Original subtitles

(narrator) It waits in silence

and strikes without warning.

It inhabits its prey like a silent time bomb waiting to explode.

(screams)

(screams)

It is the perfect killing machine.

Released in 1979, Alien sparked a science-fiction revolution.

It gave us the screen's first bone fide female action hero.

Get away from her, you bitch!

And helped launch the careers

of some of Hollywood's most noted directors.

Now go behind the scenes

of one of the world's most popular and profitable science-fiction franchises,

and witness the evolution of the Alien saga.

Alien began in the mind of Dan O'Bannon,

a filmmaker whose 1973 science-fiction comedy Dark Star

had achieved a modest degree of notoriety.

In 1975, O'Bannon was hired to oversee the special-effects development

on a proposed French film production of Dune,

based on Frank Herbert's classic novel.

While working on visual design concepts,

O'Bannon was introduced to the disturbing work

of Swiss artist HR. Giger.

(O'Bannon) Over in Pans, I had met a Swiss artist named Hans Giger.

It was a revelation.

I thought to myself

"If somebody could get this guy to design a monster movie,"

"it would be like nothing anyone ever saw."

(narrator) Unfortunately, neither Giger's nor O'Bannon's visions for Dune

would be realized.

The production was shut down for lack of funding.

(O'Bannon) Dune fell through with great abruptness,

and I ended up back in L.A. with no money, no car, all my belongings in storage.

And Ron Shusett was good enough to take me in

and let me live on his couch

(narrator) Ron Shusett was also a young aspiring screenwriter.

He and O'Bannon quickly realized

that they might stand a better chance of setting a script if they worked together.

In search of the perfect story, they catalogued their ideas

before settling on a partially completed screenplay

that O'Bannon had been working on.

(O'Bannon) It was the flip side of Dark Star-instead of funny, scary.

When you make a comedy and they don't laugh,

it's pretty devastating.

And I thought

"Well, if I can't make them laugh, maybe I can make 'em scream."

Inspired in part by HR. Giger's designs,

O'Bannon's screenplay told the tale of a small group of space travelers

who are menaced by an alien monster on board their ship.

The plot was similar to dozens of other science-fiction films.

But O'Bannon and Shusett felt their concept for the creature

would make the film unique.

(O'Bannon) The hardest part of figuring out the script

was figuring out exactly what the creature was and how it worked.

And I finally decided to move in the direction of parasites

as they function here on Earth.

They're this for a while,

then they jump on your dog and they burrow in

and they become something else for a while,

and then they jump out of your dog.

We started talking, and he said "Yeah, it could go on his face."

"It could be a creature..." We didn't know what the monster looked like.

"A little creature, and it jumps on his face."

And I said "Somehow the monster has to plant a seed in him."

”But nobody will know that till it comes bursting out of his chest."

"Oh, my God, I think we've got it. We've got the whole movie."

"Nobody’s ever seen anything like this."

And it wrote itself. Within three weeks, we had the story structure completed,

and it took us another three months to do the script.

(narrator) Ultimately, O'Bannon and Shusett named their story Alien.

They also hired designer Ron Cobb to prepare concept drawings

in an effort to sell the idea to Hollywood.

Armed with sketches and script,

the writers pitched their story to executives at 20th Century Fox.

But the studio promptly rejected it as being too violent.

In fact, the only person who showed any interest at all in the project

was B-movie king Roger Corman.

(Shusett) We sent it over to him. He loved it and said "I'll make the movie."

So we were gonna sign a contract with him to make it for $750,000.

But just before the contract was signed,

an old film-school friend of O'Bannon's offered to take Alien

and pass it on to Brandy wine Productions, an independent film company

owned by filmmakers Walter Hill, Gordon Carroll and David Giler.

Everybody's heard about scripts that came through the window

This one literally came through the window.

Somebody gave O'Bannon and Shusett's script of Alien through the window to...

Walter's desk was on an alley.

Walter read it and said

"Maybe I'm crazy, but it's got one really great scene in it."

"I think that we maybe should consider this one."

It was the chestburster. It was the thing that comes out of its chest

This scene, this one scene, is just so incredible

that it makes it worth it to do the movie.

In the winter of 1976, Brandy wine optioned the script for Alien

and once again pitched it to executives at 20th Century Fox.

Fox, they took us to lunch and said

"This is not the kind of thing we expected from you guys."

"We know this script, and we've seen it before."

You know, we later found out everybody had seen it before.

Undaunted, Hill and Giler began a massive rewrite of the project.

Two weeks tater, they resubmitted the script to Fox.

This time, the executives loved it.

Studio chief Alan Ladd Jr. was ready to move forward,

but only if something could be done

to spice up the Seeding rote of Astronaut Ripley.

(Ladd) Women in jeopardy is lot more frightening than men in jeopardy, I think.

I said "Let's change the male lead to a female lead."

It was originally written for a male.

But we had an asterisk on the front - the title page - and it said

"Any of the roles can be changed so there could be two women

to give it a broader appeal."

So we really just had a secretary change "he" to "she"

and didn't do anything different.

That is how Ripley got to be a woman.

(narrator) Envisioning Alien as a small $4.5 million film,

Fox sent the script to Ridley Scott,

a prolific commercial director from England.

Scottie first feature film, a period piece entitled The Duellists,

had just been released and was earning great critical acclaim

for creating a striking visual style on a low budget.

I think I was the right director to do science fiction

because I didn't know much about it, and therefore I didn't believe in it.

But I was intrigued enough by the dynamics of the story,

of the script - the outrageous dynamics of the script -

to say "I think I can do something with this."

So I went home and sat at home for three weeks

and story boarded the whole film.

And then they saw the board

and saw the additions that I wanted to put into it,

figured that we couldn't afford it,

so, what they did is they presented the board to the studio

and we doubled the budget.

With Scott on board

and the budget now increased to $8.5 million,

the next challenge was casting.

For the pivotal role of Ripley,

the studio briefly considered hiring an established female star like Meryl Streep,

Katharine Ross or Geneviève Bujold.

But the recent release of 20th Century Fox's Star Wars

had proven that big names weren't always necessary to make big money.

Everyone thought the same strategy should also apply to Alien.

So the studio launched a massive search for an unknown actress to star in the film.

Eventually, the choice was narrowed down

to a young New York theater actress

whose mos! notable film experience had been a six-second walk-on

in Woody Allen's Annie Hall.

(Weaver) I had heard it was a science-fiction movie,

and I wasn't that interested, I have to say.

I didn't really wanna make movies.

I wanted to work with, like, Mike Nichols

and Woody Allen on movies, and that was about it.

So I almost didn't go the audition.

Luckily, I went over.

I was wearing these very high hooker boots, I remember, cos I really didn't...

I didn't think it mattered how tall I was.

Usually I tried to appear more petite.

Ironically, Sigourney Weaver had little in common

with the blue-collar character of Ripley.

The daughter of former NBC chief Pat Weaver,

Sigourney had grown up on the fashionable Upper East Side of New York City.

Needing to be convinced,

Fox executives ordered these rarely seen screen tests...

- (man) Ashen. » "which Ridley Scott filmed in London.

(Weaver) They decided to test me.

And Ridley Scott, who'd only done one film,

I think he felt like they were testing him as well.

- (man) One, take four, scene second part. - (man 2) And achoo.

(Weaver) So he built this whole incredible set for me.

I mean, it wasn't like I had to do it with a potted palm or anything.

It was this beautiful set that I ran through.

We did a couple of scenes.

(Hesse-ft) What's happening with those repairs?

They'll be finished in an hour.

Look, I need some relief.

Why did you wait until now'?

You keep staring out at that thing long enough

they'll be peeling you off the walls.

- We're the new... - I've seen it nap pen.

We're the new pioneers, Ripley.

We even get to have our own special diseases.

I'm tired of talking.

You waited too Mung.

Give it a try anyway.

(man) cm.

(Giler) Alan Ladd watched the screen test

and had all the secretaries in the building come down and watch ll,

and then everybody asked... They got into a big argument -

did she look more like Jane Fonda or Faye Dunaway -

and, you know, all the rest of this stuff.

And he just said "You can have her. She's in."

(narrator) With the leading role filled,

filming began on July the 5th, 1978, at Shepperton Studios outside London.

To round out the cast,

Scott assembled a team of established veteran actors,

including Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto,

Harry Dean Stanton, Veronica Cartwright and John Hurt.

But despite the breadth and experience of the cast,

Fox was still taking a gamble on Alien.

The film was still very much a B movie -

a B movie with a large budget,

an unproven director, and an unknown star.

