"What the hell are we supposed to use, man? Harsh language?"
Frost (Ricco Ross) after Gorman has ordered the troops to unload their weapons
"Hey, Hicks. Man, you look just like I feel."
Drake (Mark Rolston)
"We're in the pipe, five by five."
Ferro (Colette Hiller)
Hudson (Bill Paxton)
"Game over, man! Game over!"
"Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!"
"Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen!"
"Express elevator to hell, goin' DOWN!"
"Yeah man, Bishop should go! Good idea!"
When Bishop volunteered to bring down the second drop ship.
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)
"Get away from her, you bitch!"
"Have IQ's dropped sharply I was away?"
Hicks (Michael Biehn)
"We're all in strung out shape, but stay frosty, and alert. We can't afford to let one of those bastards in here."
"Looks like the new lieutenant's too good to eat with the rest of us grunts."
Newt (Carrie Henn)
"They mostly come at night. Mostly"
"My mommy always said there were no monsters. No real ones. But there are."
Apone (Al Matthews)
"Alright sweethearts, you heard the man and you know the drill. Assholes and elbows! Hudson, come here, come here."
"What do you want me to do, fetch your slippers?"
"Another glorious day in the Corps! A day in the Marine Corps is like a day on the farm. Every meal's a banquet! Every paycheck a fortune! Every formation a parade! I LOVE the Corps!"
"It's a rescue mission, you'll love it. There's some juicy colonists' daughters we have to rescue from their virginity. Heh!"
Bishop (Lance Henrickson)
"I prefer the term "Artificial Person" myself."
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid."
Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein)
"You always were an asshole, Gorman!"
"LET'S ROCK!!!"
"No, have you?"
When Hicks asked her is she has ever been mistaken for a man.
Continuity: When the queen grabs the loader in the final fight scene, she topples it over first smashing the yellow rotating beacon light on the top then pulling it in the airlock, but when the loader is shown in the air lock the light is undamaged and operating.
Revealing mistakes: When the Alien surfaces to snatch Newt, two wires lifting its tail out of the water can be seen.
Continuity: Gorman tells Ripley that the pulse rifles shoot caseless ammunition, yet when Vasquez lets off a long burst in the air duct one can see brass casings flying out from it.
Continuity: In the opening scene of Ripley (frozen), it shows her head tilted to her left, then the close-up shows her faced forward.
Revealing mistakes: When Bishop is "doing the thing with knife" the scene is sped up to give the impression that Bishop is lightning fast. Apone can be seen rocking his head back and forth, also at a ridiculous speed.
Continuity: When we see the Alien Queen fall into the airlock with the power loader, the tip of the Queen's tail has fallen off, yet it returns afterwards.
Revealing mistakes: The wire pulling the queen alien's tail through Bishop's chest is clearly visible.
Revealing mistakes: When Ripley begins to torch the eggs in the chamber and the queen screams, you can clearly see that her head is not very well attached to the neck, revealing some metal parts from inside the model.
Continuity: After an alien smashes a hole through the triangular windshield on the APC during the escape from under the cooling tower the windshield is then shown with an unbroken windshield as it exits on to the planet surface.
What was the Marines "bug hunt"? Is there a connection to Starship Troopers?
Hudson comments about the mission being "just another bug-hunt" implying that the marines have encountered alien species before as does Frost in the mess hall scene who reminesces about "Archterian poontang".
Also under the cockpit-window of the drop ship is a picture of the marines' mascot: an eagle brandishing a machine-gun and wearing boots with the slogan, "bug stompers" which implies that is their specialty.
Elsewhere on the marines' uniforms are patches with similar images of an eagle and the slogan, "We endanger species" (or something like that). James Cameron on the DVD commentary revealed he had all the actors playing marines read Starship Troopers this is a nod to cannon of that book.
What are the differences between the Theatrical Version and the Director's Cut?
The original version was too long for the producing studio so it demanded several cuts to tighten the plot. Especially the American audience was not trusted to have the ability to sit through a movie of 148 minutes.
