Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton. A sequel to the 1979 film Alien, Aliens follows Weaver's character Ellen Ripley as she returns to the planet where her crew encountered the hostile Alien creature, this time accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines.

Aliens' action-adventure tone was in contrast to the horror motifs of the original Alien. Following the success of The Terminator (1984), which helped establish Cameron as a major action director,^[2] 20th Century Fox greenlit Aliens with a budget of approximately $18 million. It was filmed in England at Pinewood Studios, and at a decommissioned power plant.

Aliens grossed $86 million at the domestic box office during its 1986 theatrical release and $131 million internationally.^[3] The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including a Best Actress nomination for Sigourney Weaver. It won in the categories of Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. It won eight Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actress for Weaver and Best Direction for Cameron.

Plot[link]

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the only survivor of the space freighter Nostromo, is rescued and revived after drifting for fifty-seven years in stasis. At an interview before a panel of executives from her employer, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, her testimony regarding the Alien is met with extreme skepticism as she has no physical evidence. Ripley loses her space-flight license as a result of her "questionable judgment" and learns that LV-426, the planet where her crew first encountered the Alien eggs, is now home to a terraforming colony.

Ripley is later visited by Weyland-Yutani representative Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) and Lieutenant Gorman (William Hope) of the Colonial Marines, who inform her that contact has been lost with the colony on LV-426. The company decides to dispatch Burke and a unit of marines to investigate, and offers to restore Ripley's flight status and pick up her contract if she will accompany them as a consultant. Traumatized by her previous encounter with the Alien, Ripley initially refuses, but accepts after Burke promises that the team will destroy any Aliens found and not attempt to study them. Aboard the warship Sulaco she is introduced to the Colonial Marines, including Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews), Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn), Privates Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) and Hudson (Bill Paxton), and the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen), toward whom Ripley is initially hostile due to her previous experience with the android Ash aboard the Nostromo.

The expedition descends to the surface of LV-426 via dropship, where they find the colony seemingly abandoned. Two living facehuggers are found in containment tanks in the medical lab. The only colonist found is a traumatized young girl nicknamed Newt (Carrie Henn). The marines determine that the colonists are clustered in the nuclear-powered atmosphere processing station, where they find a large Alien nest filled with the cocooned colonists. The Aliens attack, killing most of the unit and capturing Apone and Dietrich. Ripley is able to rescue Hicks, Vasquez, and Hudson. With Gorman knocked unconscious during the rescue, Hicks assumes command and orders the dropship to recover the survivors, intending to return to the Sulaco and destroy the colony from orbit. A stowaway Alien kills the dropship pilots in flight, causing the vessel to crash into the processing station. The surviving humans barricade themselves inside the colony complex.

Ripley discovers that it was Burke who ordered the colonists to investigate the derelict spaceship where the Nostromo crew first encountered the Alien eggs, and that he hopes to return Alien specimens to the company laboratories where he can profit from their use as biological weapons. She threatens to expose him, but Bishop soon informs the group of a greater threat: the damaged processing station has become unstable and will soon detonate with the force of a thermonuclear weapon. He volunteers to use the colony's transmitter to pilot the Sulaco's remaining dropship to the surface by remote control so that the group can escape. Ripley and Newt fall asleep in the medical laboratory, awakening to find themselves locked in the room with the two facehuggers, which have been released from their tanks. Ripley is able to alert the marines, who rescue them and kill the creatures. Ripley accuses Burke of attempting to smuggle implanted Alien embryos past Earth's quarantine inside her and Newt, and of planning to kill the rest of the marines in hypersleep during the return trip so that no one could contradict his version of events. The electricity is suddenly cut off and numerous Aliens attack through the ceiling. Hudson, Burke, Gorman, and Vasquez are killed while Newt is captured by the Aliens.

Ripley and an injured Hicks reach Bishop and the second dropship, but Ripley refuses to leave Newt behind. She rescues Newt from the hive in the processing station, where the two encounter the Alien queen and her egg chamber. Ripley destroys most of the eggs, enraging the queen, who escapes by tearing free from her ovipositor. Closely pursued by the queen, Ripley and Newt rendezvous with Bishop and Hicks on the dropship and escape moments before the colony is consumed by the nuclear blast. Back on the Sulaco, Ripley and Bishop's relief at their narrow escape is interrupted when the Alien queen, stowed away on the dropship's landing gear, impales Bishop and tears him in half. Ripley battles the queen using an exosuit cargo-loader, before expelling it into space through an airlock. Ripley, Newt, Hicks and the still-functioning Bishop then enter hypersleep for the return to Earth.

Origins and inspiration[link]

While completing pre-production of The Terminator in 1983, director James Cameron discussed the possibility of working on a sequel to Alien (1979) with producer David Giler.^[4] A fan of the original film, Cameron was interested in crafting a sequel and entered a self-imposed seclusion to brainstorm a concept for Alien II.^[4] After four days Cameron produced an initial forty-five page treatment, although management changes at 20th Century Fox resulted in the film being put on hiatus, as they felt that Alien had not generated enough profit to warrant a sequel.^[4] A scheduling conflict with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger caused filming of The Terminator to be delayed by nine months (as Schwarzenegger was filming Conan the Destroyer), allowing Cameron additional time to write a script for Aliens. While filming The Terminator, Cameron wrote ninety pages for Aliens, and although the script was not finished, Fox was impressed and told him that if The Terminator was a success, he would be able to direct Aliens.^[5]

