COMPLETE GUIDE
ALIEN
(^086) W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K
|
TOP CHILLING SCENES
FROM THE SERIES
CHEST-BURSTER
(ALIEN, 1979)
The classic alien birth scene that took the entire
cast by surprise (and got Veronica Cartwright
splattered) remains a chilling jaw-dropper in all
its gruesome glory.“HERE KITTY KITTY!”
(ALIEN, 1979)
Kane’s death worked on surprise tactics, but Brett’s
(Harry Dean Stanton) demise is all about building
suspense, as the below-deck worker looks for a cat
but fi nds a horrifi c end with one big motherfucker!ROBOT REVELATIONS
(ALIEN, 1979)
When science offi cer Ash (Ian Holm) is revealed to
be a corporate robot ensuring the survival of the
xenomorph over the expendable crew, it brings a
chilling twist to proceedings.more dimensional, and I thought they were very
stereotypical in that fi lm,” refl ected Ward to
SciFiNow, who received a story credit on Alien 3.
Fragments of Ward’s original intentions
do remain however, including the religious
persuasion of the ‘monk-attired’ prisoners, a
reference to the beast as a devil-like ‘dragon’,
the surprise revelation of Ripley’s alien
pregnancy and her dramatic sacrifi cial inferno
demise that had a strong feeling of fi nality to it.
“One of the reasons I died was really to
liberate the series from Ripley. [...] I didn’t want
her to become this fi gure of fun that no one ever
listened to...” refl ected Sigourney Weaver.
Despite Ripley’s defi nitive demise she was
resurrected fi ve years later for the 1997 follow
up: Alien Resurrection. Scripted by a pre-Buffy Joss Whedon, the character returned
as a human/alien hybrid cloned from blood
fragments found 200 years following her death.
It was supposed to be a dark and edgy take
on Ripley; one where you weren’t entirely sure
where her allegiances lay and whether she
was more alien than human. It was different
enough to lure Weaver back and attract
another idiosyncratic visualist, French auteur
Jean Pierre Jeunet, to direct (after Danny Boyle
was briefl y considered).
Alien Resurrection returned the story to a
spacecraft setting that saw Ripley team up with
space pirates and a female android (played
by Winona Ryder) to defeat a hoard of aliens
before the ship reaches Earth. Despite proving
another visually arresting entry in the long-running series, Jeunet’s trademark irrelevant
tone and dark humour felt out of place, while the
fi lm was almost completely devoid of suspense
and scares, with Whedon later claiming that
his script had been butchered. Nevertheless,
Alien Resurrection was a commercial hit and
Whedon penned an earth-bound continuation
that disinterested Weaver and eventually led to
Fox green-lighting the derogatory AVP: Alien
Vs Predator (2004), which featured Lance
Henriksen as Weyland, (after Ridley Scott and
James Cameron briefl y entertained a writer-
producer/director alliance for ‘Alien 5’).
The life-death-rebirth gestation of the series
continued with a desire to explore the unknown
backstory to the original Alien that saw the
return of Ridley Scott to the franchise. 2012’s
Prometheus evolved from questions regarding
the ominous Space Jockey that the crew of the
Nostromo had discovered inside the derelict
spacecraft. “That was my starting block of this
thing: Who were the big guys and what were
they doing there?” said Scott.
However, what began as a prequel to Alien
sprang into something else when Damon
Lindelof did a rewrite of Jon Spaihts’ original
screenplay. “For me Prometheus was always
about making a Blade Runner/Alien mash
up using the best themes from both movies
and dropping them all into the same world,”
admitted the scribe during his DVD commentary.
Marketed as not a prequel but a fi lm that
shared Alien ‘DNA’ and set within the same
universe, Prometheus explored such hefty themes
as ‘man meeting his maker’ and our relationship
to our creators, known as the Engineers; the
same people who piloted that derelict spacecraft
in Alien. Human mortality and ‘what it is to be
human’ was also explored through the inquisitiveAlien: Covenant positioned itself as a
no-holds-barred Alien prequel.COMPLETE GUIDE
ALIEN
(^086) W W W.SCI FI N OW.CO.U K
|
TOP CHILLING SCENES
FROM THE SERIES
CHEST-BURSTER
(ALIEN, 1979)
The classic alien birth scene that took the entire
cast by surprise (and got Veronica Cartwright
splattered) remains a chilling jaw-dropper in all
its gruesome glory.