So Cameron went to the cutting room, again, and lost more than 15 minutes of footage. It was mostly character development of Ripley or background information about what had happened to Newt's parents.
But also some of the action got cut out, it might not be elementary but for people who want the entire experience it is still part of the movie. Among the fans there are two fractions, one preferring the Theatrical version and one preferring the Director's Cut.
The advantage of the Theatrical version is that it is more flowing and faster. The Director's Cut, however, offers more depth and information.
This is also the opinion of the director James Cameron who prefers the Director's Cut, also called "Special Edition", because he thinks it is the better and more exiting version of the movie.
Why do the Alien heads look so different?
Numerous behind-the-scenes pictures and documentaries of Alien also show the Alien's head with ridges, but the special effects artists covered it with a gelatinous substance, causing the head to appear smooth.
The 'real' reason for the different look in Aliens is that director James Cameron thought the Alien head looked more interesting with the ridges visible, so the special effects team left out the gel.
But, to stay within the continuity of the saga, one could argue that Aliens are "born" with a smooth head, and that this cover falls off after a while, exposing the ridges.
According to the 'extras' from the dvd quadrilogy James Cameron didn't want to have the clear dome on the aliens head as he thought it would be prone to breaking and therefore decided against it.
If the Alien can transform people into eggs (per Alien Director's Cut), how does the egg-laying Queen fit in?
The additional egg scene mentioned was not released until later editions of ALIEN and was most likely not seen by James Cameron in 1986. James Cameron had free reign from the Studio to come up with his own alien life cycle for the sequel.
Ridley Scott himself has stated that he considers the original cut of Alien to be the definitive version, with the controversial transformation scene (in the Director's Cut) as a bonus for fans who had asked for it over the years.
Integrating the scene from the Director's Cut into a self-consistent Alien "canon" is left to viewers who worry about such things. A popular hypothesis among fans is that "transforming" humans is a behavior the Alien falls into if a queen isn't available to make eggs.
In addition the Alien looks to have a hive based society. With insects there is no "Queen" egg until the workers choose to create one (no one is sure how they come to this decision).
It could be that if that the lack of a Queen compels the Alien warriors to create the right circumstances for the production of a Queen and that the "transforming" is part of preparing a host or producing the correct food source to make a "Queen facehugger".
|
|
Aliens Trivia
* Hicks was originally played by James Remar, but Michael Biehn replaced him a few days after principal photography began, due to "artistic differences" between Remar and director James Cameron. However, Remar still appears in the finished film - but wearing the same armor, and shot from behind, it's impossible to tell the difference between the two actors.
* All of the cast who were to play the Marines (with the exception of Michael Biehn) were trained by the S.A.S. (Special Air Service, Britain's elite special operations unit) for two weeks before filming. Sigourney Weaver, Paul Reiser, and William Hope didn't participate/attend the training because director James Cameron felt it would help the actors create a sense of detachment between the three and the Marines.
The characters these three actors played were all outsiders to the squad; Ripley being an advisor to the Marines while on the trip to LV-426, Burke being there just for financial reasons and Gorman being a newly-promoted Lieutenant with less experience than most of the Marines.
* When the set crews were looking around for floor grating to use on the Sulaco set design, they asked a local set design manufacturer/shop if they had anything of the sort. Indeed they did, an immense pile of old floor grating had been sitting out in the back of their shop for the last seven years. It was left there from when they tore down the set of Alien (1979).
|
|
* Armorer Terry English made three sets of Armour for each member of the cast who needed to wear Armour. He was only given two weeks to complete the job and upon arriving back at his workshop a few hours drive away from the film set, he realized he had forgotten the scrap of cloth James Cameron had given him so that the camouflage on the Armour could be matched correctly to the uniforms the marines would be wearing. Instead of going all the way back, Terry painted the completed sets of Armour from memory.