Following the success of The Terminator, Cameron and partner Gale Anne Hurd were given approval to direct and produce the sequel to Alien, scheduled for a 1986 release. Cameron was enticed by the opportunity to create a new world and opted not to follow the same formula as Alien, but to create a worthy combat sequel focusing "more on terror, less on horror".^[6] Sigourney Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley in Alien, had doubts about the project, but after meeting Cameron she expressed interest in revisiting her character. 20th Century Fox, however, refused to sign a contract with Weaver over a payment dispute and asked Cameron to write a story excluding Ellen Ripley.^[5] He refused on the grounds that Fox had indicated that Weaver had signed on when he began writing the script. With Cameron's persistence, Fox signed the contract and Weaver obtained a salary of $1 million, a sum equal to thirty times what she was paid for the first film.^[7] Weaver nicknamed her role in the Alien sequel "Rambolina", referring to John Rambo of the Rambo series, and stated that she approached the role as akin to the titular role in Henry V or women warriors in Chinese classical literature.^[7]

Cameron drew inspiration for the Aliens story from the Vietnam War, a situation in which a technologically superior force was mired in a hostile foreign environment: "Their training and technology are inappropriate for the specifics, and that can be seen as analogous to the inability of superior American firepower to conquer the unseen enemy in Vietnam: a lot of firepower and very little wisdom, and it didn't work."^[4][8] In the story of Aliens the Colonial Marines are hired to protect the business interests of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, corresponding to the belief that corporate interests were the reason that American troops were sent to South Vietnam. The attitude of the Marines was influenced by the Vietnam War; they are portrayed as cocky and confident of their inevitable victory, but when they find themselves facing a less technologically advanced but more determined enemy, the outcome is not what they expect.^[6]

Concept and design[link]

The AH-1 Cobra used in Vietnam served as inspiration for the design of the dropship.

Early concept art was created by Syd Mead, who had worked on Blade Runner, 2010 and Tron. One of the original designs for the spaceship Sulaco was spherical, but it was redesigned as the ship would be out of frame due to the film's aspect ratio. Cameron showed Mead his own concept art and the final result was described as a "rocket gun that carries stuff". Concept artists were asked to incorporate subliminal acknowledgments to the Vietnam War, which included designing the dropship as a combination of a F-4 Phantom II and AH-1 Cobra.^[9]

British Airways was re-equipping several of its aircraft tug tractors, and the crew managed to purchase a tug to use as the armored personnel carrier. It initially weighed 70 short tons (64,000 kg), and although the crew removed 35 short tons (32,000 kg) of lead, the power station floor had to be reinforced to support the weight. The crew used many "junk" items in the set designs, such as Ripley's toilet, which came from a Boeing 747. Lockers, helicopter engines, and vending machines were used as set elements in the opening hypersleep scene. Production designer Peter Lamont was asked to reduce the cost of several scenes, including the not-yet-filmed marine hypersleep sequence. Gale Hurd wanted to cut the scene altogether, but Lamont and Cameron felt it was important to the sequence of the film. To save on cost, only four hypersleep chambers were created and a mirror was used to create the illusion that there were twelve in the scene. Instead of using hydraulics, the chambers were opened and closed by wires operated by puppeteers.^[9]

Protective armor and helmet worn by Michael Biehn as Hicks (Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Seattle)

Weapons used by the Marines were based on real, fully functional weapons. British armorers used guns they found to be the most reliable when firing blanks and those which looked futuristic. The pulse rifles were created from a Thompson SMG, with an attached forend of a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun and a Remington 12 Gauge Model 870P receiver with barrel. The smart guns carried by Vasquez and Drake were based on the German MG-42 machine gun and were maneuvered with Steadicam-like harnesses created using old motorcycle parts. The crew found flamethrowers the most difficult weapon to create and use, as they were the heaviest and most dangerous.^[10]

Casting[link]

Cameron opted to hire actors who had, or could imitate, American accents. After unsuccessfully auditioning over 3,000 individuals in the United Kingdom, American actors were chosen instead, including three who had previously worked with Cameron on The Terminator: Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, and Michael Biehn. Actors who played Marines were asked to read Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers and undergo military training which included running, lifting weights, learning salutes, marches, deployments, and maneuvers for two weeks. Cameron wanted the Marines to train together, so that they would form bonds that would show on-screen. Sigourney Weaver, William Hope, and Paul Reiser were absent from training due to other obligations, but Cameron felt that this suited their characters as "outsiders" in the film.^[11]

The principal cast members of Aliens are:

• Michael Biehn as Corporal Dwayne Hicks, one of the Colonial Marines' squad leaders. James Remar was originally cast as Hicks but left the picture due to artistic differences with Cameron.^[12] Biehn was hastily cast a week after filming had commenced, and thus was not present for the military training that the other actors playing marines went through.^[11]
• Jenette Goldstein as Private Jenette Vasquez, one of the marines' "smart gun" operators. Goldstein received a Saturn Award for best supporting actress for her performance.^[13]
• Carrie Henn as Newt, a child who is the only survivor of the colony on LV-426. According to the casting director, Newt was the most difficult role to cast: schoolchildren were auditioned, but many of them had acted in commercials and were accustomed to smiling after saying their lines, a trait that the producers wished to avoid as it would not suit Aliens' dark tone. Henn, whose father was stationed at an American military base, was chosen out of 500 children for the role, although she had no previous acting experience.^[6][11] Henn received a Saturn Award for best performance by a young actor.^[13]
• Lance Henriksen as Bishop, the android executive officer of the Sulaco.
• William Hope as Lieutenant William Gorman, the marines' commanding officer.
• Al Matthews as Sergeant Al Apone, the marines' senior officer. Matthews attributed his casting to his military experience.
• Bill Paxton as Private William Hudson, the Marine team's technician. Paxton's performance earned him a Saturn Award for best supporting actor.^[13]
• Paul Reiser as Carter Burke, a corporate representative for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation.
• Mark Rolston as Private Mark Drake, Vasquez's smart gun partner.
• Cynthia Dale Scott as Corporal Cynthia Dietrich, the marines' corpsman.
• Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, reprising her role from Alien. Weaver received a Saturn Award for best actress for her performance and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, her first Academy Award nomination, though she lost to Marlee Matlin for her role in Children of a Lesser God.^[13]