As the crew of the mining ship Nostromo lies in hypersleep,

the peaceful silence aboard the ship is broken by a distress signal.

Within seconds, the ship's computer, nicknamed Mother, wakes the crew.

(man) Sixty-five, take six.

(man 2) Careful. Watch the wafting.

And cue John.

(man 3) Action, John.

(narrator) On top of all the technical and design issues

that Ridley Scott would have to face in putting together a production like Alien,

these early scenes presented the director with one of his biggest challenges -

working with a very independent ensemble of actors.

(Weaver) I don't think that Ridley quite knew what to do with us.

I would say that there were a lot of big personalities in the cast

and different acting styles.

- Still with us, Brett'? - Right.

- (Kane) I feel dead. - Anybody ever tell you you look dead?

(laughing)

(Weaver) We did not rehearse,

because he wasn't really sure how to get us to rehearse.

So we actually rehearsed a lot on film.

It was probably the most chaotic film I've ever done.

People were improvising all over the place,

and people were quite disconnected from each other,

which maybe worked for the movie.

(Parker) I think we ought to discuss the bonus situation.

Brett and I think we deserve full shares.

Mr Parker and I feel the bonus situation has never been equitable.

You get what you're contracted for, like everybody else.

(Skerritt) Ridley's one directorial comment that I recall was,

he was looking through the camera and he looked up

and he kind of winced his eyes, and he goes

"Interesting

That was his only directorial comment that I recall - 'Write-resting."

He was so visual that he sort of took refuge behind the camera.

He actually operated the camera, he and Derek Vanlint.

Mother's interrupted the course of our journey.

Why?

She's programmed to do that should certain conditions arise. They have.

(Ripley) Like what'?

It seems she has intercepted a transmission of unknown origin.

- She got us up to check it out. - A transmission? Out here'?

(Dallas) Yeah.

What kind of a transmission?

Acoustical beacon that repeats at intervals of 12 seconds.

- SOS'? - I don't know.

- Human? - Unknown.

These were really good actors.

And there wasn't really a lot of depth in any one of these characters as written.

It was just a matter of interacting with one another.

There is a clause which states "Any systematised transmission

indicating intelligent origin roust be investigated...”

- (Parker) I don't wanna hear it. - We don't know...

I wanna go home and party.

Will you just listen to the man?

People always used to complain that it was a little under-characterized,

which I absolutely 100 percent disagree with, because first of all:

what we were doing was a certain kind of film with a certain kind of dynamic.

Didn't wanna spend scenes on characters,

you know, talking about what it's like back home

and how much they miss the kids.

Money's safe. Let's take her down.

(Lambert) What the hell are we doing out here?

- That's not our system. - I know that

Ridley wanted that idea of truckers in space.

That we had been up there, and basically what we were, were truckers.

(man) Thirty-four, take three.

- (man 2) Turbulence. - (man 3) Turbulence.

- One kilometre on ascension - (man 4) And achoo.

(narrator) These scenes of the crew Sanding on the alien planet

were among the first shot for the film.

To make the spaceship and planet's surface appear larger,

Ridley Scott used a simple yet ingenious device: children.

Two of my sons - who were then 8 and 11 -

and another kid, we built three tiny spacesuits.

So when they come down on the elevator and get off,

I over cranked so they wouldn't look like children,

so they looked like big lumbering adults.

And so the set was twice the size, twice as big.

(narrator) The spacesuits, designed by famed science-fiction illustrator Moebius,

had a heavy, well-worn look,

fitting in with the more realistic truckers-in-space design

that Scott wanted to achieve.

(Cartwright) They must have weighed 75 pounds,

and we were supposed to have little air-conditioner things in there.

Well, they forgot to put the escape hole, so we were passing out like flies.

And when you've got all the stuff on you, you can't get it off.

You can't do anything cos of these hockey gloves.

I mean, it was very strenuous.

But there was an even more daunting design challenge than the spacesuits -

the alien planet itself.

For that, Scott turned to the man whose dark visions

had originally inspired Dan O'Bannon to write the script -

HR. Giger.

(Scott) I met with Dan O'Bannon, and he dug out Giger's books.

Said "What do you think of this?" I said "My God, that's it."

Scott was captivated by the disturbing images

that Giger himself had categorized as "bio mechanical an."

(Giger) Biomechanical art, yes.

That's an expression I used

for my first portfolio, which came out in '69.

They are a mixture - biological figures in mechanical environments

from the 19th century, a little bit.

After a creative meeting with Scott in Zurich,

Giger arrived in England in May of 1978

and was put in charge of designing everything that concerned the alien creature

and the planet environment.

For inspiration, Scott focused the artist on one particular painting

that had captivated him: Necronom IV.

(Scott) It was kind of an Egyptian panel of a creature

who looked part humanoid but definitely an alien.

I was just so knocked out by the whole elegance.

It was also a very disturbing image.

And we chose that style

for the alien's environment.

- (Dallas) Ash, can you see this'? - (Ash) I can.

(Shusett) Giger's work was sexual

and that's the most mild thing you could say about it.

The opening of the alien ship

looks like two giant vaginas on a 60-foot set.

We built that set. It wasn't a miniature.

Everyone goes "Oh, my God.'

(narrator) Turning Giger's sexually charged designs into three-dimensional realities

offered a unique challenge -

one that was made even more difficult by Giger's intense perfectionism.

Giger was very protective about his work:

and it was very difficult to persuade him to use anybody but himself.

We managed to get a sculptor cal led Peter Voysey,

and Voysey and he hit it off, so Giger trusted a lot of his stuff to Voysey.

So Giger then would do a drawing -

a big, big, big drawing with always an airbrush -

and Voysey would take the drawing and then go off to make it.

(narrator) One of the largest and most visually impressive sets

built for the production was the spaceship interior.

It contained what appeared to be the remains of a dead creature,

which the production crew referred to as "the space jockey."

Working from Giger's sketch,

the basic outline of the space jockey was constructed

using a supporting steel-and-wood frame,

then shaped using ribbed tubing and plaster.

The jockey himself was modeled out of clay,

while the larger components of his chair

were comprised of Styrofoam and plastic foam molds.

The jockeys chamber was simultaneously constructed

using a wide variety of available materials.

It was a mixture of Plasticine and real bones,

tubes, pipes, plaster cast, different things.

When everything was ready, the ZS-foot-high figure was moved

onto a giant turntable at the center of the set.

This allowed Scott to save time during shooting

by simply rotating the jockey to get different camera angles.

Once again, Scott's children stood in

to give the set an even more impressive scale.

- (Dallas) Can you see anything? - (Kane) I don't know... A cave.

(narrator) The walls of the jockey set were later used

as the walls of the alien egg chamber.

(Kane) The pit is completely enclosed.

It's full of leathery objects, like eggs or something.

Atmosphere was added with the help of some smoke and blue laser light,

borrowed from the rock band The Who.

In total, 130 eggs were molded out of plaster,

with one egg given a rubber top

that was designed to open with hydraulics.

(Scott) The egg, when it opens, is what the butchers call "Nottingham lace,"

cos it's the covering of cows' stomachs

I mean, you can't beat that. It looks like the real thing. It's biological.

And it just... There it is. It's real.

To complete the sequence in which the facehugger attaches itself

to Kane's face,

the filmmaker shot numerous takes of him peering into the open egg.

Then four additional shots were filmed.

Shot 1 showed 40 feet of pig intestine

being launched with a small explosive charge.

For Shot 2, an effects technician put a rubber facehugger glove on his hand,

wrapped it around a plastic dome placed in front of the camera lens,

and then quickly pulled it away.

Then the film was played in reverse.

This insert shot represents the interior of Kane's space helmet

as the creature's tube-like appendage is forced down his throat.

For the last shot, a facehugger model was attached to the actor's helmet

and numerous takes were done of him falling away from the egg.

Once edited, the sequence lasts a mere four seconds onscreen.

My God.

When Kane is brought back to the ship,

the facehugger and its ingenious physiology is revealed in more gruesome detail.

- What's it got down his throat? - (Ash) I suggest it's feeding him oxygen.

Paralyses him, puts him in a coma, then keeps him alive.

What the heH is that?

(O'Bannon) The whole thing was supposed to be about the sexual life cycle of an alien.

One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex.

Everybody is always all in a knot about sex.

I said "That's how I'm gonna attack the audience."

"I'm gonna attack them sexually."

"And I'm not gonna go after the women in the audience."

"I'm gonna attack the men."