The result was a pattern and color combination not too dissimilar to the British Army DPM pattern. Fortunately, Cameron liked the contrast between the Armour and the BDUs (Battle Dress Uniforms) the marines wore beneath it, saying it make the Armour more obvious to the eye. The graffiti you see on some of the Armour was done by the actors themselves, with a little help from English for a few details like Hicks' clasp and padlock on his chest Armour. The Armour was had made from Aluminum and all in one size, with on set adjustments made by English to make them fit each actor.
* According to the 1991 Special Widescreen Collector's Edition Laserdisc release of the movie (presented on the Bonus Disc of the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD Box Set), James Cameron turned in the first treatment for the film, called Alien II at the time, on September 21, 1983. Some of the differences between this initial treatment and the final film included the following:
- The character of Carter Burke was absent, instead, his dialogue was given to someone named Dr. O'Niel, who did not join Ripley and the marines on their voyage to the colony planet.
- Instead of being taken to the Gateway Station, Ripley was taken to Earth Station Beta.
- The name of the colony planet was Acheron, taken from the script of Alien (1979), instead of LV-426.
- Ripley's daughter was alive, and Ripley had a disheartening videophone conversation with her, where she blamed Ripley for abandoning her by going to space.
- There were multiple atmospheric processors on the planet. - The initial discovery of the aliens on the colony planet is much longer, where it is shown how Newt's father gets to the site of the eggs and is jumped by a facehugger.
- An additional scene involves a rescue team going to the site of the alien eggs and being jumped by tens of facehuggers.
- The aliens sting people to paralyze them before either killing or cocooning them.
- At one point Ripley, Newt and Hicks get cocooned. - The aliens cocooning people are a different breed. They look like smaller, albino versions of the warrior aliens.
- Bishop refuses to land on the planet and pick up Ripley, Hicks and Newt, indicating "the risk of contaminating other inhabited worlds is too great."
- Ripley ends up using the colonists' shuttle to get back to the Sulaco.
- Bishop tells her: "You were right about me all along." The first draft script was turned in by Cameron on May 30, 1985. This draft was quite different from the treatment, but very close to the final film.
|
|
* Budget constraints meant that they could only afford to have six hypersleep capsules for the scenes set on board the Sulaco. Clever placement of mirrors and camera angles make it look like there's about 12. Each hypersleep chamber cost over $4,300 to build.
* The title of Alien (1979) in Hungarian was "The 8th passenger: Death". Consequently, the title of Aliens (1986) was: "The name of the planet: Death".
* A scene on the colony before the alien outbreak was deleted from the final cut. Elements of that scene show up in later James Cameron projects. The line, '... and we always get the same answer: 'Don't ask'.' was used in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).
In fact the entire scene in Terminator 2 follows the same pacing and tone as the scene cut from the theatrical version of Aliens: - an employee flags down a supervisor and they walk together, talking about the behavior of their employer - Weyland-Yutani in Aliens, CyberDyne Systems in Terminator 2 - and ending in the line '...don't ask.'. The character name 'Lydecker' was used in "Dark Angel" (2000).
* During the sequence in which Newt and Ripley are locked in MedLab, Ripley is attacked by one of the two facehuggers after setting off the sprinklers, resulting in the facehugger wrapping its tail around her neck after jumping off of a table leg. To film this, director James Cameron had the Special Effects crew design a facehugger fully capable of walking towards Ripley on its own, but to make it appear as if it jumps off of the table, and Cameron then used backwards-filming.
He set up the facehugger on the table leg, then dragged it off and later edited the piece of film to play backward to make it appear to be moving forward towards Ripley. Crew thought that the fact that water was falling down during this whole scene would affect the sequence that was filmed backward (it would show the water moving up instead of down). In the end, the water was not visible enough to see the direction in which it was falling.
* The "special edition" includes extra scenes: Newt's parents discovering the abandoned alien ship on LV-426, scenes of Ripley discussing her daughter, Hudson bragging about his weaponry, robot sentry guns repelling first alien raid, and Hicks and Ripley exchanging first names. Also included is a scene on LV-426 where a child rides a low-slung tricycle similar to one ridden in The Terminator (1984), also directed by James Cameron.
