comment, "micro changes in air density, my ass" was a foreshadow to show that Ash was hiding something and that she was onto him (cf: she realizes that he didn't give the full explanation of the motion tracker's operating mechanism) Taking into account that Ash knew what he was going into, he could easily have thought about the possibility that the creature could escape and hide on the ship. Therefore, he could've "invented" this device long before they needed it. Q: How come Ripley managed to survive in the shuttle without the coolant that Lambert and Parker were collecting? A: [possibly] since there was only one hypersleep chamber in the shuttle, Lambert, Parker and Ripley would have to stay concious while waiting to be rescued. Since Ripley was the only survivor, she went into hypersleep and didn't need the coolant due to her hybernation. Or, [possibly], and more likely, is that the coolant was needed for more than one person to be in the cryotubes. After all, cryo=cold, and the cooling process is only needed at the start of the journey, since the tube would hold in the cold generated then for the any needed duration of time (in this case, 57 years!). But just one person means less coolant -- which means just one person has to be frozen at the start of the journey. Q: When the remaining crew discusses Brett's death, what does Ash say? A: Ash says "Kane's son... " It was once believed to be "Gained some" by some botched subtitles, but, on the ALIEN DVD commentary, director Ridley Scott confirmed that the line is "Kane's son." _ALIENS_ Q: What does "Sulaco" mean? A: "Sulaco" was the town in which most of Joseph Conrad's book entitled "Nostromo" took place. Q: Is LV-426 also called "Acheron" ? A: There doesn't seem to be any evidence of this in the movie, the name was given to the planet in older drafts of the script, the Alan Dean Foster novelization, the movie-comic as well as the RPG. Q: What IS the name of the company? A: The Weyland-Yutani Corporation. It can be seen, mirror-reversed, on a blast shield after the discussion of the atmosphere processor blowing up. It appears as "Weylan-Yutani" on all beer cans in _ALIEN_ but is too small. In _ALIEN^3_ it is written on a computer screen in an extreme close-up near the end. In the director's cut of _ALIENS_, during the additional footage of the colony (prior to the alien infestation) we see a logo of the company which reads: Weyland-Yutani __ __ __ __ \ \ \ \ ___ / / / / \ \ \ / _ \ / / / \ \_/ / \ \_/ / \___/|_|\___/ Building Better Worlds Also, a very good shot of the logo can be seen in the director's cut, when Simpson and Lydecker yell at the playing kids, immediately before the cut to the Jordan family discovering the derelict ship. The Weyland-Yutani logo also has some chinese (japanese?) characters below them. These cannot be viewed well (at all) in the movies. Alien War in London has worked out this logo. Merchandising also has these signs on them. The symbols are pronounced "Weyland Yutani kabushiki-kaisha" and mean "Weyland Yutani joint-stock corporation" Q: What is the name of the colony? A: Hadley's Hope (as revealed in the director's cut of _ALIENS_) Q: Why don't the colonists on LV-426 pick up the derelict SOS? A: In a cut scene from ALIENS, the derelict ship has been damaged by volcanic activity and, as a result, the beacon was rendered inoperable. [James Cameron, STARLOG #125, DEC 1987] Q: How did the colony get infected? A: In my [James Cameron] version of the Alien life cycle, the infestation of the colony would proceed like this : 1. Russ Jorden attacked, they radio for rescue. 2. Rescue party investigates ship...several members facehuggered... brought back to base for treatment. 3. Several "chestbursters" free themselves from hosts, escape into ducting, begin to grow. 4. Extrapolating from entomology (ants, termites, etc.), an immature female, one of the first to emerge from hosts, grows to become a new queen, while males become drones or warriors. Subsequent female larvae remain dormant or are killed by males... or biochemically sense that a queen exists and change into males to limit waste. The Queen locates a nesting spot (the warmth of the atmosphere station heat exchanger level being perfect for egg incubation) and becomes sedentary. She is then tended by the males as her abdomen swells into a distended egg sac. The drones and warriors also secrete a resinous building material to line the structure, creating niches in which they may lie dormant when food supplies and/or hosts for further reproduction become depleted (i.e. when all the colonists are used up). They are discovered in this condition by the troopers, but quickly emerge when new hosts present themselves. [STARLOG #125, DEC 1987] Q: Is Ferro's first name "Mira" ? A: No, according to the on-board computer on the Sulaco, Ferro's first name starts with a "C". The confusion with her name is caused by Vasquez when she says (to Ferro): [...hey mira, who's Snow White?] However, in Spanish (Vasquez is Mexican), "mira" means "look", so Vasquez is actually saying, "hey look, who's Snow White?". Q: How many colonists are there? A: There were 158 colonists on LV-426 [...you were responsible for the deaths of 157 colonists... Ripley (Aliens)] plus Newt. This number is also visible on a sign that was on-screen during the scene where Newt's parents are going out to the derelict craft (director's cut only). Q: How many aliens where on LV-426 when the marines arrived? A: [possibly] around 156. (Newt was still alive and at