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Aliens

"Game over, man! Game over!"

James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) picks up 57 years after Ridley Scott’s original, with Ellen Ripley—Sigourney Weaver, in the performance that earned her an Academy Award nomination—waking from hypersleep to find the moon where the Nostromo crew encountered the alien now colonized by settlers who have gone silent. What follows is not another horror film but a combat movie: Ripley, a unit of Colonial Marines, and a corporate representative descend on the colony, and the xenomorphs are waiting in numbers. Written and directed by Cameron and produced by Gale Anne Hurd, the film stars Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Jenette Goldstein, Carrie Henn, and Mark Rolston. Andy Nelson and Pete Wright discuss Aliens on The Next Reel on TruStory FM as part of their Alien series.

The Genre Pivot

James Cameron‘s central insight when he took on the sequel was that you cannot make a horror film sequel to Alien and have it work. Drop a new group of people into the same situation and you get exactly what horror sequels are: diminishing returns. So he didn’t do that. He made a combat movie in the same universe—shifting from slow-burn dread to sustained combat tension—and that decision is the reason Aliens stands on its own as a film rather than just as a follow-up. Pete and Andy examine how Cameron arrived at that choice, how he pitched it, and how his background working with Roger Corman and then racing through three screenplays simultaneously—Aliens, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and The Terminator—shaped what he brought to the project.

Honoring the World Scott Built

Cameron was not just making a different kind of film—he was making it inside someone else’s universe, and he treated that responsibility seriously. Andy traces how Cameron studied Ridley Scott‘s shooting grammar down to specific lens choices: the long lenses, the foreground objects placed between the camera and the action, the sense of texture and industrial weight. Cameron applied those techniques deliberately to ensure that despite the 57-year time jump and the shift in genre, the two films feel like one continuous world. Pete frames this as the reason the pair works best watched back to back—the pacing, the production design, and the visual grammar across both films make for something closer to a six-act story than two separate movies.

The Marines and the Cast

Shooting at Pinewood Studios in London created a casting problem Cameron had not anticipated: British union rules required the production to work through every eligible local union member before importing talent. Cameron had set the standard that this needed to be an American military unit with American accents and American grizzled energy—and the British actors who came in, even those with convincing American accents, the casting director said, were too soft. The Americans who had been living in the UK long enough to hold union cards had also softened. The solution was to ship the cast over from the US. Pete and Andy walk through the ensemble: Bill Paxton’s Hudson, Michael Biehn’s Hicks, Lance Henriksen’s Bishop, Paul Reiser’s Burke, Jenette Goldstein’s Vasquez, Al Matthews’s Apone, and Carrie Henn’s Newt. They spend time on Henriksen in particular—Pete’s case for Bishop as the definitive android of the franchise, given how Cameron inverted the Ash dynamic by making the android’s trustworthiness the question rather than his threat.

Making the Xenomorphs Look Alien

The production had the budget for roughly 16 xenomorph suits—not a lot when you need to convey hundreds. The solution was casting: Cameron brought in dancers, acrobats, and gymnasts, performers who could move in ways that don’t read as human, and supplemented the suits with approximately ten articulated puppets that could crawl through corridors and across surfaces. The result is a film where the aliens genuinely move like insects rather than men in costumes. Andy identifies the moment that defines this—when Hicks sticks his head into the ceiling space with a flashlight and the camera finds dozens of xenomorphs moving in the dark, all of them wrong in a way that the original’s single alien could never be. The hosts also dig into the Alien Queen: Cameron’s addition to the mythology, the controversy it creates when set against a key piece of footage in the Alien director’s cut, and Andy’s on-the-spot theory for why the two can coexist—a theory Pete is genuinely uncertain was not just invented live on air.

The Director’s Cut and the Score

The theatrical cut of Aliens was shortened at studio insistence to maximize the number of daily screenings at a time when multiplexes were not yet everywhere and screen space was a genuine constraint. Cameron cut the film himself, which makes it his film either way—but what the director’s cut restores matters: the scene establishing Ripley’s daughter, which grounds her emotional bond with Newt; the automatic sentry gun sequence, which establishes the marines’ situation before their retreat; and the colony setup that gives the arrival its proper weight. Andy also breaks down James Horner’s score, written almost entirely without access to finished footage—Cameron was still shooting when Horner was composing—which meant the climax cues were essentially written blind. The score earned an Oscar nomination. The process left Horner convinced he would never work with Cameron again, until Cameron called for Titanic.