"And I'm gonna put in every image I can think of

that I know will make the men in the audience cross their legs."

"Homosexual oral rape. Birth."

"The thing Pays its eggs down your throat." The whole number.

(narrator) While Giger supervised the production

of the full-sized alien-creature costume,

a sculptor named Roger Dicken was hired to modify Giger's initial facehugger design

and tum the concept into a reality.

The central part of the facehugger was sculpted in Plasticine.

Then a rubber mold was made.

Eight fingers were created from another mold

and then given aluminum joints so they could bend

and fit around the sides of the actor's face.

The tail was a flexible cord covered with loam and latex.

It was tightened around the actor's throat

by simply putting on an off-screen piano wire.

(Dallas) It's not coming off without tearing his face off with it.

But the facehugger also had an internal design component

that is revealed when the creature mysteriously removes itself from Kane.

Kane'? Dallas?

(screams)

(Dallas) Are you OK?

- (Ash) I didn't see it. Was it in the overhead? - It was up there somewhere.

- My God - (Dallas) Cover the damn thing, will you?

- It's alive. - That's a reflex achoo.

(Scott) We created a cup for the facehugger,

and from the fishmonger's, I ordered shellfish.

So when he turns it over to examine it, you're really staring at oysters and clams.

They were fresh, so it didn't stink.

(narrator) Perhaps the key sequence in the entire film is this one,

in which the crew celebrates Kane's recovery from the alien attack.

(O'Bannon) That's the big moment. That's the kicker.

It's laid its eggs inside of our guy: and it comes out through the chest.

I said "And I'm gonna have it happen at dinner."

"While they're all sitting around, it's gonna land right in the middle of the food."

Unlike the other phases of the alien's life cycle,

Giger had a difficult time conceptualizing the chest-bursting creature.

His first sketches looked like bloody turkeys

and were more comedic than terrifying.

Once again, Roger Dicken was brought in to help refine the design.

Using Plasticine, he constructed a sleeker, simpler creature

that could be manipulated with wires, an aluminum rod, and a hand grip.

It also featured arms that were eventually removed

at the request of Ridley Scott.

In order to ensure a surprised and terrified reaction from his actors,

Ridley Scott chose to prep the pivotal scene with only John Hurt present on the set.

We should've known something was gonna happen

because everyone was wearing raincoats on the set,

including Ron Shusett and Dan O'Bannon, who were the original writers,

who had come up with this chestburster concept,

and they were, like, over on the side: like, hee-hee-hee.

Like this, like it was Christmas or something.

They were very merry.

And I see Sigourney looks really scared.

I thought "Boy, she's really getting into character."

I said "Good, Sigourney, you're really up for this."

She said "No, I'm pretty scared."

"I know it's gonna happen live

because the cameras have cellophane over them."

"There's gonna be a lot of blood, isn't there?" I said: "Heh."

What's the matter? The food ain't that bad.

(Ripley) What's wrong?

(coughing)

This is serious.

Kane, what's wrong?

(Weaver) For us, it was almost as if it happened.

And John's work, too, the way he totally committed

and was, you know, in so much agony.

(screams)

It was like watching him be in a terrible accident

and then the creature coming out

(screams)

(Lambert sobbing)

(Lambert) Oh, God'.!

(Skerritt) I kind of suspected the way he was gonna do it.

What I didn't see, though,

was the intestines of a cow that were going to be coming out.

So that was fresh and delicious for me.

(screeches)

(Cartwright) Quite a shock, actually.

I mean, we were looking at this sort of gray penis. Can I say that'?

One seventy-five, take four.

(man) Leaning in, and turning, and action, and now.

(Shusett) And I remember Yaphet Kotto's wife telling me

for two weeks after that, he came home and he had the creeps.

- (Ash) Don't touch it! - (man 2) Two.

(Shusett) He would sit in a room for a couple of hours

before he'd talk to anybody.

(man 3) Cut it.

That was the moment they were so into this movie

that they were scared.

They knew this just wasn't some schlock movie.

This was gonna scare the hell out of anybody.

(Brett) This is just an ordinary prod, like a cat tie prod.

It shouldn't damage the bastard unless its skin is thinner than ours

But it will give him a little incentive.

Now we just have to find him.

(narrator) Deck by deck, the hunt for the alien begins aboard the Nostromo.

To design the interior of the ship,

Scott instructed concept artist Ron Cobb and production designer Michael Seymour

to come up with something that would be different

from anything seen in the science-fiction genre before.

(Scott) We wanted to keep away from Star Wars because Star Wars was so good,

and we wanted to keep away from 2001 because that was so good.

And so we had to create our own... Find our own formula.

And also, we were on a kind of limited budget.

(Cobb) It was kind of funny. It had an industrial look from a past age

Even at that time, we had transistors and touch screens and all that stuff,

but none of that in Alien.

We went back practically to vacuum tubes, you know,

so actually, it was very retro technology.

Ridley was always saying he wanted it to look like a World War ll submarine,

you know, with the low ceilings.

Also, the idea that it might look like a tramp steamer

and that it'd be sort of grimy, and it carries ore.

He had buyers go out and buy tons and tons of RAF surplus aircraft parts.

(Scott) We went out and bought two old Vulcan bombers,

and they just pulled them apart for parts.

So the corridors became lined with aircraft parts.

So the process was more sculptural

You would go out and see a big bunch of machinery out of a jet engine

and turn that into a column or a device that you'd put on the wall.

Hundreds of empty television cases sitting at the back of the stage,

and you'd wonder what that's for.

About a day later, you'd see them all stapled to the wall

as sort of vents and things,

just salvaged and turned upside down, painted this weird color,

and they add a hose and stick it on the wall.

And you'd get the benefit of all that machining,

you know, that you wouldn't have to duplicate in wood or Styrofoam,

and it looked so real.

(narrator) The Nostromo set was constructed as one interconnected piece,

allowing the actors to move easily from room to room.

(Cobb) You couldn't walk through a wall ever.

You would have to enter a real hatch and go down all the real corridors

to get to wherever you were shooting that day.

And you saw nothing of the stage.

You know, everywhere you looked you would see spacecraft, spacecraft.

And all the lighting was practical, inside the craft like you were on location.

So it felt like you were on a spaceship shooting a movie, you know

It's in this locker.

In where?

(Cobb) And it really helped the actors

because it was very claustrophobic, and it was also very isolating.

(hisses)

- Don't let him go! - (Parker) What the heH are you doing?

It's the cat

(Parker laughs)

Jonesy?

Here, Jonesy.

(narrator) The most frightening aspect of the film, however, was the alien monster itself.

(Brett) Here, kitty, kitty.

To maintain the maximum amount of tension,

Scott's plan was to reveal the creature only in short, shadowy glimpses.

(meowing)

First thing I wanted to see was something you didn't understand.

Come on, baby.

That's a kitty.

(Scott) So when Harry Dean Stanton goes after the cat,

I figured I'd just bring him in from upside down.

(hisses)

Which was basically just a tail coming down behind his back.

(Brett) Come on.

(Scott) Then the kind of jellified, almost like aspic forehead.

(growls)

Then he turns around. Then it comes up, you see the face.

(chuckles)

And then you knew you were in real trouble.

(screaming)

(narrator) Because the adult alien was based on HR. Giger's Necronom IV,

designing the creature was simple.

Bringing it to life, however, presented some unique challenges.

(Scott) We went through all sorts of weird things first,

where I got in some contortionists,

trying to make a shape that you couldn't understand

by combining three bodies.

Then the one underneath was always staggering all over the place,

so then we developed to two

So then we developed to a midget contortionist

with a normal guy underneath

so you didn't quite know what you were looking at.

And then I figured that wouldn't work because we couldn't get the head on.

As Ridley Scott pondered the problem

of who or what could convincingly play Giger's alien creature,

he went to a local pub and spotted a 7-foot-tall African design student

named Bolaji Badejo.

I said "Why don't you pop over to him, ask him if he wants to be in movies?"

And the guy thought we were joking,

and he then worked for the next six months as the alien.

Bolaji was perfectly suited for Giger's ambitious design,

and the artist was able to literally sculpt the alien creature

onto the young man's body.

(Giger) So they made a plaster cast of him.

This plaster cast we had from Bolaji

then was covered with Plasticine - just a fine skin -

and then I could just model the details in.

Once Giger's final model was completed, a rubber body suit was cast from it.

Then Carlo Rambaldi, famous for his work on King Kong

and Close Encounters of the Third Kind:

was brought in to animate the alien's head.