least one of the other colonists hadn't been chest-busted yet) There has been some suggestions that the colonists had livestock that the aliens could've infected as well (raising the number of aliens to an indeterminant amount) however there is no evidence of livestock anywhere in the movie; furthermore, the planet does not seem to be a habitat in which live stock could survive (there was no vegetation on the planet). Q: Why did Ripley risk life and limb to save Newt, but didn't give a second thought to Dietrich and Apone? A: In the theatrical version of the movie, it can be said that Ripley knew exactly where Newt was because of the locater band she was wearing, thus making rescue of Newt plausible. Also, it's obvious That Ripley was greatly emotional attached to the girl, in all versions. A better reason exists, however it was cut from the theatrical release and is only on the Special Edition; the scene where Ripley discovers that her daughter has died (refer to section [5] on cut scenes) reveals to us that her daughter was relatively the same age as Newt the last time Ripley was with her. We can see the parallels between Newt and the daughter that Ripley had lost. Q: How can Ripley hang on during violent vacuum decompression while the much stronger alien queen can't? A: Ripley had her arm wrapped around a step in the ladder where as the queen only had a finger-hold on Ripley's shoe, when Ripley's shoe slipped off her foot, the queen had nothing else to hold onto. (This is seen in the movie. If you check the scene frame-by-frame with a laserdisc or DVD, you can see the shoe fly off in the queen's hand. This assumes that the vacuum isn't SO violent that it would rip Ripley's arm off). Q: Why does Ripley attempt to climb out of the pit after the queen has been "vacuumed" out of the Sulaco? Why doesn't she just close the doors? A: [possibly] Ripley thought that the lower door in the pit would be damaged with the acidic blood of the queen alien, so she had to close the top doors in order to seal up the breech. (this explanation is from the novelization) Q: Why doesn't anyone stay on board the Sulaco? A: The Sulaco is so automated that it would be unnecessary, and, in a possibly threatening military situation, you need every man you can get. If another dropship was required, the station on LV-426 was equipped to remote-pilot it down. (However, they had no idea that the equipment was going to be ruined by the aliens) Q: How has Newt survived all this time? The aliens seem to have no problem getting around in the air ducts? A: She can crawl through the air ducts that the aliens can't fit into. This, combined with her knowing the air ducts so well, could keep her out of the aliens' grasp (perhaps the aliens knew about her, but just couldn't catch her). In the director's cut, Newt boasts to her brother that the reason she wins their version of "hide-and-seek" is because she can get into all those tiny crooks and crannies where no one can reach her. Q: How does the queen know how to use an elevator, and how does she know what floor to get off at? A: The elevator returns automatically to the level of the platform Ripley got off at. When she leaves the elevator (to find Newt) you see it returning up. She comes back (with Newt) and calls both elevators. Ripley takes the first one that arrives and it starts going up. The queen gets in the second elevator and it automatically goes up. Q: Are those power-loaders real? A: Based on the Collectors Version of Aliens on Laserdisc, which comes with a disk that shows some of the secrets of the making of the movie, the loader is part real, part fake. The actual loader is real, but has an external power supply. Since the loader is extremely heavy, it is supported by cables which are masked out for the final print. A power loader was on display at the Boston Museum of Science as part of a special effects exhibit. This power loader was worked by a person inside, behind and below the actor, that is with their legs down in the power-loader's legs and their torso in the power-loader's back. Different constructs of the power loader were used depending on the action it had to perform in front of the camera. _ALIEN^3_ Q: Why did it take so long for the chestburster to come out of Ripley? It only took a few hours for it to come out of Kane in _ALIEN_. A: The queen takes longer to gestate than a normal alien. After all, there's more to develop -- reproductive systems with ovaries, larger crest, and, as seen at the film's end, both arms AND legs, not seen to have developed before in any other chestburster. Plus, this chestburster is someone wider (fatter?) than previously seen incarnations. So it has matured more. Also, [possibly,] Taking into account the parallels between the aliens and an insect colony, two Alien hives will be in competition if they are close to each other. Therefore the incubation period of queens is higher to enable the unsuspecting host to move further from the original hive. Q: Why is that bloody autopsy necessary? As we see later in the movie, that nice diagnostic scanner in the EEV's cryo-tube is still working quite fine (and Ripley knows about it). The autopsy is obviously very unpleasant for her, so it is hard to see why she didn't figure out the easier way? A: [Possibly] The diagnostic machine works on the EM radiation emitted by the human body and since Newt was dead and did not emit any radiation, the scanner wouldn't have worked. Q: What is the "dreaded" seven-dwarf concept for the _ALIEN^3_ script? A: One of the earlier stages of the _ALIEN^3_ script received alot of heat: ''...Back in New York, [Walter] Hill saw "The Navigator : An Odyssey Across Time", a stunning but esoteric art film by an obscure New Zealand director named Vincent Ward. But Ward said he didn't like [David] Twohy's script. No problem, said Fox. "So I hopped on an airplane," says Ward," and during the flight, I had an idea that was totally different: Sigourney would land in a community of monks in outer space and not be accepted by them." The monks would live on a wooden planet that looked like something out of Hieronymus Bosch, with furnaces and windmills -- and no weapons... of course, John Fasano got got a crack at this, uh, interesting plot, but so did Larry Ferguson... FINCHER : In the draft Larry [Ferguson, Beverly Hills Cop II] was writing, she [Ripley] was going to be this woman who had fallen from the stars. In the end, she dies, and there are seven of the monks left --- seven dwarfs. Q : You're kidding? FINCHER : Seriously. I swear to God. She was like...what's her name in Peter Pan? She was like Wendy. And she would make up these stories. And in the end, there were these seven dwarfs left, and there was this fucking tube they put her in, and they were waiting for Prince Charming to come wake her up. So that was one of the endings we had for this movie. You can imagine what Joe Roth said when he heard this. "What?! What are they doing over there?! What the fuck is going on?!" '' [PREMIERE magazine, May '92] Q: How did the face-huggers get on the Sulaco? A: The truly factual answer is that the audience wasn't supposed to question it. Use your imagination. (several theories exist, some of which are stated in section [13] frequently discussed topics) Q: Did the little face-hugger critter actually do so much damage to the Sulaco that the ship decided to EJECT the hypersleep capsules? A: Shown at the start of the movie was a face hugger jumping on a cryo-tube, cracking the glass and dripping some acid on the floor. The acid manages to eat its way into the electrical system and cause a fire. The Sulaco then ejected the hypersleep capsules (probably because it couldn't put out the fire). Q: I remember seeing a trailer for _ALIEN^3_ that was really different than the movie? A: This is true. Quite awhile before _ALIEN^3_ was finally released (roughly 1990), there was a "coming soon" trailer shown in several theaters. This trailer used the tagilne "In 1979, we learned that in space, no one can hear you scream. In 1992... everyone on Earth... WILL." This tagline made many people mistakenly believe that ALIEN^3 would take place on Earth and there would be some huge encounter. In reality, Fox was only trying to convey that everyone on Earth would be terrified by their new Alien film. Oops. Q: There's a prison planet: is anyone really going to spend money on hideously expensive space travel in order to send these guys to some far-off solar system? A: Space travel ISN'T hideously expensive! It's obviously quite frequent in this universe. The military does it, the company does it, and, notably, so do your average human colonists. But, if that's not good enough, historically, extremely dangerous and/or subversive-to-the- government criminals have been shipped off (at great expense) to a new location quite often. England regularly shipped off prisoners to one of the American colonies [Georgia? South Carolina?] which was a designated prison colony, as well as Australia -- a prison *continent*. The progression of the Western legal system has been to appeal numerous times (at great expense) to avoid death penalties. The Company in the Alien series is a reasonable outgrowth from the rest of Western business, why not the legal system, too? They avoid the massive cost of incarceration and court and lawyer fees from appeals by not having a death penalty, but shipping the prisoners off to a "prison". _ALIEN RESURRECTION_ Q: How does Ripley's clone get an alien inside of her in _ALIEN RESURRECTION_? A: As we see in _ALIEN^3_, a gestating alien combines host DNA with its own during development -- and thusly, in that film, we had a four-legged alien. Since Ripley's clones are created from blood samples taken by Clemens while Ripley was still unconscious, she already had the chestburster in her, and the DNA in the blood would have been altered accordingly. Of course, it is also because of this DNA mixing combined with imperfect closing processes that we get the new and improved Ripley. Q: Why does the Newborn kill the Queen after birth? For god's sakes, man, that's its MOTHER! A: The novelization suggests that the Newborn felt conflicting impressions of motherhood from both the Queen and Ripley, and wanted to eliminate the frustration by eliminating one of the competing factors -- hence, the Queen goes. This is further implied by Gediman's exclamation to Ripley that the Newborn "thinks you're its mother!" The script book, on the other hand, suggests another possibility: the Newborn may have intended to mate with Ripley (!) and, as a result, killed the Queen out of a sort of Oedipal frustration. Surely, that would be something of an amusing aspect of humanity to have been instilled in this genetic hybrid! Q: Why does the Newborn follow Ripley all the way back to the Betty? A: As suggested above, the Newborn was either following what it felt was its mother, not allowing Ripley to abandon it (something that clearly pissed the Newborn off), or it was following the intended mate that had spurned