2024-08-30 03:01:00
The day of the premiere of Alienson July 18, 1986, Director James Cameron and producer Gale Anne Hurd, “Then married, they attended every screening in Los Angeles. One, at midnight on Hollywood Boulevard, was especially exciting. ‘It was like people were in an amusement park,'” Hurd says today. “They were screaming at the screen… we expected a visceral response, but We never expected to get to that point.”
Moviegoers, however, were already warned that Cameron’s sequel would be a very different beast than Ridley Scott’s original.“This time it’s war,” the trailer said. Alien: Romulus It hit theaters ten days ago, but Aliens remains the reference to the aftermath of the franchise. There hasn’t been a decent entry – or a universally appreciated Alien, at least – since 1986, with a spotty track record of troubled productions (Alien 3), maligned oddities (Alien: Resurrection), low quality spin-offs (Alien vs. Predator) and unfathomably disappointing prequels (Prometheus by Ridley Scott and Alien: Covenant). In addition, a trail of unproduced films – mainly the discarded Alien 5 de Neill Blomkamp- whose gestation was more complicated than the life cycle that goes from the hand attached to the face to the monster that bursts rib cages.
In fact, Aliens casts a huge shadow in the shape of a Alien Queen. In terms of 80s action, it’s a giant armored space truck, a monster that defines the genre, decade and series. But it is much more than action and famous phrases like “Get away from her, bitch!” Aliens It’s a masterclass in world-building and story exploration, propelling the series far beyond the isolated confines of the original.
The film was shot during a period of great success for Cameron, who went from being dismissed of Piranha II filming Terminator y Aliens in just four years. In fact, Cameron was already working on the sequel to Alien before starting to roll Terminatorwhich was delayed by the contractual obligation of Arnold Schwarzenegger with the continuation of Conan the Barbarian. Meanwhile, Cameron looked for work as a screenwriter and met with Alien producers David Giler and Walter Hill to discuss a film. “Spartacus in space.” But when they mentioned that they had an idea for Alien 2 -something about Ripley teaming up with soldiers and returning to LV-426, the alien egg-ridden planet from the first film—Cameron went for it.
His friends warned Cameron that I didn’t do it a sequel to Alienalthough his response was (rightly): “Yes, but I really want to do it. It will be great.” As incredible as it may seem, he wrote Alien, Rambo II and the rewriting of Terminator both, in three months. Always attracted by a strong female lead, Cameron had a photo of Sigourney Weaver on his desk while he was writing.
Cameron’s most obvious masterstroke was change gender: of the extraterrestrial terror of the Alien from Ridley Scott to the fast-paced action of Aliens“Jim revered the first film, as I do, and he didn’t think the original could be improved upon,” Hurd explains. “He didn’t want to remake it. So he thought, what would be a better film? proper continuation of Ripley’s character? And how could it essentially be a different genre?”
“I knew I could do fast-paced action,” Cameron later told Film4. “I knew I could just turn the screw harder and harder on an action sequence. So I thought, let’s do it, let’s jump from the horror premise to what ultimately becomes an action movie.” Cameron took elements from a previous treatment he had written titled Mother, including the fight with the power charger and the name “xenomorfo”. Madre would turn out to be a suitable genesis: Aliens es powerfully maternal.
In Cameron’s story, Ripley awakens from her cryogenic sleep after 57 years, at which point she learns that her daughter on Earth has aged and died. She is then convinced to return to LV-426 with a unit of Marines, on a mission to save a human colony from the Xenomorphs. Ripley finds the colony’s sole survivor, Newt (Carrie Henn), of 10 years, which he takes as adopted daughter before facing the Alien Queen, a 15-foot-tall creature with multiple limbs and maternal fury.
As the story goes, Cameron pitched his concept to the producers by writing the word “alien” on a whiteboard in the briefing room, adding an “s” to it, and drawing a line through it to make it Alien$. Hurd laughs at the place this anecdote occupies. “I wasn’t there,” he says. “But I understand that it’s true. And even if it isn’t, it should be.”
Unusually, the studio was so enthusiastic about Cameron’s still-unfinished script that They waited for me to filmTerminator to complete it. It wasn’t until the box office success of that film that Cameron closed the deal to direct as well. Aliens, his first studio film. At that time a sequel was expected raised only 60% of the original. Aliens had a budget of 14 million dollarsmuch more than Terminatorbut not huge compared to the blockbusters of the eighties. As a 29-year-old woman, Hurd faced other straight In addition to the budget, she also needed to be accepted as a producer by the studio and its team.