Key Discussion Points

  • Cameron’s writing sprint: he pitched Aliens to producer David Giler while The Terminator was still a spec script, then wrote three screenplays—Aliens, Rambo: First Blood Part II, and The Terminator—in roughly three months simultaneously
  • Pete’s “present vs. mystery” framing, drawn from a Damon Lindelof interview: Alien is a film that sears into you after you see it; Aliens works while you’re in it—”Chinese food,” Pete says, and immediately has to defend that
  • Paul Reiser’s Burke as the corporate villain—playing entirely against his comedic persona, and doing it well enough that Pete and Andy both note it as one of the film’s underappreciated pieces
  • The T-1000 sword/skull confusion: Pete and Andy’s extended back-and-forth on exactly who gets what through where in Terminator 2, featuring Jenette Goldstein in some capacity
  • Box office and awards: $18M budget against $183M worldwide gross; seven Oscar nominations including Best Actress for Sigourney Weaver—one of the first sci-fi/action leads nominated in that category
  • Andy saw Aliens before Alien—his stepmother was horrified—and still considers the original the stronger of the two films
  • “Queen Takes Bishop”—Andy’s favorite track title on James Horner’s score, and his argument that the climactic sequence it scores is exactly as good as the film that led up to it
  • Pete’s genuine uncertainty, stated on air, about whether Andy’s Queen theory was a real position or invented live on the spot to answer the question

Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we continue our Alien series on The Next Reel with James Cameron’s 1986 landmark. The Next Reel—when the movie ends, our conversation begins!

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*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*

Pete Wright:
You sound just like Kathleen Turner.

Andy Nelson:
Wow. That’s awesome. Let’s rock and roll. Let’s make it happen. Let’s make music.

Let’s make money. Oh, wait, we don’t make money. This show, that’s right.

Pete Wright:
We have a we serve a wait, either we have a different mission or we serve a higher purpose.

Andy Nelson:
That’s right.

Pete Wright:
That was good. Alright.

Andy Nelson:
Let’s start.

Pete Wright:
No. Well, that’s too late. Oh. Yeah. I’m I’m I’m I’m just Are we knee deep?

Well, we’re getting we’re we’re wading into the depths. That’s the truth. That’s the truth of it. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re not, you know, in bed.

You sound you sound good. You sound good.

Andy Nelson:
I sound good considering I’ve got an ear infection.

Pete Wright:
So maybe I don’t sound good. If you have an ear

Andy Nelson:
infection I only half hear you.

Pete Wright:
That’s right. Alright. Well, we’ve we’ve got a lot to well, I worry I don’t worry. I’m not really worried. Not the worrying type, but I am I am aware that tonight’s show could we will not finish the conversation that we’re gonna have tonight in the time that we will be having it.

And I’m just aware of that because that conversation could take days. So I think we just do with what we got. That’s the I’m gonna pre apologize to you that I know we’re not gonna finish.

Andy Nelson:
Oh.

Pete Wright:
Is that fair?

Andy Nelson:
That’s alright.

Pete Wright:
I think I the yeah. This is this is this is kind of a flagship. Tonight, we’re gonna be talking about Aliens. Z. Z.

Yes. Did I not pronounce that hard enough?

Andy Nelson:
I just wanted to emphasize it.

Pete Wright:
Aliens is are going to be talked about. And, But first, we need to talk about, you and your new identity. Where do people find you, Doctor. Nelson?

Andy Nelson:
At sodacreekfilm.com. They can find me there, they can find me at rashpixel, they can find me sodacreekfilm on Twitter, sodacreekfilm on Facebook, everywhere. Excellent. Soda Creek Film.