It was cast from soft polyurethane,

providing flexibility for the fleshy, moving parts of the alien's face.

Six stretched and shredded condoms doubled as tendons.

The lips could be curled to revealed vicious teeth

fashioned out of polished steel.

Oil was rubbed into the head to give ii a sweaty, reflective shine,

and the jaws were smeared with K-Y Jelly to give them a slimy appearance.

(Scott) I wanted it to be insect-like, like an ant, because if you examine an ant

under a microscope, they're kind of elegant you know,

and I wanted him to be very elegant and dangerous.

Am I dear? I wanna get outta here.

(beeping)

Move! Get out of there!

(over radio) ifs moving towards you.

Move, Dallas!

Move, Dallas! Get out!

No, the other way!

(screeches)

(narrator) With budget pressures coming from the Fox home office in Los Angeles,

cast and crew soon found themselves working six and even seven days a week.

The grueling schedule took a heavy toll on everyone.

It was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

I mean, just physically, it was exhausting.

Every day, you would get squirted down with your glycerin,

and you felt grubby all the time.

And it ended up being one of the hottest summers

they've ever had in England.

The Alien production team choked on the heavy incense smoke

fit to give the film its eerie, diffused atmosphere.

In some scenes,

the strobe lights were intense enough to cause nausea in the actors.

The discomfort - the wet, the heat, all of that -

was nothing compared to what these people were actually going through,

so it was sort of fun: I thought, like boot camp.

Despite the difficulties, the crew was capturing some amazing scenes,

including one memorable sequence

involving the Nostromo's chief science officer, Ash.

(Grunts)

(Parker) Gm her up.

Get her up, get her up.

It's a robot. Ash is a goddamn robot.

After the chestburster,

there was nothing we had that was as amazing,

but with that robot's head, we came close, and it was late in the movie.

It was like 20 minutes from the end.

I think you needed some moment like that - as amazing - to balance it out.

(Ripley) Ash, can you hear me?

And that was Giler's and Hill's idea. I credit them for that extra touch of brains.

It just took it to a new level.

(Ripley) Ash!

What was your special order?

You read it. I thought it was clear.

Bring back life form, priority one.

Ali other priorities rescinded.

The damn company. What about our lives, you"?

I repeat, all other priorities are rescinded.

(Ripley) How do we kill it?

(Ash) You can't.

The perfect organism.

Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.

You admire it.

I admire its purity.

Last word.

- What? - You have my sympathies.

We're gonna blow up the ship. We'll take our chances in the shuttle.

(narrator) It is Ripley's confrontation with Ash

that signals the pivotal change in her character.

(computerized voice over PA) The ship will detonate in T minus ten minutes.

(Weaver) She had to really take over,

and I fell that she was really sort of a young ensign type

who pretty much went by the book,

and that the movie was a journey

from her going from the book to pure instinct.

(Ripley) Where are you?

Get out of the way

(alien screeching)

I remember talking to Ian Holm. I said "Gosh."

I said "Do you think that she thinks what she's doing is right all the time?"

"Do you think she's that sure of herself?" He said "Yes."

And I said "You know, I think she's totally winging it all the time

and hopes no one can tell," which, of course, was what I was doing.

It was basically my first film,

and I was learning by the seat of my pants, and I guess so was Ripley.

(narrator) Finally, in October 1978, after four months of sweltering heat,

suffocating smoke, and physical exhaustion,

principal photography was completed on Alien.

The actors and most of the crew were sen! home.

But for Ridley Scott, the production was far from over.

The director had yet to film the special-effects sequences,

and there were still several months of editing and post production ahead.

Relocating to Bray Studios,

Ridley Scot! joined his special-effects crew,

who had spent the previous four months shooting the elaborate miniatures.

In fact, Scott scrapped most of the shots that had been filmed prior to his arrival.

I mean, if we start level, almost nose down, as she starts to hit the strata,

can you do that'?

They told him he couldn't put smoke in. There was no way he could do that.

Well, he did it. He did it fine.

And he reshot those, and then we redid a lot of them.

The Nostromo, which had been painted yellow,

was repainted dull gray.

Several pieces of the ship were also redesigned.

The miniature-builders found themselves on such a tight schedule

that they often used commercially available mode! kits

from local hobby shops.

We were raiding plastic kit parts,

and as can happen of course we'd go into a model shop

and the first mastic kit part there was Darth Vader's TIE fighter.

We'd buy 50 Darth Vader TIE fighters,

and we had the whole of the bottom of the refinery to cover.

And so we got a staple gun and were stapling on bits of TIE fighters.

This is how quick it was done.

(man) Take four. Ready and action.

Filming the miniatures was tedious work,

especially under Ridley Scott's meticulous watch.

Shots that lasted only seconds on-screen could take up to three days each to shoot.

(Giler) I would watch Ridley do this.

Camera moves one frame every two seconds or something like that.

And it was like watching, you know, dry-cleaning or something like that.

(man) Take one, A camera.

(man 2) All right, clear the shot. Thank you.

While Scott filmed at Bray Studios, his editors worked on the film.

(man) Cut it.

But when the first cut clocked in at well over two hours,

the director stepped in and began to make a series of strategic trims.

The edits heightened the tension

by keeping the alien's screen time to an absolute minimum.

(Ladd) That's why the alien isn't seen until one of the last shots of the movie.

You see parts of him, but you never see him

until he's exposed at the end.

(Ripley) Oh, my God.

When he came out of that position, it was extraordinary.

It was like seeing something coming out of a Chrysalis.

(screams)

(screeching)

(man) Get that hose out, Jonathan.

(narrator) But when Fox executives saw the film for the first time,

they were unhappy with whet they felt was an excessive degree of bloodshed.

(screaming)

The Fox executives saw it, and they were appalled.

It was just wall-to-wall gore and blood everywhere,

and, you know, it was almost pornographic.

Bret"!

(man) Take nine.

(Ladd) We asked Ridley to take out all the blood.

Under the Hitchcock theory, it's much more frightening

when you don't see the event, them doing the bloody thing.

(man) Action.

Another infamous deletion from the final version is this one -

when Ripley comes upon the chamber

where her fellow crew mates have been cocooned alive.

Dallas.

What did it do'?

Kill me.

What. .? What did it do?

Brett.

It just held it up,

and when the dynamic is really running, you just don't wanna do that.

It's important to know when it's good enough

and not just go on and on and on.

I'll get you out of here.

I'll get you up to the shuttle.

Kill me.

What can I do?

Kill me.

I felt sorry for him having to sit there all day with the maggots crawling on him.

We always had... We had so many maggots on the set.

It was just vile.

- (man) Ready, Derek? - (man 2) Hold it.

- I mean, wait till I move, okay? - (man 3) Yes, I will. Okay ready? Action.

It's just a matter of the job. You take the job, you do the job.

So it's not a matter of discomfort or anything else.

(narrator) Alien was new a sleek and suspenseful one hour and 56 minutes.

Yet despite the many trims, the film still received an R rating

from the Motion Picture Association of America.

Such a rating threatened to strip the movie of its most important audience -

teenaged science fiction and horror fans.

In an effort to brand Alien into America's collective social consciousness,

20th Century Fox began an impressive multimillion-dollar advertising campaign.

(Giler) This guy, Richard Greenberg: came over with the space letters,

with the, you know, "In space no one can hear you scream,"

with the egg, with everything.

We all took a look at this and thought "No, this is great. Done: settled."

When Alien premiered, audiences lined up around the block.

Critics lauded the film, caning it stylish and spellbinding.

Some reviewers claimed that Alien

had the horror and suspense of The Exorcist,

the epic quality of Star Wars

and a monster that made the shark in Jaws look like a goldfish.

Somebody once put it... They said Star Wars was the Beatles

and we were the Rolling Stones.

We were the nasty version. Heh, heh. I always liked that description

In spite of being hobbled by an R rating,

Alien grossed over $4.7 million in its first week of release.

It did a lot for my career.

They wanted me on all these magazines, and basically, I said "No, thanks."

I wasn't sure how I felt about being famous.

I hadn't really anticipated that I would be on the cover of Newsweek overnight.

I think, at the time, I was more of a control freak,

and I wasn't sure what that would do to my life.

Alien proved so popular

that Fox quickly launched a series of toys and other merchandise

aimed, ironically, at children and teenagers,

a target audience technically too young to see the movie.

One toy, however, would become infamous for its failure -

an 18-inch action figure of the Alien monster issued by Kenner Toys.

That toy was sold to children,

who hadn't seen the film: didn't understand what it was about.

Mothers were with them, going "You're not buying that, that's horrible."