Additional marines were played by Tip Tipping (as Private Tim Crowe), Trevor Steedman (as Private Trevor Wierzbowski), Colette Hiller (as dropship pilot Corporal Collette Ferro), Daniel Kash (as dropship crew chief Private Daniel Spunkmeyer), and Ricco Ross (as Private Ricco Frost). Paul Maxwell portrayed Van Leuwen, the head of the review board that revokes Ripley's flight license.

Filming[link]

The producing team behind Aliens, James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd

Aliens was filmed on a budget of $18 million at Pinewood Studios, with production lasting ten months.^[4] Production was affected by a number of personnel and cast disruptions. Shooting was said to be problematic due to cultural clashes between Cameron and the British crew, with the crew having what actor Bill Paxton called a "really indentured" way of working. Cameron, who is known to be a hard driving director and at the time was bound to a low budget with a release date set that he could not delay, found it difficult to adjust to working practices such as the regular tea breaks that brought production to a temporary halt. The crew were admirers of Ridley Scott, and many believed Cameron to be too young and inexperienced to be directing a film such as Aliens, despite Cameron's attempts to show them his previous film, The Terminator, which had not yet been released in the UK.^[14]

Some scenes of the Alien nest were shot at the decommissioned Acton Lane Power Station in Acton, London. The crew thought it was a perfect place to film due to its grilled walkways and numerous corridors. Problems were encountered with rust and asbestos, however, and the crew was required to spend money to clean the asbestos.^[9] The Alien nest set was not dismantled after filming, and was reused in 1989 as the Axis Chemicals set for Batman. When the crew of Batman entered the set, they found most of it intact.^[15]

At one point the crew members mocked Cameron's wife, producer Gale Anne Hurd, by asking her who the producer was and insisting that she was only getting producer's credit because she was married to the director. A walkout occurred when Cameron clashed with an uncooperative cameraman who refused to light a scene the way Cameron wanted. The cameraman had lit the Alien nest set brightly, while Cameron insisted on his original vision of a dark, foreboding nest, relying on the lights from the Marines' armor. After the cameraman was fired, Hurd managed to coax the crew members into coming back to work.^[14]

Music[link]

Music composer James Horner felt he was not given enough time to create a musical score. Horner arrived in England and expected the film to be "locked" so he could write the score in six weeks, which he thought was a sufficient amount of time. Horner, however, discovered that filming and editing were still taking place, and he was unable to view the film. He visited the sets and editing rooms for three weeks and found that editor Ray Lovejoy was barely keeping up with the workload due to time restrictions. Horner believed Cameron was preoccupied with sound effects, citing that Cameron spent two days with the sound engineer creating the sounds for the pulse rifles. He also complained that he was given an outdated recording studio; the score was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios, a thirty-year-old studio that was barely able to patch in synthesizers or use the electronic equipment that Horner required.^[16]

Six weeks from theatrical release, no dubbing had taken place and the score had not been written, as Horner was unable to view the completed film. The final cue for the scene in which Ripley battles the Alien queen was written overnight. Cameron completely reworked the scene, leaving Horner to rewrite the music. As Gale Hurd did not have much music production experience, she and Cameron denied Horner's request to push the film back four weeks so he could finish the score. Horner felt that, given more time, he could get the score to 100% of his satisfaction, rather than the 80% he estimated he had been able to achieve. The score was recorded in roughly four days.^[16] Despite his troubles, Horner received an Academy Award nomination (his first) for Best Original Score.

Horner stated that tensions between himself and Cameron were so high during post-production that he assumed they would never work together again. Horner believed that Cameron's film schedules were too short and stressful. The two parted ways until 1997 when Cameron, impressed with Horner's score for Braveheart, asked him to compose the score for Titanic.^[16]

Visual effects[link]

Brothers Robert and Dennis Skotak were hired to supervise the visual effects, having previously worked with Cameron on several Roger Corman movies. Two stages were used to construct the colony on LV-426, using miniature models that were on average six feet tall and three feet wide.^[17] Filming the miniatures was difficult due to the weather; the wind would blow over the props, although it proved helpful to give the effect of weather on the planet. Cameron used these miniatures and several effects to make scenes look larger than they really were, including rear projection, mirrors, beam splitters, camera splits and foreground miniatures.^[17]

The Alien suits were made more flexible and durable than the ones used in Alien, to expand on the creatures' movements and allow them to crawl and jump. Dancers, gymnasts and stunt men were hired to portray the Aliens. The creature's head was changed from the sleek shape used in Alien, as the crew thought that the original shape would crack with the creatures' increased mobility. Ridges were added along the head to increase its durability during movements.^[17]

Scenes involving the Alien queen were the most difficult to film, according to production staff. A life-sized mock-up was created by Stan Winston's company in the United States to see how it would operate. Once the testing was complete, the crew working on the queen flew to England and began work creating the final version. Standing at fourteen feet, it was operated using a mixture of puppeteers, control rods, hydraulics, cables, and a crane above to support it. Two puppeteers were inside the suit operating its arms, and sixteen were required to move it. All sequences involving the queen were filmed in-camera with no post-production manipulation.^[17]