Pete Wright:
Excellent. And you should do that. Find the kindly Andy Nelson there, and you can find me PeteWright on Twitter, and at rashpixel.tv is probably the easiest way to track me down there on Twitter. Facebook too. Find me on Facebook.

We’re getting a lot of good links on the on Facebook related specifically to Aliens and the Aliens saga. And so we’ll share some of those. But first, we have a couple of trailers we wanna talk about. I think only I think this was a two trailer week.

Andy Nelson:
There were two Two more trailer, and then we should just mention that I finally did see the Avengers.

Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah. We should do you wanna do that first?

Andy Nelson:
Let’s do that first.

Pete Wright:
Do it. Tell me tell me where you stand on this movie.

Andy Nelson:
Well, I was I was very very happily I should say happily surprised. I guess, I was hoping it would be good, and so I kind of got what I went in expecting. So that was great. I thought they just like you said, they did a great job taking a story with a large group of characters that all needed story time, and they actually found a way to give them all story time, develop all their stories, and keep it not just focusing on one person, but they found a way to actually have a story about a team, which I thought was really impressive.

Pete Wright:
I’m glad to hear you say that. I think, you know, when I think about team movies, teams that are larger than four, you know, because I’m thinking specifically about, well, know, like Mission Impossible, that’s kind a teen That’s

Andy Nelson:
the one that comes to my mind, that for me, was a failure. Only because of that.

Pete Wright:
You’re talking about Mission Impossible one, or this whole series?

Andy Nelson:
Well, really, I think the whole series to me well, no, I think that they got back on track around three and ‘4. But one and two felt more just like any other James Bond or, you know, lone fighter. Mean, kind of reintroduced some team elements to it, guess, but it never felt like a team story.

Pete Wright:
No. It really didn’t. I don’t even think I mean, I really liked Ghost Protocol. I thought it was terrific, it didn’t it did not satisfy the team structure the way, I think, Avengers did, and I think it did exceptionally well.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. You’re right. I mean, I like the team itself that they had in Ghost Protocol.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. But it was still Ethan Hunt. I mean, that was his Right. His gig. Everybody else did what he said.

Andy Nelson:
Right. Right. I agree. Yeah. This was really a team effort, and it was all about them working together and dealing with each other, and it was great.

I’d be hard pressed to say which one was the central focus of the story.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think that’s I think that’s really it, and I think that’s a you know, I was talking I was actually talking to my dad about this today, and he said, you know, I mean, of course, they you know, because we were talking about all the kind of A list action and, you know, actors that were in this thing. And he said, well, of course, they’re all excited about it because they all have their own franchise out of this gig. Like, when you think about me now, you know, you think about Tony Stark and he’s got two movies and another one coming and Right. You know, are they gonna do a Black Widow movie?

I can only assume.

Andy Nelson:
They certainly could.

Pete Wright:
I would see it twice. You know, everybody’s got their own franchise out of this, and so of course, they’re all gonna come play nice. I mean, I didn’t get the feeling that any one of the sort of character performances was trying to outshine the other. So I’m I’m thrilled to hear you say you like this.

Andy Nelson:
The one thing that I, you know, I think was just for me, I wouldn’t even say it was a disappointment, but it just wasn’t exciting, was the aliens. The and I mentioned this to you earlier, but they just seemed kind of blah. It’s just like, oh, we need some massive force to come in and be the guys that get smashed. Let’s pick these bland aliens as the ones to do that. And that kind of left me a little, you know, disappointed, but I liked the big giant caterpillar, flying caterpillar things more than the little aliens on the jet jet skis or whatever.

Pete Wright:
You know, I think I think you’re alright. You know, that was one of those things I’ve been thinking about. I grant you, know, maybe the aliens could have used some more oomph, but really, you said it. I mean, the purpose they serve in the movie is not to be the scary alien force. They the purpose they serve in the movie is to beat a target Yeah.

To be smashed. I mean, that’s the that’s why they’re there. A lot of pixels on the screen to be destroyed because that’s what I wanna don’t wanna see scary aliens running. I wanna see explosions of aliens, and that’s don’t need them to be that exciting to be targets.