* In the scene in the air shaft where Vasquez shoots the alien with a handgun, Jenette Goldstein could not handle the recoil of the gun properly. As a result, producer Gale Anne Hurd doubled for Vasquez in shots where the gun is fired. She was the only woman available who had experience firing handguns.
Goldstein's flinching at the firing of a gun is also masked during the operations room fight immediately preceding the air shaft scene, when Vasquez is seen firing two grenades at the aliens - for the first one, there's a barely visible cut (Goldstein's head changes position suddenly) and for the second shot there is a smash-cut away from her face at the moment of firing.
|
|
* One of the perfect locations they found was a decommissioned coal-fired power plant in Acton, West London. The only trouble with it was that it was heavily riddled with asbestos. So, a team was sent in to clean up the plant, and atmosphere readings had to be taken constantly throughout filming in this location to make sure that the air was clear of contamination. Ironically, the Acton location turned out to have better atmospheric quality than Pinewood Studios.
* During Hudson's (Bill Paxton) boasting monologue aboard the drop ship (special edition only) he talks about some of the weaponry of the Colonial Marines, mentioning a "phased plasma pulse rifle" - the pulse rifles the marines carry are ballistic, not "phased plasma", but the line references The Terminator (1984) (also directed by James Cameron, and featuring Paxton in a minor role) in which the terminator asks a gun store clerk for a "phased plasma rifle".
* Lance Henriksen wanted to wear double-pupil contact lenses for a scene where Bishop is working in the lab on a microscope and gives a scary look at one of the Marines. He came to set with those lenses, but James Cameron decided he did not need to wear them because he was acting the character with just the right amount of creepiness already.
* Sigourney Weaver had initially been very hesitant to reprise her role as Ripley, and had rejected numerous offers from Fox Studios to do any sequels, fearing that her character would be poorly written, and a sub-par sequel could hurt the legacy of the original film. However, she was so impressed by the high quality of James Cameron's script - specifically, the strong focus on Ripley, the mother-daughter bond between her character and Newt, and the incredible precision with which Cameron wrote her character, that she finally agreed to do the film.
* In an interview, composer James Horner felt that James Cameron had given him so little time to write a musical score for the film, he was forced to cannibalize previous scores he had done, such as elements from his Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) scores, as well as adapt a rendition of "Gayane Ballet Suite" for the main and end titles.
Horner stated that the tensions with Cameron were so high during post-production that he assumed they would never work together again. However Cameron was so impressed with Horner's score from Braveheart (1995) that he later asked him to compose the score for Titanic (1997).
* In the original script, when Ripley is rescuing Newt, she encounters a cocooned Burke (Paul Reiser) in the power plant. He claims he can feel the chestburster inside him and asks for help. Ripley gives him a live grenade and moves on.
|
|
* The initial cinematographer was Dick Bush. However, director James Cameron fired him a month into production because he wasn't satisfied with the lighting, and the two men reportedly hated working with each other. Cameron then tried to hire Derek Vanlint, the DP on the previous film. Vanlint wasn't interested, but recommended Adrian Biddle for the job.
* Since production took place in England, the director and producers conveniently cast many American actors who were already living in England. This was particularly important for the actress playing Newt, who had to be a minor. Carrie Henn, who played Newt, was an American girl living with her family in England (actually, a bit of an English accent can be heard when she says, "Let's go," and, "There is a short-cut across the roof," during the Alien attack at the end of the movie). Her movie brother Timmy (seen only in the extended version) is also her real-life brother Christopher Henn.
* The difficulties surrounding Sigourney Weaver's contract negotiations were such that James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd - recently married - announced that if the deal was not done by the time they got back from their honeymoon, they were out.