So it didn't succeed.

Nevertheless, Alien earned the respect of the Hollywood film industry.

It was nominated for two Academy Awards -

one for best art direction and set decoration

and one for best visual effects,

which the Alien design team most deservedly won.

Alien went on to gross over $165 mil/ion worldwide

in its first theatrical release.

A sequel seemed inevitable.

But in June 1979,

Alan Ladd Jr. resigned his post as head of production at 20th Century Fox.

The future of Alien, for now, seemed in doubt.

(narrator) For four years, producers Walter Hill and David Giler

searched for the right person to bring Alien 2 to life.

Their search led them to a young Canadian writer director

named James Cameron.

Cameron had earlier worked

for Roger German's New World Entertainment.

There, he earned a reputation as a jack of all trades.

By 1983, Cameron had graduated from B movies to A-list films,

when he landed the-job writing Rambo: First Blood Part ll.

Another script, entitled The Terminator,

brought him to the attention of producer David Giler.

We had an idea for another project that was about a gladiator tn space,

and so we were talking to him about doing that.

He knew a lot about Alien - really, a lot.

Ridley Scott made this film that I think just stunned the world.

And I was one of the people who was stunned by it when I saw it.

And a few years later, when I was asked to write the second one,

I saw an opportunity to make a film like that.

Cameron worked out a treatment in just three days.

And while he preserved the main ingredients of the first film,

namely Ripley and the alien creature,

he took the concept in a new direction.

By setting the story on the alien planet,

Cameron could give his characters an arsenal of weapons.

He also released not one, but dozens of alien creatures.

The first one was the haunted house This one should be the roller coaster.

There was no point in trying to do the same kind of scary movie.

He had to do a different kind of scary movie.

Although Cameron's treatment was universally praised,

it gathered dust at 20th Century Fox -

that is, until August 1984,

when producer Lawrence Gordon took over as head of production.

Fox hired Cameron, fresh off the success of The Terminator,

to write and direct Alien 2, now simply dubbed Aliens.

But luring Sigourney Weaver back as Ripley

proved a task more difficult than first imagined.

In the years since Alien,

Sigourney Weaver's career had taken off with starring roles

in films like The Year of Living Dangerously and Ghostbusters.

To sign her, Fox now had to pay the actress $1 million,

a far cry from the $30,000 she had received for her performance in Alien.

It was a fantastic sort of tour-de-force part.

I liked Jim Cameron right away.

We had a very good dynamic working together.

He was very respectful of whatever I thought,

and Must thought his whole take on it was wonderful.

In July 1985, preproduction began at Pinewood Studios.

There, Cameron reunited the team that made his Terminator film so successful.

His wife, Gale Anne Hurd, would serve as producer,

and special-effects masters Stan Winston, Robert Skotak, and Dennis Skotak

would expand upon the original film's already impressive visuals.

But even these loyal supporters couldn't insulate Cameron

from problems with the British crew.

(Weaver) I think one of the things that was difficult for Jim

was that there was a big pro-Ridley feeling on the set

cos we were working in England,

and who was this upstart Canadian kid, you know?

And he arranged several showings of Terminator

so the crew could see, you know, I think how good he was,

and no one ever showed up.

Unfazed, Cameron pushed ahead. Cameras rolled in September 1985.

I only need to know one thing where they are.

- Go Vasquez. Kick ass. - (Vasquez) Anytime, anywhere.

Right. Right.

Are you finished?

I hope you're right. I really do.

The Marine ships and hardware were created

with the help of designer Ron Cobb, a veteran of the first film.

(Cobb) It was a Vietnam allegory.

There were a lot of references to Vietnam in the way everything looked

and the way people talked.

I sure wouldn't mind gettin' some more Arcturian poontang Remember?

- Yeah, Frost but your one was a male. - Doesn't matter when it's Arcturian

Jim and I brought each actor in and then sat there with felt-tip

and scribbled comments on their outfits,

you know, just the way the Vietnam soldiers did

Trust me

(narrator) Using the conventions of war films,

Cameron populated his production with likeable characters.

There was the soldier with false bravado.

How do I get out of this chickenshit outfit?

The soldier with a lot to prove.

(man) Have you ever been mistaken for a man'?

No. Have you?

The unseasoned officer.

How many drops is this for you, Lieutenant?

38.

Simulated.

And the quiet good guy.

We all kind of bonded, and, you know, there's something like...

When you're young and, you know, you're walking around

and everybody's got their pulse rifles and this armor on

and their helmets and their gear and their walkie-talkies,

and it's like being a kid -just a lot of fun.

Ready to get it on.

Go.

In an effort to humanize

and further develop the character of Ellen Ripley,

Cameron made her a mother.

Amanda Ripley-McClaren - married name, I guess - aged 66.

And that was at the time of her death.

I'm real sorry.

I promised her that I'd be home for her birthday.

Her 11th birthday.

Hey. Shh.

It's all right.

The director also gave Ripley a young companion

in the person of 10-year-old Newt -

(Ripley) Don't be afraid.

The sole survivor of the human colony.

It was a great pleasure, I think,

to play a woman achoo hero who has this other costs.

For Ripley to be able to think about someone else besides herself

and what's happened to her and everything was a great idea for the script

and a great joy for Ripley.

- Don't go. Please. - I'm gonna be right in the next room.

I'm not gonna leave you: Newt. I mean that.

You promise?

- I cross my heart. - And hope to die.

And hope to die.

(Henriksen) Sigourney took her over. That was really her child.

Wherever she was, Newt was. Wherever Newt was, she was.

And always looking out for her, and Jim was looking out for her too.

And achoo.

(Henriksen) She was this wonder-M real innocence on the set

They were so nice to me all the time. They would come over and play with me.

I had my table on the side, and Pd have clay and ..

It's kind of weird now, looking back and thinking

Sigourney Weaver was sitting next to me, making clay figures.

I had to do.. I had to go where my strengths were,

which was in character and action.

So I created this interesting hybrid of the suspense and horror of the first film

and the action I brought to it.

- Movement. - What's the position?

Talk to me, Hudson.

Multiple signals. They're closing.

Unh. Aah!

(Vasquez) Let's rock!

- Get them out of there! - (man) Shut up!

- Do it now! - Shut up!

(man 2) They're coming out of the goddamn walls!

(narrator) In Cameron's film, killing the aliens was easy.

(man 3) Eat this.

But killing dozens of them at a time wasn't.

Come on, you bastards!

Come on, you too. Oh, you want some of this?

- Aah! - Hudson?

Due to budget constraints,

the director had to portray the alien hordes using only 12 monster costumes.

(yelling)

But it is the film's depiction of the human characters

that makes Aliens more than just an exciting action film.

I want you to put this on.

- (Ripley) What's it for'? - It's a locator.

Then I can find you anywhere in the complex on this.

- Thanks. - It doesn't mean we're engaged or anything.

Just nice little, subtle little... You know, like "I like you, you like me."

"You know: maybe when we get rid of killing all these aliens, we'll get together."

But that was never meant to be, I guess.

Show me everything.

I can handle myself.

I noticed.

(narrator) Although Sigourney Weaver handled her firearms

with the steady hand of a pro,

the weapons made the real-life gun-control advocate

more than a little uncomfortable.

I had to do so much shooting. I had to shoot bullets.

And then also the flamethrower part of it, and then also a bazooka.

And that was hard for me.

I think there are other, shrewder ways of figuring things out.

Flamethrower, fine, but... You know?

Remember, short controlled bursts

Eight metres.

Can't be. That's inside the room.

It's readin' right. Look.

What the heH?

Oh, my God...

(yelling)

(Biehn) There were a lot of dangerous setups in that movie.

Run.

There was a lot of fire, a lot of gunfire. There was a lot of automatic weapons

Of course, Jim's always using full loads.

We really kind of had to be on our toes.

They would have, like, these stunt guys - real stunt guys -

and then dummies that I'd have to incinerate.

I look back and I think "Jeez: they trusted me so much," because...

I never got it wrong, thank God,

but what if I'd incinerated a real stunt person?

They all look the same.

(screams)

' (Newt) Ripley! ' (Ripley) Newt!

(narrator) For Carrie Henn, some of the stunts were downright fun.

In this scene, the young actress had to slide down a three-story air shaft.

(Henn) It took like a zillion takes to do it.

But it was cool cos there was a huge chute -

It had to have been two or three stones high -

and there was a huge mattress at the bottom.

So I kept wanting to mess up cos I kept wanting to go down the chute.

That was the coolest part.