it back to the ship in an attempt to finish placating its, uh, desires. Another way to look at this was that Ripley was taken back to the hive to give her a chance to join her "brothers and sisters", and when she ran off, abandoning them for her second chance at humanity, the Newborn followed her, filled with rage. Q: I heard there was a cut scene in _ALIEN RESURRECTION_ where Ripley has sex with an alien! Is that true? A: Most likely not. Though it could be out there on the cutting room floor, this whole rumor started with ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, and it's more likely that either the scene where Ripley is carried back to the nest was mistaken for her having sex with an alien, or the scene in the script book where the Newborn attempts to mate with her (and Ripley freaks out and kicks it away) was filmed and misunderstood to mean that she actually did mate with it. Either way, odds are, you'll never see a cut scene of Ripley and an alien doing the nasty. But, who knows? _ALIEN VS PREDATOR_ Q: Is there an Alien vs Predator script, and if so, will it be filmed? A: Yes, there is a script written by Peter Briggs called 'Alien vs Predator'. It is fairly certain though, that it will never be filmed at all. There is too much bureaucracy involved to make this project worthwhile. Also, the money necessary for this project is very hard to obtain because of numerous copyrights and companies involved. And finally, Sigourney Weaver is appalled by the idea and feels that it would ruin the franchise, so, in case they want to make _ALIEN 5_, Fox doesn't want to piss off Sigourney. Still, you can check out the script at the websites that are listed two questions down! _OTHER_ Q: Can aliens stay alive in space? A: Contrary to what you may have read in any ALIENS novels... probably not. It is possible to stay alive for a few moments for humans, so aliens (with their exo-skeleton and "funny habit of shedding its cells and replacing them with polarized silicone" which of course protects it from many "adverse environmental conditions") have a prolongued protection against the void. We can see in ALIEN that the alien which is thrown out of the Narcissus stays alive. It hooks it's tail onto the outlet of the thruster and climbs inside. Ripley sees this, and then hits the ignition. So they are able to sustain themselves in space for a few moments, but whether life itself is possible seems unlikely. Q: Do the aliens use their host's DNA to help them adapt to their host's environment? Yes! This is now nothing less than solid fact. An old draft of the _ALIEN_ script had Ash giving an extensive description of the alien creature. Ash said that the alien that came from Kane was, in a sense, Kane's child. (this scene suggests that the aliens use the host's DNA) Ash saying, "Kane's son." is still in the movie. Obviously, though, the real evidence is in ALIEN^3 and ALIEN RESURRECTION. The alien in _ALIEN^3_ was different than other aliens, because it came from a different host (the dog). Plus, Ripley clone #8 had the alien chestburster inside of her because of the combinant DNA in the blood samples from Fury 161. The DNA combined because the alien uses host DNA to build itself. Q: Where can I get Gibson's/Fasano's _ALIEN^3_ scripts? A1: There is a long and a short version of both. The short versions are included in this FAQ. The long versions can be downloaded from the net. A2: This may not be valid depending on the age of the FAQ: - Go to Drew's Script-O-Rama or Movie Page to grab your own copy. Q: What is "ALIEN WAR" ? A: Alien War WAS a walk-through ride, found at the Trocodera in London. It is set on the alien theme. The plot was that a party of 12 is being given a tour through a medlab research establishment where they are breeding and studying aliens. A marine has been assigned to guide you through. Once in the waiting chamber, the sirens go off and your guide comes in and explains that due to an accident the aliens have escaped. Next he explains that he is going to lead the party to safety. So off everybody sets thru these dark corridors, all being told to huddle against walls etc. Along the way various things can happen, which are unknown now, since no internet record still exists, and the attraction has, sadly, shut down. At the very least, it is known that one or two members of each ride party are "plants" that "die" or are taken away at the hands of the animatronic aliens. Q: What is the 'Aliens: Ride at the Speed of Fright'? A: It was a ride at Fisherman's Wharf. It was at the TurboRide Simulation Theatre and it was called Aliens: Ride at the Speed of Fright. These theatres are popping up in a lot of the "touristy" areas around the country, but this was the first one with an Aliens theme I had seen. The premise was that you are accompanying the lone survivor of a mission that encountered Aliens back to the site of their discovery. The seats move on hydraulic lifts to match the video and it gets pretty nauseating from time to time. You fly in a dropship to the surface and then take an APC into the complex. It features a lot of footage from Aliens. The coolest part was a statue of ol' Tingrin right outside the theatre, though. Not a perfect likeness, but good enough to make you squirm. It's the scale that made it cool. It was about 7' tall and whip-thin like the original. Anyway, it, too, has closed down. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This Usenet FAQ Archive is a service of Netmeg Internet (http://www.netmeg.net/)