“HERE KITTY KITTY!”
(ALIEN, 1979)
Kane’s death worked on surprise tactics, but Brett’s
(Harry Dean Stanton) demise is all about building
suspense, as the below-deck worker looks for a cat
but fi nds a horrifi c end with one big motherfucker!ROBOT REVELATIONS
(ALIEN, 1979)
When science offi cer Ash (Ian Holm) is revealed to
be a corporate robot ensuring the survival of the
xenomorph over the expendable crew, it brings a
chilling twist to proceedings.more dimensional, and I thought they were very
stereotypical in that fi lm,” refl ected Ward to
SciFiNow, who received a story credit on Alien 3.
Fragments of Ward’s original intentions
do remain however, including the religious
persuasion of the ‘monk-attired’ prisoners, a
reference to the beast as a devil-like ‘dragon’,
the surprise revelation of Ripley’s alien
pregnancy and her dramatic sacrifi cial inferno
demise that had a strong feeling of fi nality to it.
“One of the reasons I died was really to
liberate the series from Ripley. [...] I didn’t want
her to become this fi gure of fun that no one ever
listened to...” refl ected Sigourney Weaver.
Despite Ripley’s defi nitive demise she was
resurrected fi ve years later for the 1997 follow
up: Alien Resurrection. Scripted by a pre-
Buffy Joss Whedon, the character returned
as a human/alien hybrid cloned from blood
fragments found 200 years following her death.
It was supposed to be a dark and edgy take
on Ripley; one where you weren’t entirely sure
where her allegiances lay and whether she
was more alien than human. It was different
enough to lure Weaver back and attract
another idiosyncratic visualist, French auteur
Jean Pierre Jeunet, to direct (after Danny Boyle
was briefl y considered).
Alien Resurrection returned the story to a
spacecraft setting that saw Ripley team up with
space pirates and a female android (played
by Winona Ryder) to defeat a hoard of aliens
before the ship reaches Earth. Despite proving
another visually arresting entry in the long-running series, Jeunet’s trademark irrelevant
tone and dark humour felt out of place, while the
fi lm was almost completely devoid of suspense
and scares, with Whedon later claiming that
his script had been butchered. Nevertheless,
Alien Resurrection was a commercial hit and
Whedon penned an earth-bound continuation
that disinterested Weaver and eventually led to
Fox green-lighting the derogatory AVP: Alien
Vs Predator (2004), which featured Lance
Henriksen as Weyland, (after Ridley Scott and
James Cameron briefl y entertained a writer-
producer/director alliance for ‘Alien 5’).
The life-death-rebirth gestation of the series
continued with a desire to explore the unknown
backstory to the original Alien that saw the
return of Ridley Scott to the franchise. 2012’s
Prometheus evolved from questions regarding
the ominous Space Jockey that the crew of the
Nostromo had discovered inside the derelict
spacecraft. “That was my starting block of this
thing: Who were the big guys and what were
they doing there?” said Scott.
However, what began as a prequel to Alien
sprang into something else when Damon
Lindelof did a rewrite of Jon Spaihts’ original
screenplay. “For me Prometheus was always
about making a Blade Runner/Alien mash
up using the best themes from both movies
and dropping them all into the same world,”
admitted the scribe during his DVD commentary.
Marketed as not a prequel but a fi lm that
shared Alien ‘DNA’ and set within the same
universe, Prometheus explored such hefty themes
as ‘man meeting his maker’ and our relationship
to our creators, known as the Engineers; the
same people who piloted that derelict spacecraft
in Alien. Human mortality and ‘what it is to be
human’ was also explored through the inquisitiveAlien: Covenant positioned itself as a
no-holds-barred Alien prequel.