(Newt screams)

Newt! No.

At the time: I didn't really realize how dangerous it was.

I actually did most of my stunts myself.

(screams)

(Cameron) Because the alien is so powerful,

because our weapons are SO useless against it,

because the differential in strength between a male and a female

is so inconsequential

compared to the differential in strength between the human and the alien,

it's the great leveler.

Men and women are on equal footing before the alien.

(narrator) Although the sinister and deadly alien eggs were featured in the first film,

one question was left for Cameron's script to resolve:

just who or what was laying those eggs.

The answer: the alien queen.

Like a queen bee,

she is both mother and ruler of a hive of worker and warrior aliens.

Based on HR. Giger's original design from the first film,

Cameron drew upon his special-effects experience

and designed the alien queen himself.

He came to Stan Winston's with these beautiful color renderings

that he himself had done of the queen alien.

While she looks like she is of the same family as the warrior alien

has a more elegant flow to her design,

and he extrapolated the lines of the alien

but expanded on them, made it more elegant and son of feminine,

which was a really brilliant move.

When built, the queen was 20 feet long and 12 fee! (all.

Her tail alone was nearly 10 feet long.

Working the suit required two men inside

while up to 16 puppeteers worked the muscle controls via wire.

(Giger) That was really great.

I like the queen. It's really great.

I thought "I mean, it can't..."

It would work out also without me very well.

The end result was a terrifying monster that even HR. Giger could appreciate.

And Ripley's explosive encounter with the alien queen

set up a climax that pushed the boundaries of special effects as never before.

(explosion)

The audience gets very wound up in an action sequence

where there's jeopardy to characters that they care about.

So you have to release that, so now you have to chill people out.

- You did OK. - I did?

Oh, yeah.

(Cameron) Then shock 'em again.

(grunting)

We wrapped cables around the upper and lower half of the body

so that as the cables were pulled, it would twist and throw.

(narrator) The android blood was made of milk and yogurt,

a sickening combination under the hot lights of a film set.

(Henriksen) I got sick as a dog the first day of shooting in that stuff,

and we had to keep going.

I was just dying.

You don't wanna hear the gory details, but I could barely, like, keep my head up.

In an effort to top his gripping planet-escape sequence,

Cameron staged the ultimate cinematic showdown:

Go. Move.

A battle to the death between Ripley and the alien queen.

No, here!

Here.

Cameron's eye for detail was crucial to successfully capturing the battle.

The director carefully story boarded the entire sequence?

Which required live action mixed with miniatures.

(Gillis) When we shot the scene with the full-scale queen alien,

we only shot maybe for two days, and that was for the entire sequence

And I remembered thinking "How's he gonna pull this together?"

"This is... There's just not enough stuff."

Get away from her, you bitch!

(snarling)

With James Cameron's careful planning and the work of puppeteer Doug Beswick,

the miniatures cut together flawlessly with the live-action footage.

Come on!

The fight between the power loader and the queen alien

is still, to me, one of the premier examples

of the effectiveness of editing miniatures intermixed with full-scale.

(screams)

(Ripley screams)

Ripley!

(grunting)

(screams)

(screaming)

(screeching)

(narrator) In January 1986, James Cameron began editing on Aliens.

But his first cut was thought to be too long by the film's executive producers.

Cameron began trimming.

He even deleted entire scenes,

including the sequence that referred to Ripley's daughter.

That was sort of the linchpin, to me, of my whole performance -

that she, you know, seeing this little girl:

doesn't really wanna get close again, be hurt again, but does anyway.

And we went to the premiere.

That whole thing had been cut out, and I was furious and so hurt

because, to me, that was whole point of the whole character,

was that she had this inside.

Another cutting-room casualty was this scene,

in which Newt's family has their first deadly encounter with the aliens.

What is it Dad?

I'm not sure.

Let's see if we can't get a closer look, maybe through that crack down the side.

- (mother) Shouldn't we call in'? - Let's wait till we know what to call it in as.

That's about as close as we can get. Shall we take a look inside?

- Bye. - (mother) Bye.

Timmy, they've been gone a Mung time.

It'll be OK, Newt. Dad knows what he's doing.

Mayday! This is Alpha Kilo Two Four Nine-r calling Hadley Control!

This is Alpha Kilo Two Four Niner. Alpha Kilo Two Four Niner calling Hadley...

(screams)

(narrator) Numerous other trims and deletions helped bring Aliens' total running time

to a lightning-paced two hours and 17 minutes.

Studio executives loved the film but felt that ii was still loo long.

They begged Cameron to make further cuts,

but this time the director held his ground,

insisting that any further edits would compromise his creative vision.

In the end, an agreement was reached.

The film would remain at its current running time

and Cameron would direct two more movies for the studio,

The Abyss and True Lies.

On July the 78th, 7986, Aliens premiered.

It was an immediate monster hit.

It was a different kind of reach on than Alien. It was more fun.

(whoops)

It wasn't the kind of deep terror that Alien provoked.

This was the roller-coaster ride

If a filmmaker sets out to make a terrifying experience:

to make the ultimate monster movie,

and people don't scream

or they don't jump when something happens,

then you've failed

So it certainly is with a sense of satisfaction that I watch people react.

(announcer) Aliens: This time, ifs war.

(narrator) Aliens grossed $10 miff ion on its opening weekend,

eventually grossing nearly $200 million worldwide.

The film was even nominated for seven Academy Awards,

including one for Sigourney Weaver as the year's best actress.

Not bad for a human.

Well, it was a big surprise to all of us.

And I'm still a bit surprised.

I really think it's to Jim's credit.

He wrote the role, and the role was a: you know, big, powerful role.

And I'm grateful to the Academy for putting it in

with all those other great performances.

So it was a great honor to squeak through and be nominated

You wanna know what I think my chances are'? Very slim.

(narrator) On Oscar night, Aliens claimed two awards -

one for best visual effects

and another for best sound-effects editing.

Alien was now a full-fledged franchise.

There were action figures, novelizations,

comic books, model kits and trading cards.

There was even a highly successful Alien vs. Predator comic book

and merchandising series.

Within weeks of Aliens' ref ease,

it was obvious to everyone another Alien sequel was inevitable.

The only questions that remained

were where, when, and how.

(narrator) During the four years that followed the release of Aliens,

20th Century Fox spent $13 miff ion on 10 different writers

in an effort to put a fresh spin on the Alien saga.

There was a script at one point

that had 20 power loaders fighting 20 queen aliens,

and that would have been a $200 million movie,

and it was just not doable.

Studio executives finally thought they had found the right idea

in a story by Vincent Ward and John Fasano.

Their script, set in a space monastery,

tried to recapture the claustrophobic terror of the first Alien film.

I think the alien attacked one of the monks

as he was sitting on the toilet or something -

sort of every person's nightmare if they're gonna think about Alien.

I thought it had a good setting.

The monastery-in-space thing was cool, I thought.

But white Fox had a script,

luring back Sigourney Weaver proved more difficult.

Following her success in Aliens,

Weaver had been nominated for two more Academy Awards -

one for her performance in Working Girl

and the other for her portrayal of naturalist Dian Fossey

in Gorillas in the Mist.

The actress now wanted more than money.

She wanted creative control.

Fox readily agreed and hired her as a co-producer of the film.

Production was scheduled to begin in October of 7 990 at Pinewood Studios,

with a $50 million budget

and with relative newcomer David Fincher hired to direct.

Fincher was known for crafting music videos

for stars like Paula Abdul,

Aerosmith and Madonna.

He had never before directed a feature film.

But even before one frame of film was exposed,

production problems began to surface.

(Giler) David and I and this writer went to London.

We got a draft of the script, and everybody said they weren't gonna do it.

By now, we were building sets,

and there had been a considerable amount of money invested in it.

The production essentially shutdown while the script was being finished,

so we were kind of there, you know?

What do we work on? What do we do, you know?

We can't lose the crew.

(narrator) With the crews still on the payroll,

producers Walter Hill and David Giler stepped in to rewrite the script.

(Weaver) The tricky thing about writing a character like Ripley

is that one of the first instincts

is to write her like some kind of butch gym instructor.

You know, "AH right, people, let's get out." You know, like that.

And she's really, I think, a lot cooler than that.

I knew with Walter Hill and David Giler

that they would just write a straight character.

(narrator) The new script changed the story's setting from a monastery

to a prison colony fitted with rapists and murderers.

The cast was rounded out with Charles Dance...

I think it might be better if I left.

...Pete Postlethwaite...

This was her idea.

...Charles S. Button...

