(^084) W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K
|
COMPLETE GUIDE
ALIEN
the 2003-recorded DVD commentary. “She
didn’t think that Ripley hated the alien. [I said]:
‘No, she hates the alien that killed all her
crewmembers and put her through the traumatic
event of her life. [...] Ripley would want to
prevent the kind of trauma that she had been
through happening to anybody else.’”
Picking up events 57 years later, Aliens fi n d s
Ripley coming out of stasis to reluctantly return
to the now colonised planet LV-426 after her
employers lose contact with the colony. With the
military accompanying her, she travels on the
condition that they eradicate the creatures.
Cameron initially saw Aliens as a
straightforward revenge story, which was
refl ected in his catchy ‘This Time It’s War’
tagline. However, the fi lmmaker admitted
Weaver helped him see Ripley differently. “Her
motivation was on a higher plain. [...] She was
acting out of a sense of duty and that spoke very
much to some of the themes I had in the story
with respect to her relationship with Newt.”
Indeed Ripley, who learns she has tragically
outlived her own daughter, forms a maternal
bond with the orphaned child survivor she
fi nds in the cooling ducts on LV-426 and strives
to protect. A romantic interest is alluded to
between Corporal Hicks played by Michael
Biehn, (particularly in the 1990 ‘Director’s
Cut’), while Bill Paxton assumes the ‘voice of the
audience’ role as Private Hudson and Jenette
Goldstein memorably embodied macho marine
Vasquez (see our interview on page 83).
Ripley also comes into initially distrustful
contact (which is quite understandable given
her run-in with homicidal automation Ash in
Alien) with an android named Bishop played by
Lance Henriksen. “Ian Holm and Rutger Hauer
both did wonderful jobs [playing androids] that
I thought: ‘How am I going to live up to this?’”
Henriksen admits to SciFiNow. “So, I thought:
‘I’ve got to forget all of that stuff as it wasn’t
going to help me at all.’ [...] I think there’s a
great innocence to Bishop. So I played him in
relation to my emotional life between the age
of 12 and 14 – there was a feeling of outliving
everyone I’m talking to and they are alive and
I’m not. Therefore I’m a self-aware and
optimistic creation.”
Less optimistic was the atmosphere on the
Pinewood Studios set. Cameron brought his now
legendary hard-driving work ethic to the UK-
based production that reportedly clashed with
the predominantly British crew. It all culminated
with a union strike that led to a meeting of minds
that ultimately helped relieve cultural tensions.
Nevertheless, the end result speaks for itself
and Aliens became another heart-thumping
thrill ride for audiences when it was released
in 1986 to critical, commercial and subsequent
Oscar-winning acclaim. Weaver was nominated
for Best Actress for her impressively committed,
genre-defi ning post-feminist portrayal of the
defi ant heroine (within a still noticeably male-
dominated universe) that anchors the fi lm. In
addition, the gung-ho mentality of the initiallymacho marines, who are defeated by an
enemy they don’t understand, served as an apt
commentary on the humbling experience of war.
“[...] These technologically advanced soldiers
succumb to a technologically inferior but
much more determined enemy that they don’t
know how to fi ght, which is really a Vietnam
metaphor,” admitted Cameron.
For Alien 3, initially-hired New Zealand
writer-director Vincent Ward sought a unique
back-to-basics approach. His soulful take had a
solitary alien causing havoc in a self-suffi cient
wooden monastery planet run by outcast pre-
medieval monks. “I took the idea that Ripley
arrives in a world that makes her believe in evil
and sees the alien as the devil rather than the
organism that it is,” Ward told SciFiNow. “When
things start to go wrong the monks believe that
Ripley has brought something ‘evil’ into their
midst, and as her health diminishes she too
begins to feel that somehow she is responsible.”
Ward had the characters of Hicks and Newt
dead on arrival, abolishing the family motif set
up by Cameron in Aliens and returning Ripley to
a solitary character. But regrettably producers“THAT WAS MY
STARTING BLOCK...
WHO WERE THE
BIG GUYS AND
WHAT WERE THEY
DOING THERE?”