Reception[link]

Box office[link]

Eagerly anticipated by fans following the success of Alien,^[18] Aliens was released in America on July 18, 1986, and September 26 in the United Kingdom. The film opened in 1,437 theaters with an average opening gross of $6,995 and a weekend gross of $10,052,042. It was number one at the United States box office for four consecutive weeks, grossing $85.1 million, and remains the highest-grossing Alien film at the U.S. box office when not adjusting for inflation. The film took a further $45.9 million outside of North America, for a total gross of $131 million.^[1]

Reviews[link]

Test and pre-screenings were unable to take place for Aliens due to the film not being completed until its week of release.^[19] Once it was released in cinemas, critical and audience reaction was very positive. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and called it "painfully and unremittingly intense" and a "superb example of filmmaking craft." He also stated "when I walked out of the theater, there were knots in my stomach from the film's roller-coaster ride of violence."^[20] Walter Goodman of The New York Times said it was a "flaming, flashing, crashing, crackling blow-'em-up show that keeps you popping from your seat despite your better instincts and the basically conventional scare tactics."^[21] Time Magazine featured the film on the cover of its July 28, 1986, issue, calling it the "summer's scariest movie". Time reviewer Richard Schickel declared the film "a sequel that exceeds its predecessor in the reach of its appeal while giving Weaver new emotional dimensions to explore."^[4] The selection of Aliens for a Time cover was attributed to the successful reception of the film,^[22][23] as well as its novel example of a science fiction action heroine.^[24] Echoing Time's assessment, Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader called the film "one sequel that surpasses the original."^[25]

Reviews of the film have remained mostly positive over the years. In a 1997 interview, Weaver stated that Aliens "made the first Alien look like a cucumber sandwich."^[26] In a 2000 review, film critic James Berardinelli said "When it comes to the logical marriage of action, adventure, and science fiction, few films are as effective or accomplished as Aliens."^[27] Austin Chronicle contributor Marjorie Baumgarten labeled the film in 2002 as "a non-stop action fest."^[28] Based on 48 reviews, the film holds a "Certified Fresh" rating of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average critic score of 8.8 out of 10.^[29] It also holds a score of 87 out of 100 ("universal acclaim") on the other major review aggregator, Metacritic.^[30]

Accolades[link]

Sigourney Weaver's Academy Award nomination for Best Actress was considered a milestone at the time when the Academy gave little recognition to the science fiction genre.

Aliens was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Music, Best Sound, Best Film Editing, and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration. It won two awards for Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. Sigourney Weaver received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, and although she did not win, it was considered a landmark nomination for an actress to be considered for a science fiction/horror film, a genre which was given little recognition by the Academy in 1986.^[6][19][31]

Aliens received four BAFTA award nominations and won in the category of Visual Effects.^[32] It won eight Saturn Awards in the categories of best science fiction film, actress (Sigourney Weaver), supporting actor (Bill Paxton), supporting actress (Jenette Goldstein), performance by a younger actor (Carrie Henn), direction (James Cameron), writing (James Cameron), and special effects (Stan Winston and the L.A. Effects Group).^[13]

Time magazine named Aliens in their Best of '86 list calling it a "technically awesome blend of the horror, sci-fi and service-comedy genres."^[33] In 2007, Entertainment Weekly named Aliens as the second-best action movie of all time, behind Die Hard.^[34] In a Rotten Tomatoes analysis of the top 100 science fiction films, Aliens ranks tenth among the best-reviewed films of the genre.^[35] In 2004, Aliens was ranked thirty-fifth on Bravo's "100 Scariest Movie Moments" for the scene in which Ripley and Newt are attacked by facehuggers; the original Alien was ranked second for the chestburster scene.^[36] IGN ranked it third in its "Top 25 Action Films of All-Time", stating that "there won't be an Alien movie as scary – or exciting – as this one made ever again."^[37]

Special edition[link]

A "Special Edition" of Aliens was released in 1992 on laserdisc and VHS that restored seventeen minutes of deleted footage. These additions include a segment showing Newt's family first encountering the derelict spacecraft on LV-426, Ripley learning that her daughter died during the years she was in hypersleep, a scene in the operations building in which the Marines use sentry guns against the Aliens, and several extended dialogue scenes between Ripley and the Marines.^[6] These scenes had been deleted from the original theatrical release as 20th Century Fox representatives thought the film was showing "too much nothing" and spent an unnecessary amount of time building suspense.^[6]

Most of the Special Edition's footage was first seen when the film made its broadcast television debut on CBS in 1989, but two additional sequences concerning Burke's transmission to the colony about the derelict, and the Jorden family's subsequent discovery of the same, were added to the initial Laserdisc release. According to Cameron, the visual effects for the scene were incomplete, so he went back to the Skotak brothers and had them finish the sequences. All currently available versions of the Special Edition contain these scenes.