Quick, easy and parolees.

...and Lance Henriksen.

Please? Trust me.

Although the characters of Newt and Hicks had escaped with Ripley

at the end of Aliens,

the filmmakers decided not to bring them back for the third movie.

I was incredibly disappointed and very hurt

and, you know, didn't understand why they needed to kill my character off.

I was really hurt by that.

One thing I actually loved about Fincher, you know,

was that he just killed everyone she was ever close to.

I mean, it was..

It was: I thought, very appropriate in an odd way.

(Giler) We just felt that Sigourney coming back by herself

was the most powerful image that we could have for 3.

- Where are the others'? - They didn't make it.

- What? - They didn't survive.

I have to get to the ship.

Gotta get to the ship.

- You're in no condition for that - Wanna get me some clothes,

or should I go like this?

Given the nature of our indigenous population, I would suggest clothes.

(narrator) As the production began to take shape,

it was obvious that Fincher was infusing his movie

with a visual style similar to that of the first film.

The prison, built from the original monastery sets,

was moody and claustrophobic.

Fincher's visual direction also included a startling new look for Ripley.

(Weaver) What I loved about what Fincher was doing

was that it was so utterly different from what the other two directors had done.

He said "Well, how do you feel about Dam?"

And I thought... You know, I thought "This guy's got guts."

How do you like your new haircut?

It's OK.

(Henriksen) She shaved her head: but she still looked feminine.

She still radiated this woman.

She's one of the people that can shave her head

and still have that nice effect.

(narrator) As in the first film, Alien 3 had only one alien on the loose,

but this time in an environment

in which there were no conventional weapons.

This is a maximum-security prison

and you have no weapons of any kind'?

The script called for the creature to gestate inside an animal

and mutate into a hybrid of its host.

The theory being that in the last film,

the creature was essentially a bipedal creature

because it gestated inside of a bipedal human.

Originally, the filmmakers planned for the alien to hatch from an ox.

For this, Fincher turned to HR. Giger

to create fresh concept drawings for the new monster.

The Alien 3, that was a big disaster because...

I don't know, really, what happened there,

but they made this certain thing, and then it was stopped.

And I only was engaged about a month.

Giger's designs were groundbreaking,

but producers felt they strayed too far from audiences' expectations.

Fincher next turned to Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.,

a special-effects house operated

by former Stan Winston employees Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr.

(man) Roll cameras. Go.

(Gillis) We shot it We built an ox.

We shot the scene of this creature coming out,

but I think he felt, ultimately,

that, you know, an ox is sort of a cumbersome animal

Fincher replaced the unwieldy ox with a rottweiler

so that the new monster could take on the canine is more vicious qualities.

What kind of animal would do this to a dog'?

(whimpering)

Initially, Gillie and Woodruff planned on building an alien suit onto a real animal.

(man) Yeah, how do you like that?

Ultimately, the canine-alien hybrid was played by a puppet.

So really what we were trying to do was to say

"Generally speaking, this is a four-legged alien."

"What would that look like if it was running on all fours?"

"How would it behave?"

- It's here! It got Clemens! - Stop this raving at once.

I'm telling you! It's here!

Aaron, get that foolish woman back to the infirmary.

(screaming)

- (man) What is that? - (man 2) Move it!

For close-ups of the adult alien,

it was Tom Woodruff Jr. himself who donned a rubber suit.

I've always wanted to be the guy in the monster suit.

(man) Action.

(Woodruff) Sigourney Weaver came up to me

during one of the shots and said "We should talk about this.”

"What is it that the alien's gonna be doing for this thing?"

It was more than just, you know,

"Where are you gonna be so I don't get hit by the taxi?"

She actually said "You gotta think of this as an acting thing."

And I really hadn't up till then, you know'?

It's a little bit of acting, but it's also getting to be a monster and all this cool stuff.

(narrator) As the story of Alien 3 unfolds,

the alien monster strikes from the shadows, killing everyone in its path.

(alien screeching)

Everyone except Ripley.

(screams)

(whimpering)

(Weaver) I find that such an amazing moment.

I think ifs the only Mme she's been that close

where, for some reason, she's not dead.

(narrator) Because the prisoners of Alien 3 have no weapons,

they must use themselves as bait

to lure the alien to a fiery death in the prison's blast furnace.

Come on! Come and get me, you fucker!

It's started.

With the help of computer animation and special effects,

Fincher was able to put a fresh spin

on the now-traditional alien-chase sequences.

There we go.

(man) A7 closed!

Over in the east wing. Door B7 safe!

The idea in 3 was that you were gonna be able to really see the alien.

And we wanted to have one where you could really see this thing.

Pour it!

(narrator) Eventually, the /one alien is trapped and killed.

But a new alien queen still lives inside Ripley.

What is it?

I think you've got one inside of you.

That's not possible.

We want to help.

What does that mean?

We're gonna take that out of you.

Let me help you.

What guarantee do I have,

once you've taken it out,

that you'll destroy it?

You have to trust me.

No.

(Bishop) Ripley!

Think of all we could learn from it.

It's the chance of a lifetime!

You must let me have it. It's a magnificent specimen.

I felt that it was important for Ripley to die in this movie.

This whole idea of death and self-sacrifice,

all of that made perfect sense in terms of the world of the film.

I knew that she would rather die

than cooperate with these bad people.

What are you doing?

No!

I don't know, for some reason, I felt it was a good thing to end it,

and great death scene.

(screeching)

(narrator) With Ripley de ad,

the future of the Alien franchise seemed in doubt.

But Fox's marketing department had more immediate concerns.

How do you market a film where the hero dies at the end?

Their answer was to make Alien 3 look like James Came-rods Aliens

in the film's promotional campaign.

The result was a series of trailers

for a film that audiences would never see.

(screams)

(announcer) The bitch is back.

No!

It's here!

(man) Run as fast as you can!

Ripley!

(announcer) Alien 3.

(narrator) At a final production cost of $50 million,

Alien 3 brought in a disappointing $55 million at the box office.

3 was not much liked in America. I think people were disappointed in it.

I don't know if it was too cold of a movie.

People walked out of that theater like "Oh, man." You know:

It was like... Probably like having a party at Attica.

(Gillie) From what I understand, however, in Europe and the U.K.,

the film was much more warmly received

because the people were interested

in some of the subtext that was going on there.

And I think over time, it has done quite well.

It ended up doing as well as the rest of them:

but it did it in different places.

(narrator) Although many fans criticized Alien 3 for its downbeat ending,

the film was rewarded for its unique style

with an Oscar nomination for best visual effects of 1993.

Concerned that the future

of their once-lucrative Alien franchise was in jeopardy,

Fox quickly began developing another Alien script.

But with Ellen Ripley dead, where else could the story go?

(narrator) In 1993, 20th Century Fox hired 29-year-old screenwriter Jess Whedon

to map out a fourth Alien movie.

The young writer had already made a name for himself

creating the hit film Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I wrote a treatment, and they said ”This is interesting."

"We'd like maybe to make this,

but you have to put Sigourney Weaver in it."

Because originally, she had been dead.

And so I wrote a completely new one: and that became the script.

In order to solve the dilemma created by Ellen Ripley's death in the previous film,

Whedon created a whole new character by bringing Ripley back as a clone.

I didn't expect to like it.

I expected really just to say "It's fine: go ahead and make a movie without me."

But I didn't realize I would be brought back from the dead against my will

and that they would've screwed it up

so that, in fact, I wasn't playing Ripley anymore,

I was playing some new and improved Ripley.

In addition to the promise offered by playing a new character,

Fox also lured Weaver with an $11 million paycheck

plus a percentage of the film's gross profits and co-producer credit.

Let me see the rehearsal.

French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet,

the man behind the critically acclaimed films Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children,

was hired even though he had never before helmed an English-language film.

He didn't really speak any English at all,

and I thought that would be tough: you know,

to make a movie in someone else's language.

But there was something about him and he loved the Alien series,

and so in the end, I thought it was a very good choice.

Winona Ryder was cast as mechanic Annalee Call

in hopes that her character might help lure a fresh, young audience into theaters.

Rounding out the cast were a team of established character actors,

including Ron Per/man, Dan He day a and Brad Dourif.

We weren't handed a script. Nobody got a script.

We got, you know, one of those shot-by-shot...

That has dialogue in it,

but you basically see drawings of the frames.

And that was strange.

- (man) Take two. - Action.

(narrator) When Alien Resurrection began shooting in November of 1996,

it became the first of the Alien movies

to be filmed at the 20th Century Fox studios in Los Angeles.