RIDLEY SCOTTNever trust
an android...(^084) W W W. S C I FI N OW.CO.U K
|
COMPLETE GUIDE
ALIEN
the 2003-recorded DVD commentary. “She
didn’t think that Ripley hated the alien. [I said]:
‘No, she hates the alien that killed all her
crewmembers and put her through the traumatic
event of her life. [...] Ripley would want to
prevent the kind of trauma that she had been
through happening to anybody else.’”
Picking up events 57 years later, Aliens fi n d s
Ripley coming out of stasis to reluctantly return
to the now colonised planet LV-426 after her
employers lose contact with the colony. With the
military accompanying her, she travels on the
condition that they eradicate the creatures.
Cameron initially saw Aliens as a
straightforward revenge story, which was
refl ected in his catchy ‘This Time It’s War’
tagline. However, the fi lmmaker admitted
Weaver helped him see Ripley differently. “Her
motivation was on a higher plain. [...] She was
acting out of a sense of duty and that spoke very
much to some of the themes I had in the story
with respect to her relationship with Newt.”
Indeed Ripley, who learns she has tragically
outlived her own daughter, forms a maternal
bond with the orphaned child survivor she
fi nds in the cooling ducts on LV-426 and strives
to protect. A romantic interest is alluded to
between Corporal Hicks played by Michael
Biehn, (particularly in the 1990 ‘Director’s
Cut’), while Bill Paxton assumes the ‘voice of the
audience’ role as Private Hudson and Jenette
Goldstein memorably embodied macho marine
Vasquez (see our interview on page 83).
Ripley also comes into initially distrustful
contact (which is quite understandable given
her run-in with homicidal automation Ash in
Alien) with an android named Bishop played by
Lance Henriksen. “Ian Holm and Rutger Hauer
both did wonderful jobs [playing androids] that
I thought: ‘How am I going to live up to this?’”
Henriksen admits to SciFiNow. “So, I thought:
‘I’ve got to forget all of that stuff as it wasn’t
going to help me at all.’ [...] I think there’s a
great innocence to Bishop. So I played him in
relation to my emotional life between the age
of 12 and 14 – there was a feeling of outliving
everyone I’m talking to and they are alive and
I’m not. Therefore I’m a self-aware and
optimistic creation.”
Less optimistic was the atmosphere on the
Pinewood Studios set. Cameron brought his now
legendary hard-driving work ethic to the UK-
based production that reportedly clashed with
the predominantly British crew. It all culminated
with a union strike that led to a meeting of minds
that ultimately helped relieve cultural tensions.
Nevertheless, the end result speaks for itself
and Aliens became another heart-thumping
thrill ride for audiences when it was released
in 1986 to critical, commercial and subsequent
Oscar-winning acclaim. Weaver was nominated
for Best Actress for her impressively committed,
genre-defi ning post-feminist portrayal of the
defi ant heroine (within a still noticeably male-
dominated universe) that anchors the fi lm. In
addition, the gung-ho mentality of the initially
macho marines, who are defeated by an
enemy they don’t understand, served as an apt
commentary on the humbling experience of war.
“[...] These technologically advanced soldiers
succumb to a technologically inferior but
much more determined enemy that they don’t
know how to fi ght, which is really a Vietnam
metaphor,” admitted Cameron.
For Alien 3, initially-hired New Zealand
writer-director Vincent Ward sought a unique
back-to-basics approach. His soulful take had a
solitary alien causing havoc in a self-suffi cient
wooden monastery planet run by outcast pre-
medieval monks. “I took the idea that Ripley
arrives in a world that makes her believe in evil
and sees the alien as the devil rather than the
organism that it is,” Ward told SciFiNow. “When
things start to go wrong the monks believe that
Ripley has brought something ‘evil’ into their
midst, and as her health diminishes she too
begins to feel that somehow she is responsible.”
Ward had the characters of Hicks and Newt
dead on arrival, abolishing the family motif set
up by Cameron in Aliens and returning Ripley to
a solitary character. But regrettably producers“THAT WAS MY
STARTING BLOCK...
WHO WERE THE
BIG GUYS AND
WHAT WERE THEY
DOING THERE?”
RIDLEY SCOTTNever trust
an android...