The special edition was released as part of The Alien Legacy 20th Anniversary Edition DVD box set in 1999 along with Alien, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection. Both the theatrical version and the special edition were released again in 2003 as part of the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set along with similar versions of Alien, Alien 3, and Alien Resurrection. A separate two-disc "Special Collector's Edition" DVD of Aliens was released on January 6, 2004, containing the same material as the two Aliens discs in the Quadrilogy set.^[38] Additional content in these versions included an audio commentary for the special edition featuring director James Cameron, producer Gale Hurd, special effects artists and crew members. The second disc included special features relating to pre-production, production, and post-production.^[39]

Interpretation and analysis[link]

Philosopher Stephen Mulhall has remarked that the four Alien films represent an artistic rendering of the difficulties faced by the woman's "voice" to have itself heard in a masculinist society, as Ripley continually encounters males who try to silence her and to force her to submit to their desires. Mulhall sees this depicted in several events in Aliens, particularly the inquest scene in which Ripley's explanation for the deaths and destruction of the Nostromo, as well as her attempts to warn the board members of the Alien danger, are met with officious disdain. However, Mulhall believes that Ripley's relationship with Hicks illustrates that Aliens "is devoted ... to the possibility of modes of masculinity that seek not to stifle but rather to accommodate the female voice, and modes of femininity that can acknowledge and incorporate something more or other of masculinity than our worst nightmares of it."^[40]

Several movie academics, including Barbara Creed, have remarked on the color and lighting symbolism in the Alien franchise, which offsets white, strongly lit environments (spaceships, corporate offices) against darker, dirtier, 'corrupted' settings (derelict alien ship, abandoned industrial facilities). These black touches contrast or even attempt to take over the purity of the white elements.^[41] Others, such as Kile M. Ortigo of Emory University, agree with this interpretation and point to the Sulaco with its "sterilized, white interior" as representing this element in the second film of the franchise.^[42]

While some claim that the shape of the Sulaco was based on a submarine,^[43] the design has most often been described as a 'gun in space' resembling the rifles used in the movie.^[44] Author Roz Kaveney called the opening shot of the ship traveling through space 'fetishistic' and 'shark-like', "an image of brutal strength and ingenious efficiency"—while the militarized interior of the Sulaco (designed by Ron Cobb) is contrasted to the organic interior of the Nostromo in the first movie (also designed by Cobb).^[45] David McIntee noted the homage the scene pays to the opening tour through the Nostromo in Alien.^[46]

The android character Bishop has been the subject of literary and philosophical analysis as a high-profile fictional android conforming to science fiction author Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics and as a model of a compliant, potentially self-aware machine.^[47] His portrayal has been studied by writers for the University of Texas Press for its implications relating to how humans deal with the presence of an "Other",^[48] as Ripley treats them with fear and suspicion and a form of "hi-tech racism and android apartheid" is present throughout the series.^[49] This is seen as part of a larger trend of technophobia in films prior to the 1990s, with Bishop's role being particularly significant as he proves his worth at the end of the film, thus confounding Ripley's expectations.^[50]

References[link]

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

• Superior Firepower: The Making of Aliens, Alien Quadrilogy – Disc 3, 2003, 20th Century Fox

Further reading[link]

• Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ellen Ripley (by Ximena Gallardo C. and C. Jason Smith, Continuum, 272 pages, 2004, ISBN 0-8264-1910-0)
• The Complete Aliens Companion (by Paul Sammon, Harper Prism, 1998, ISBN 0-06-105385-6)
• Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Alien and Predator Films (by David A. McIntee, Telos, 272 pages, 2005, ISBN 1-903889-94-4)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Aliens (film)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Aliens

• Aliens at the Internet Movie Database

Sir Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott in March 2012.
Born	(1937-11-30) 30 November 1937 (age 74) South Shields, England, United Kingdom
Occupation	Film director, film producer
Years active	1965–present
Notable work(s)	Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, American Gangster
Spouse	Felicity Heywood, (m. 1964–1975, divorced) Sandy Watson (m. 1979–1989, divorced)
Children	With Felicity Heywood Jake (born 1965) Luke (born 1968) With Sandy Watson Jordan (born 1978)

Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November, 1937) is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Legend (1985), Black Rain (1989), Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Black Hawk Down (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005) American Gangster (2007), Body of Lies (2008), and Prometheus (2012).

Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing, as well as Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. He was knighted in the 2003 New Year Honours.^[1] In 2011, Scott received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^[2] He is the older brother of film director Tony Scott.^[3]

Early Life[link]

Scott was born in South Shields,^[4] England, the son of Elizabeth and Colonel Francis Percy Scott.^[5] He was raised in an Army family, meaning that for most of his early life, his father — an officer in the Royal Engineers — was absent. Ridley's older brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around, living in (among other areas) Cumbria, Wales and Germany. He has a younger brother, Tony, also a film director. After the Second World War, the Scott family moved back to their native north-east England, eventually settling in Teesside (whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner). He enjoyed watching films, and his favourites include Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai.^[6] Scott studied in Teesside from 1954 to 1958, at Grangefield Grammar School and later in West Hartlepool College of Art, graduating with a Diploma in Design.

He went on to study at the Royal College of Art, contributing to the college magazine, ARK, and helping to establish its film department. For his final show, he made a black and white short film, Boy and Bicycle, starring his younger brother, Tony Scott, and his father. The film's main visual elements would become features of Scott's later work; it was issued on the 'Extras' section of The Duellists DVD. After graduation in 1963, he secured a job as a trainee set designer with the BBC, leading to work on the popular television police series Z-Cars and the science fiction series Out of the Unknown.

He was assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realising the famous alien creatures. However, shortly before Scott was due to start work, a schedule conflict meant that he was replaced on the serial by Raymond Cusick.^[7]

In 1968, Ridley and Tony Scott founded Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a film and commercial production company.^[8] Five members of the Scott family are directors, all working for RSA.^[9] Brother Tony has been a successful film director for more than two decades; sons, Jake and Luke are both acclaimed commercials directors as is his daughter, Jordan Scott. Jake and Jordan both work from Los Angeles and Luke is based in London.