When they returned, no progress had been made - so James Cameron, determined to make the film and wary of the deadline scenario he had created, devised a scheme: he telephoned Arnold Schwarzenegger's agent for an informal chat and informed him that, thanks to his newfound standing in Hollywood following The Terminator (1984), he had decided to make this film entirely his own by writing Ripley out; as Cameron anticipated, Schwarzenegger's agent immediately relayed the information to his colleague representing Weaver at ICM, who in turn contacted 20th Century-Fox Head of Production Lawrence Gordon; both men, determined that under no circumstances whatsoever would Ripley be written out, wasted no time in sealing Weaver's deal.
* Having hired James Cameron to write the screenplay, 20th Century Fox then did the unthinkable when he left the production to direct The Terminator (1984): they agreed to wait for Cameron to become available again and finish the screenplay. Cameron had only completed about 90 pages at that stage, but the studio had loved what he had written so far.
* The Alien nest set was kept intact after filming. It was later used as the Axis Chemicals set for Batman (1989). When the crew of Batman (1989) first entered the set, they found most of the Alien nest still intact.
* To most of the crew, the choice of James Cameron as director was mystifying as The Terminator (1984) hadn't been released at that stage. The film's assistant director continually questioned Cameron's decisions and was openly antagonistic towards him. Ultimately producer 'Gale Anne Hurd (I)' had no choice but to fire him and he briefly instigated a mass walk-out from the rest of the crew. Fortunately this was quickly resolved but caused some doubt as to whether the film would make it to completion.
|
|
* The assault vehicle is a modified tow-truck that British Airways used for towing airplanes around at Heathrow. The only trouble was that the truck they purchased weighed 75 tons. By stripping out most of the lead used in its construction, they were able to remove about 30 tons.
* When Bishop discovers that Ripley's former ship had a malfunctioning android or "Artificial Person", he asks what model it was. Gorman responds that it was a CyberDyne model. CyberDyne Systems created the Terminator in James Cameron's The Terminator series.
* Most of the movie was filmed under very bluish light to give it a strange and "alien" feel. The colors of the Marines' camouflage BDUs and the Humbrol "Brown Bess" used on the Pulse Rifles were all chosen specifically to work with the blue set lighting. As a result, both look very different under natural light than they did on screen.
* At one time during filming, the APC had an actual roof. But, during the "Fire In the hole" scene, the actors were actually suffocating from the fire's smoke. After a few tries, the roof of the APC was removed.
* In the scene where the crew is getting dressed after waking up from hypersleep, Hudson says, "Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?" to which Vasquez answers, "No. Have you?" This is "borrowed" from Hollywood legend. Columnist Earl Wilson once asked Tallulah Bankhead, "Have you ever been mistaken for a man?" Bankhead responded, "No darling. Have you?"
* Some of the sound effects for this film were created with help from the Fairlight, an early Australian-made digital sampler. Though the machine sampled at a now-laughable 8 bit resolution, the Fairlight then cost an astounding 30 thousand dollars (USD) and was state-of-the-art. Musicians such as Jan Hammer, Kate Bush, and Prince have used it extensively throughout their respective careers.
* The music that plays when the Alien Queen appears as Ripley and Newt wait for the elevator is a reused piece from Jerry Goldsmith's score for the original Alien (1979). Thematically, the music appears in both movies at the same time: near the end, as Ripley tries to escape from an alien while the environment around her counts down to self-destruction (the Nostromo in Alien (1979), and the atmosphere processor in Aliens (1986)).
* Lance Henriksen caught a dose of food poisoning from the milk and yogurt combination that he had to spew up when his chest was pierced by the alien queen's tail. Having this lactose combination sitting around under hot studio lights created a bacterial breeding ground. Curiously, the crew of the first Alien (1979) film opted not to use milk for Ash's "death" scene (where he also spews the milky substance out of his mouth) as they thought a fluid made of milk would go sour under the hot lights.
|
|
References:
abc.net,
beyondhollywood.com,
boxofficemojo.com,
cinemaroll.com,
comicsbulletin.com,
dailyscript.com,
denofgeek.com,
filmtracks.com,
imdb.com,
nytimes.com,
quipster.net,
time.com,
wikipedia.org
|
|