Weaver, for his part, knew nothing about the film. He was initially opposed to a sequel, but agreed to read Cameron’s script. Cameron later recalled that Weaver’s requests were to “die in the movie… don’t use guns… make love to the alien” (Weaver had to wait until Alien: Resurrection to fulfill the latter). But it hardly mattered: The studio declined to pay Weaver’s fees. “Fox backed out and went to the executive producers,” Hurd says. “They said, ‘Write a new script and it’ll be a new chapter. Ripley’s not coming back.’ I don’t know what that movie would be.”
Cameron and Hurd threatened to abandon the project, though the shrewd Cameron hatched a plan: He told Schwarzenegger’s agent, who worked at the same agency as Weaver’s, that he was about to go ahead without her. Cameron knew Arnie’s agent would tell Weaver’s agent, who called the studio and closed the deal. Weaver charged $1 million, 30 times his fee. Alien. When Sigourney joined the production, her co-stars – including Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton y Jenette Goldstein, Cameron regulars – had spent weeks together in the training camp.
Was there really as much testosterone among the Marines as portrayed in the film? “Oh, yes,” says Goldstein, who plays the tough-as-nails Vasquez. The camp bonding exercises worked: “We’re still incredibly close.” He also liked Cameron’s low-budget mentality. “When things went wrong, it was like a B-movie,” remembers. “We fixed it, put tape on it and shot it from a different angle.” That shabby quality has helped Aliens to stay on your feet, suggests dancer-turned-chef Carl Toop, who slipped into one of the alien suits. “You still feel the actual tension “We were in positions where we felt in danger. That must have been reflected in the actors’ expressions; I think some of it wasn’t 100% acting.” “It was very scary.”
Cameron himself designed the Alien Queen, a giant puppet that required multiple operators and hydraulic systems to maneuver it. The Queen could have been a product of sequelae: bigger, louder, less subtle. But it is the manifestation of the film’s most powerful weapons: the maternal grief and fury that throb beneath the action. You can’t help but feel sorry for the Queen when Ripley burns down her nest. Unfortunately, Cameron and Hurd had to cut the story of Ripley’s dead daughter to reduce the running time (it was later brought back in the special director’s cut). “Talk about killing your babies,” Hurd jokes.
It is clear that Aliens It was action cinema of the highest order. But part of the British team was not impressed, and one of them referred contemptuously Cameron not by name, but as “the Yankee”. “That was annoying,” Hurd says, “because Jim is Canadian.” Cameron and Hurd attempted to organize screenings of Terminator to show the British what Cameron’s films were like, but hardly anyone bothered to come. “There was a clash of personalities and cultures,” says Goldstein, diplomatically.
There were also tensions over the working hours. While American crews were accustomed to long hours, dictated at the behest of the director, the British, reinforced by strong unions, preferred shorter days and (as is the divine right of every Englishman) mandatory tea breaks. Cameron would set up a take and the tea lady would interrupt with her squeaky cart, at which point the crew would stop for a cup of tea and a cheese scone. The “famous tea lady,” Goldstein recalls, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Jim was like, “Oh my God!”
In the end, director of photography Dick Bush was dismissed because he lit the scenes the way he wanted – and not the way Cameron asked – while the first assistant director, Derek Cracknell, was on the verge of being fired, leading to a near mutiny and a crisis meeting. “We managed to come to an agreement,” says Hurd.
Of course, Cameron and Hurd were validated: Aliens triumphed and grossed $183 million. Besides, It was nominated for seven Oscars and won two.
Her genre-bending brilliance is perfectly encapsulated in one particular sequence: when Ripley and Newt find themselves caught by a pair of “hands.” In Alien, the “hand” or claw is more of a grotesque visual element, an image of primal fear, clings to John Hurt’s face. Cameron takes that image and transforms it into an action-driven sequence. a horror that twists, slithers, and speeds. That is the essence of the Reinvention Cameron in an alien eggshell.
“I don’t think Ridley liked me getting into the little world that he had created,” Cameron later said. In 2012, the Prometheus Scott would make the fatal mistake of go inward, trying to answer questions about the original that were best left as mysteries. Alienson the other hand, is a universal model for continuing the story while building on the mythology, creating new corners to explore, with a fresh vision… all without sucking the life out of the original. Just as the Xenomorph is a perfect organism, Aliens es a perfect sequel.
* Of The Independent from Great Britain. Special for Page/12.