In 1995, Shepperton Studios was purchased by a consortium headed by Ridley and Tony Scott, which extensively renovated the studios while also expanding and improving its grounds.^[10]

Career[link]

Beginnings[link]

Working with Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Hugh Johnson at RSA during the 1970s, Scott made television commercials in the UK including most notably the 1974 Hovis advert, "Bike Round" (New World Symphony), which was filmed in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

[edit] The Duellists

The Duellists of 1977 was Ridley Scott's first feature film. It was produced in Europe and won a Best Debut Film medal at the Cannes Film Festival but made limited commercial impact in the US. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it featured two French Hussar officers, D'Hubert and Feraud (played by Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel). Their quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter, long-drawn out feud over the following fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. The film is lauded for its historically authentic portrayal of Napoleonic uniforms and military conduct, as well as its accurate early-19th-century fencing techniques recreated by fight choreographer William Hobbs. It is also lauded for the stunning cinematography of the Dordogne.

[edit] Alien

Scott's box office disappointment with The Duellists was compounded by the success received by Alan Parker with American-backed films — Scott admitted he was "ill for a week" with envy. Scott had originally planned to next adapt a version of Tristan and Iseult, but after seeing Star Wars, he became convinced of the potential of large scale, effects-driven films. He therefore accepted the job of directing Alien, the ground-breaking 1979 horror/science-fiction film that would give him international recognition.

While Scott would not direct the three Alien sequels, the female action hero Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver), introduced in the first film, would become a cinematic icon. Scott was involved in the 2003 restoration and re-release of the film including media interviews for its promotion. At this time Scott indicated that he had been in discussions to make the fifth and final film in the Alien franchise. However, in a 2006 interview, the director remarked that he had been unhappy about Alien: The Director's Cut, feeling that the original was "pretty flawless" and that the additions were merely a marketing tool.^[11]

[edit] Blade Runner

After a year working on the film adaptation of Dune, and following the sudden death of his brother Frank, Scott signed to direct the film version of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Starring Harrison Ford and featuring an acclaimed soundtrack by Vangelis, Blade Runner was a disappointment in theatres in 1982 and was pulled shortly thereafter. Scott's notes were used by Warner Brothers to create a rushed director's cut in 1991 which removed the voiceovers and modified the ending. Scott personally supervised a digital restoration of Blade Runner and approved the Final Cut. This version was released in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto cinemas on 5 October 2007, and as an elaborate DVD release on 18 December 2007.^[12] Today, Blade Runner is often ranked by critics as one of the most important and influential science fiction films of the 20th century^[13] and is usually discussed along with William Gibson's novel Neuromancer as initiating the cyberpunk genre. Scott regards Blade Runner as his "most complete and personal film".^[14]

"1984" Apple Macintosh commercial[link]

In 1984 Scott directed the television commercial 1984, written by Steve Hayden and Lee Clow, produced by Chiat\Day, and starring Anya Major as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as "Big Brother".^[15][16] It was released for a single airing in the United States on 22 January 1984 during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII.^[17] It introduced the Macintosh for the first time and is now considered a "watershed event"^[18] and a "masterpiece".^[19]

1984 used the unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from "conformity" (Big Brother).^[20]

These images were an allusion to George Orwell's noted novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a supposedly fictional "Big Brother".

[edit] Legend

In 1985 Scott directed Legend, a fantasy film produced by Arnon Milchan. Having not tackled the fairy tale genre, Scott decided to create a "once upon a time" film set in a world of fairies, princesses, and goblins. Scott cast Tom Cruise as the film's hero, Jack, Mia Sara as Princess Lily, and Tim Curry as the Satan-horned Lord of Darkness. A series of problems with both principal photography, including the destruction of the forest set by fire, and post-production (including heavy editing and substitution of Jerry Goldsmith's original score with a score by Tangerine Dream) hampered the film's release. Legend received scathing reviews.

1987–92[link]

Scott made Someone to Watch Over Me, a romantic police drama starring Tom Berenger, Lorraine Bracco and Mimi Rogers in 1987, and Black Rain, a 1989 cop drama starring Michael Douglas and Andy García, shot partially in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. Both achieved mild success at the box office.

Thelma & Louise (1991) starring Geena Davis as Thelma, and Susan Sarandon as Louise, was successful, and revived Scott's reputation. However, his next project—an independent movie, 1492: Conquest of Paradise—was less successful. It is a visually striking film telling the story of Christopher Columbus. However, it was a box office failure, and Scott did not release another film for four years.

Recent career[link]

In 1995, with his brother Tony, Scott formed the film and television production company, Scott Free Productions in Los Angeles. All his subsequent feature films, starting with White Squall and G.I. Jane, starring Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen, were produced under the Scott Free banner. Also in 1995 the two brothers purchased controlling interest in Shepperton Studios, which later merged with Pinewood Studios. Scott and his brother have produced the CBS series Numb3rs (2005–2010), a crime drama about a genius mathematician who helps the FBI solve crimes, and The Good Wife (2009–), a legal drama concerning an attorney continuing her law practice while coping with her husband, a former state attorney trying to rebuild his political career after a major scandal.

2000–2005[link]

The huge success of Scott's film Gladiator (2000) has been credited with reviving the nearly defunct "sword and sandal" historical genre. Scott then turned to Hannibal (2001), the sequel to Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. In 2002, Scott released the war film, Black Hawk Down, which further established his position as a critically and financially successful film maker. The film won two Oscars.