(man 2) Drop your weapons or I blow his head off!

The soul of the piece is her process of waking up,

finding out she's alive, and finding out who she is

and if she's what she was, and if hot, is she still strictly human?

And so that sort of ..

The whole movie revolved around Ripley's problem.

Ellen Ripley died 200 years ago.

You're mother.

I'm not her'?

(sighs)

- Who am I? - You're a thing, a construct.

They grew you in a lab.

And now they brought it out of you.

Not all the way out.

I felt that she should kind of be as if someone had put, you know,

like, super-octane gas inside of her.

(grunting)

(narrator) To show off Ripley's new found dexterity and strength,

Joss Whedon devised a scene

in which the genetic a fly engineered character confronts the smugglers.

(grunting)

The scene was to end with Ripley making a half-com shot

with her back to the basket -

a shot Sigourney Weaver wanted to make herself

without the aid of camera tricks and special effects.

Well, we try and we try and we try,

and there is just no way that this basketball

is gonna go anywhere near to in the basket.

After nearly a full day of shooting,

Jeunet told Weaver she had one more chance to make the shot.

You know, the crew just exploded with cheers and screams,

and to my absolute astonishment you know, I had gotten a basket.

You know, it was just swish.

Something of a predator, isn't she?

Yes, she continues to make us all very proud.

Jean-Pierre said "Well, yes, but you know, it left the frame for a second,

so no one will think you got the basket."

And I said "Yes, they will

because I'm gonna tell everybody lever meet that I got this basket."

(narrator) Of course, Ellen Ripley wasn't the only character in the film

to be affected by the genetic engineering.

The aliens are now more vicious and cunning than ever before.

(screeching)

What we wanted to do was to make the creature look more ferocious

and more aggressive.

We really sloped the forehead back and moved the chin forward

so they look more evil.

(roars)

We gave it the triple-jointed leg

but also a tail with a sort of blade-like structure to it

that would allow it to swim.

So we made a number of changes that: hopefully, you know, improved the look of it

without making it unrecognizable from the first film.

I heard you, like, ran into these things before.

That's right.

(Johner) So, like, what did you do?

I died.

(narrator) in one of the most disturbing sequences in the film,

Ripley confronts the horrors of her own cloning.

There, in front of her,

are the fatted efforts of the scientists to bring her back to life.

(Weaver) The clone situation was really amazing.

I love it when it can really get into science

and take, you know, the audience to places that we can only dream about.

Then I think it really works.

The clones were sculpted by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr.

from molds taken of Sigourney Weaver.

(Gillie) She was the one who wanted to put herself

into these positions as a clone

where she would just look absolutely horrible.

She has no problem getting down and dirty and slimy and grimy.

Kill me.

(crying)

(narrator) One of the most physically challenging moments in the movie

was the underwater sequence

for which a special 36-foot-deep tank was constructed.

(Gillie) Very complicated scene to shoot.

We must have been there for weeks.

There was always an issue of safety.

- You ready to get wet, partner? - Yeah.

(Weaver) Some people were able to stay down and have some air and keep going,

but I always had to come up.

So that was certainly, for me, the most frightening thing I'd ever done.

I mean, I've dealt with fire and explosives, and, you know, it's fine,

but the underwater thing was creepy.

(narrator) The sequence was especially frightening for Winona Ryder,

who had a dread fear of water after nearly drowning at age 12.

Although she spent weeks working on the underwater scenes

and training with divers, Ryder found the experience terrifying.

(man) Panic, panic. Cut, cut. Get 'em.

Safety divers were especially important for Tom Woodruff Jr.,

who had to perform underwater in the alien suit.

Remember, he's blind, so we have to help him in.

Unable to see through the cumbersome mask

and burdened by the heavy costume,

Woodruff could not surface even in an emergency.

Between shots, safety divers fed the actor air,

but during each take, he was on his own,

holding his breath for up to two minutes at a time.

- (man) We're still rolling. - During one take, he nearly drowned.

(Woodruff) And the shot's over, and Pm just in the dark, I'm just waiting.

I have my hand up, my safety signal

And I'm waiting and waiting. I'm thinking

"I know I can hold my breath. How long can I hold my breath?"

And I'm just thinking of all this stuff. I'm thinking "it's taking way too long."

And then, finally, the safety diver's there to put the mouthpiece in.

(narrator) Ultimately, Woodruff's creature was augmented by digital animation

courtesy of Blue Sky Studios.

Blue Sky's animators patterned the underwater alien's movements

on reference footage of sea Iguanas.

They wanted to create the impression

that the alien was propelling itself forward with its tail.

But as ingenious as the underwater alien was,

Jeunet's most notable contribution to the alien's onscreen evolution

was the sequence in which Ripley and her alien-queen counterpart

share the birth of the new alien child.

(screeching)

(roars)

Half human, half alien,

the mutant child is a fearsome and loathsome creature to behold.

(Weaver) I felt because they have this bond - sort of mother-child whatever -

that there would be this immense tenderness between them

that was also erotic, that was sort of in that questionable area.

Mostly tenderness, but because it was tenderness

it would seem, you know, like you couldn't get enough of each other,

I think the way you do feel about a baby.

The last thing she wanted

would be for this creature to fall into the wrong hands, to be...

Land on Earth and be put in some horrible place

and experimented with.

80, you know, in an odd way, she's doing it to save him.

(sizzling)

(screeching)

(screaming)

(narrator) With stunning visuals, a fresh script,

and two leading female stars,

Fox had high hopes for Alien Resurrection

I think it stands up. People on the street loved it.

It was so full of surprises

and kind of juicy characters and stuff.

The film earned $160 million worldwide,

a promising improvement over the third installment,

but disappointing enough

to call the future of the Alien franchise into question.

Since the premiere of the first Alien film in 1979,

the Alien franchise has grossed $600 million at the box office.

There's that equipoise between the great human forces

of the fear of going into the unknown

and the curiosity to see what's in there, what's around that corner:

what's in that shadow.

They are still scary.

I don't know, it touches some kind of, you know, visceral note.

(Weaver) I really have to thank Ridley Scott

for giving us that kind of gritty, real beginning.

I think he transformed the way we look at space completely.

And M's been a fantastic opportunity for me as an actor

to be able to come back to a role with more experience

and a different perspective and a different kind of hunger

It's been a good gig, you know. (laughs)

(narrator) The Alien saga fives on through home videos,

books, graphic novels and video games.

Studio executives even considered the possibility

of making an Alien vs. Predator movie.

(announcer) The deadliest creatures in the universe

will meet their match:

each other.

Fox is talking about making.

They wanna make Alien vs. Predator,

which, to me, is like Godzilla and Mothra or something.

(announcer) "Aliens vs. Predator" from Fox Interactive.

(narrator) The advent of digital video technology

has allowed the director's original vision to be examined,

evaluated...

Dallas?

Wand appreciated.

(screams)

But for the loyal fans of the Alien saga, four films just aren't enough.

They clamor for a fifth movie.

In February 2001,

rumors of Alien 5 hit the mainstream press

and quickly traveled the globe.

Suddenly, people will ask me about Alien 5.

They were quite delighted. I was a bit surprised.

But as always, developing the right storyline is key,

and nearly everyone involved in the series

seems to have their own ideas about where the franchise should go.

I think what was interesting that was touched on in Alien 4

was this idea of mixing of human and alien DNA.

(Weaver) There is something about it that feels a little unfinished to me

because I don't know which side was gonna Wm,

for instance, with Ripley.

I always felt that to really finish the series,

you'd have to go back to the planet from which the alien originated

and get rid of it at the source.

Who are you?

I'm the monster's mother.

(Woodruff) What draws the audience? I think it's Ripley.

I think it's Sigourney Weaver playing Ripley that brings people to see the films.

Get away from her, you bitch!

(snarls)

Is there more to be mined from the whole thing?

Probably there is.

And do I sometimes miss science fiction? I do.

You know, I love getting dirty and rolling around in slime

and stuff like that and...

80, you know, I said no like 50,000 times before:

and now I've sort of learned not to do that,

cos it is science fiction and anything can happen.

What happens now?

I don't know.

I'm a stranger here myself.

(narrator) Four films.

Four separate experiences in science fiction,

action-adventure and terror.

Alien conjures our worst nightmares

and preys on our deepest fears.

It burst upon the big screen and seized our imaginations.

And now it lurks in our living rooms,

always ready to strike again.

(man) Running dry. Ready'? And action.

- (man) Oh, yeah. - (Weaver) Okay, back on.

(laughter)