In 2003 Scott directed Matchstick Men, adapted from the novel by Eric Garcia and starring Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman. It received mostly positive reviews and performed moderately at the box office. In 2005 he made the modestly successful Kingdom of Heaven, a movie about the Crusades which consciously sought to connect history to current events. The Moroccan government sent the Moroccan cavalry as extras in the epic battle scenes.^[21]

Unhappy with the theatrical version of the film (which he blamed on paying too much attention to the opinions of preview audiences), Scott supervised a director's cut of Kingdom of Heaven, which was released on DVD in 2006.^[22] In an interview to promote the latter, when asked if he was against previewing in general, Scott stated: "It depends who's in the driving seat. If you've got a lunatic doing my job, then you need to preview. But a good director should be experienced enough to judge what he thinks is the correct version to go out into the cinema."^[23]

2006–present[link]

Scott teamed up again with Gladiator star Russell Crowe, directing the movie A Good Year, based on the best-selling book. The film was released on 10 November 2006, with a score by Marc Streitenfeld. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp and Subsidiary studio 20th Century Fox (who backed the film) dismissed A Good Year as "a flop" at a shareholders' meeting only a few days after the film's release.^[24]

Scott's next directorial work was on American Gangster, the story of real-life drug kingpin Frank Lucas. He was the third director to attempt the project after Antoine Fuqua and Terry George. Denzel Washington and Benicio del Toro had been cast in the initial Steven Zaillian-scripted project under the working title Tru Blu, both actors having been paid salaries of $20 m and $15 m respectively without doing any production on the film. Following George's departure, Scott took over the project in early 2006. He had Zaillian rewrite the script to focus on the dynamic between Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts. Washington signed back on to the project as Lucas, and Crowe signed on to play Roberts. The film finally premiered in November 2007 to positive reviews and good box office. In late 2008 Scott released the espionage thriller Body of Lies starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Crowe once again which opened to luke-warm ticket-sales and mixed reviews.

Scott directed an adaptation of Robin Hood titled Robin Hood, which starred Russell Crowe as Robin Hood and Cate Blanchett as Maid Marian, and which was released on 13 May 2010 in Australia and 14 May 2010 in America. The film also starred Max von Sydow and Mark Strong.

Scott and his brother Tony produced the film adaptation of the 1980s TV cult classic The A-Team, which was directed by Joe Carnahan and released on 11 June 2010.

On 31 July 2009, news surfaced of a two part prequel to Alien, developed by 20th Century Fox.^[25] with Scott attached to direct.^[26]. The project, ultimately reduced to a single film called Prometheus, which Scott describes as sharing "strands of Alien's DNA" while not being a direct prequel, is scheduled for release in June 2012.

On 6 July 2010, YouTube announced the launch of Life In A Day, an experimental documentary that was to be executive produced by Scott. Released at the Sundance Film Festival on 27 January 2011, it incorporates footage shot on 24 July 2010 that was submitted by YouTube users from around the world.^[27]

Planned projects[link]

In April 2008, Scott announced his new project, The Kind One, a period drama set for release in 2012. The film will star recent Academy Award nominee Casey Affleck.^[28] It is based on the novel of the same name by screenwriter Tom Epperson.

On 12 October 2008, Scott confirmed that after a 25 year wait for the rights to become available, he is making a return to science fiction with a film adaptation of the book The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. He was looking for a script writer.^[29] In March 2009, Scott confirmed that the film would be in 3D citing James Cameron's Avatar as an inspiration for doing so. "I'm filming a book by Joe Haldeman called Forever War. I've got a good writer doing it. I've seen some of James Cameron's work, and I've got to go 3D. It's going to be phenomenal."^[30][31]

Another science fiction project to which Scott has been attached is an adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, with Leonardo DiCaprio also attached.^[32]

In August 2011, information leaked about production of a sequel to Blade Runner by Alcon Entertainment, with Alcon partners Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove.^[33] Scott announced on 15 October 2009 that he will direct a film adaptation of the Red Riding trilogy.^[34]

As of 1 February 2012, Ridley Scott discussed a project based on a screenplay called The Counsellor by Cormac McCarthy with the producers of The Road, Nick Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz. ^[35]

Personal life[link]

Ridley Scott was married to Felicity Heywood from 1964 to 1975. The couple had two sons, Jake and Luke, both of whom work as directors on Scott's production company Ridley Scott Associates. Scott later married advertising executive Sandy Watson in 1979, with whom he had a daughter, Jordan Scott, and divorced in 1989.^[36][37]

His current partner is the actress Giannina Facio, whom he has cast in all his movies since White Squall except American Gangster.^{[citation needed]} He divides his time between homes in London, France, and Los Angeles.

Approach and style[link]

Scott was not initially considered an actors' director^{[citation needed]}, but has become more receptive to ideas from his cast as his career has developed. Examples include Susan Sarandon's suggestions that the character of Louise pack shoes in plastic bags in one scene of Thelma & Louise, and another where her character exchanges jewelry for a hat and other items— and Tim Robbins' collaboration with Scott and Susan Sarandon to rework the final scene with a more upbeat ending. Russell Crowe commented, "I like being on Ridley's set because actors can perform [...] and the focus is on the performers."^[38] Paul M. Sammon, in his book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, commented in an interview with Brmovie.com that Scott's relationship with his actors has improved considerably over the years.^[39] More recently during the filming of Scott's 2012 film, Prometheus, Charlize Theron praised the director's willingness to listen to suggestions from the cast for improvements in the way their characters are portrayed on script. Theron worked alongside the writers and Scott to give more depth to her character during filming.^[40]

On the other hand, he can be a demanding and difficult director to work for. He was nicknamed "Guvnor" in the Blade Runner production. Several crew members wore protest t-shirts with slogans such as "Yes Guvnor, my ass" and "Will Rogers never met Ridley Scott" in reference to Will Rogers' most famous quotation, "I never met a man I didn't like".^{[41][citation needed]} This was mainly in response to the way that Scott directed his first American crew, which some considered too harsh.

His striking visual style, incorporating a detailed approach to production design and innovative, atmospheric lighting, has been influential on a subsequent generation of filmmakers — many of whom have imitated his style. Scott commonly uses slow pacing until the action sequences. Examples include Alien and Blade Runner; the LA Times critic Sheila Benson, for example, would call the latter "Blade Crawler" "because it's so damn slow". Another technique he employs is use of sound or music to build tension, as heard in Alien, with hissing steam, beeping computers and the noise of the machinery in the space ship.

Scott has developed a method for filming intricate shots as swiftly as possible:

"I like working, always, with a minimum of three cameras. [...] So those 50 set-ups [a day] might only be 25 set-ups except I'm covering in the set-up. So you're finished. I mean, if you take a little bit more time to prep on three cameras, or if it's a big stunt, eleven cameras, and — whilst it may take 45 minutes to set up — then when you're ready you say 'Action!', and you do three takes, two takes and is everybody happy? You say, 'Yeah, that's it.' So you move on."^[38]

Although Scott is often known for his painterly directorial style, other techniques and elements include:

• Strong female characters.^[42][43]
• Some of his movies feature strong conflicts between father and son that usually end with the latter killing the former (Blade Runner, Gladiator) or witnessing the event (Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood). The Lord of Darkness in Legend also mentions his "father" on a few occasions. As part of the conflict between father and son there are some repetitive scenes: in Gladiator, the son hugs the father seemingly as an expression of love but this embrace turns into the suffocation and death of the father. There is a similar sequence in Blade Runner.
• Scott utilises cityscapes as an emphasis to his storytelling (i.e., a futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner, Tokyo in Black Rain, Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven).
• In Gladiator, Blade Runner and Kingdom of Heaven, a son gets to know his father when he is grown up. Other common elements are that the mother is not seen, and that the son or father is seen performing his last actions. For example, Roy Batty is dying when he saves Deckard, Maximus dies after killing Commodus and Godfrey of Ibelin kills some enemies after he has been mortally wounded by an arrow. In addition, the hero is saved from death before attaining his greatest deeds: Deckard is saved by Rachel, Maximus is saved by a slave and Balian is saved by a Muslim enemy. Similar situations can be seen in Tony Scott's Man on Fire.
• Military and officer classes as characters reflecting his father's career, such as in G.I. Jane and Black Hawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven.
• Storyboarding his films extensively. These illustrations, when made by himself, have been referred to as "Ridleygrams" in DVD releases.
• Scott was once known for requesting a great many takes. This was evident on Blade Runner: the crew nicknamed the movie "Blood Runner" because of this.
• He often makes use of classical music (the Hovis advertisements, Someone to Watch Over Me).
• Extensive use of smoke and other atmospheres (in Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain), plus fans and fan-like objects (Blade Runner, Black Rain and the large Boeing jet engines in the 1984 TV advertisement). Fans are also used in Hannibal, for symbolic purposes.
• Consistency in his choice of composers, using Jerry Goldsmith (Alien and Legend), Vangelis (Blade Runner and 1492: Conquest of Paradise), Hans Zimmer (Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down and Matchstick Men) or Marc Streitenfeld (A Good Year, American Gangster, Body of Lies, Robin Hood and Prometheus). Scott has also twice used songs by Sting during the film credits ("Valparaiso" for White Squall and "Someone to Watch Over Me" for the movie of the same title).

DVD format and director's cut[link]

Scott is known for his enthusiasm for the DVD format, providing audio commentaries and interviews for all his films where possible. In the July 2006 issue of Total Film magazine, he stated: "After all the work we go through, to have it run in the cinema and then disappear forever is a great pity. To give the film added life is really cool for both those who missed it and those who really loved it."^[23]

Running alongside his enthusiasm for DVD, Scott is sometimes considered the "father" of the director's cut, though the impetus to produce such versions has sometimes begun with other parties. The positive reaction to the Blade Runner Director's Cut encouraged Scott to re-cut several movies that were a disappointment at the time of their release (including Legend and Kingdom of Heaven). Today the practice of alternative cuts is more commonplace, though often as a way to make a film stand out in the DVD marketplace by adding new material.

Filmography[link]

Commercials[link]

• Bike Round for Hovis (1973)
• Chanel... Share the fantasy. for Chanel (1979)
• 1984 for Apple Computer (1984)
• Deficit Trials for W.R. Grace (1986)
• The Choice of a New Generation for Pepsi (1986) (Starred Don Johnson and Glenn Frey)
• Nissan 300ZX Twin Turbo Super Bowl commercial (1992)

TV shows[link]

• Numb3rs (Producer, 2005–2010)
• The Good Wife (Executive producer, 2009–present)
• The Pillars of the Earth (Executive producer, 2010)
• Prophets of Science Fiction (Executive producer, 2011)
• Labyrinth (Executive producer, 2012)

Awards & Nominations[link]

Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing: for Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, as well as a Golden Globe, BAFTA and Emmy Award. He has won 3 British Academy Awards for the film Blade Runner.^[44] He was knighted in the 2003 New Year Honours. In 2011, He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.^{[45] [1]}

Box office performance[link]

References[link]