Andy Nelson:
Well, but, you know, there are ways to make it to have an ending with a bad guy where you feel because, you know, your good guys are only as strong as your bad guys.

Pete Wright:
Well, and Lokey, I think, was an exceptionally great bad guy for this

Andy Nelson:
Well, he was great, but I mean, one of the best parts of the movie is when Hulk When the Hulk, Pounds yeah, that was him, just puny god after Puny god, he smashed mean, that was great. I mean, that whole bit was great, but then Loki’s out of the picture until they come back, pick him up, and arrest him, and Alright. And that was it. And it’s like, okay. I could’ve used a little more excitement with the bad guys there.

But, you know, all in all, it was it was very fun, and I absolutely loved the Hulk. Just, they did such a great job with or Mark Ruffalo and Joss Whedon, all together, did such a great job with the Hulk.

Pete Wright:
No, you’re right. I hate this movie. That totally ruined it for me. I’m done. I’m done talking about it.

I hope they don’t make a sequel because

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. This was a waste.

Pete Wright:
Screw them. I wanna go see The Great Gatsby.

Andy Nelson:
Ah, there. Now we’re back. Now we’re talking trailers.

Pete Wright:
Segue, right?

Andy Nelson:
Wow. I guess that was a segue.

Pete Wright:
I hope they are planning a Great Gatsby two already. I wanna see

Andy Nelson:
I hope so too.

Pete Wright:
I wanna see the sequel.

Andy Nelson:
With what’s what’s his buddy’s name, Nick? Nick Caraway. Nick Caraway. He’ll have his own franchise.

Pete Wright:
He’s gonna be his own Oh my goodness. This is a fascinating movie. This is Baz Luhrman Baz Luhrmann next Baz Luhrmann film. I you know, I all of Baz Luhrmann’s films. I can’t mean, you think about Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge, give me more.

He did the what did he do? Strictly Ballroom. Strictly Ballroom. Right?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
I pretty much named the movie, and the I go through the exact same kind of emotional response to it.

Andy Nelson:
Did you see Australia? Yes. That was atrocious.

Pete Wright:
Yes. No. And then that’s that’s okay. Except for that movie. Except for that movie because the I had not thought about that.

I, you know, I’ve written that one off, but all of them, I go through the same emotional connections, which is, Baz Luhrmann’s doing another thing, and then it gets closer, and I think, I should really see this, and then I don’t see it because invariably, somebody who I consider to be a maudlin drama queen will come into my life and say, oh, you’re going to love XYZ movie if it’s Baz Luhrmann’s movie. And so I

Andy Nelson:
Was that me? Are you pretending that’s me?

Pete Wright:
No. But it very well could have been.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, it could be.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Could have been. Yeah. And then

Andy Nelson:
Oh my gosh. Love

Pete Wright:
Oh, Baz can do no wrong. And then I see it year sometimes years later, and I fall in love with it. Moulin Rouge is the one that really sticks out. I really love Moulin Rouge.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Do. Strictly ballroom, terrific. But you’re right, Australia was a tough one. That was a tough sit.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. It’s a shame.

Pete Wright:
It is a shame.

Andy Nelson:
Shame for a country that I am so in love with and

Pete Wright:
Yeah. And you would think he would be, have done better work with that too.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. No.

Pete Wright:
One one would think. But I really, wow, I’m intrigued by this. I don’t remember the hip hop baseline being quite as prevalent in the 1922 New New York, sort of Long Island set. I don’t remember that. It’s like they got all the flapper costumes and the fancy shiny clothes.

Andy Nelson:
Nor do I think that the vehicles could drive, like, 90 miles an hour down the road. I don’t think wrong.

Pete Wright:
This is I wanna say this is based on a comic strip, more than the Fitzgerald book, but, this should be an interesting interpretation of Gatsby played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Let’s see, who else is Toby McGuire. Toby McGuire, yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Think it’s going to be an interesting one. I’ll watch it. It comes out Christmas, so we’ve got some time to kill before it rolls around.

Pete Wright:
This will be an interesting one. So the trailer hit this week. The other one that hit this week is the new

Andy Nelson:
Skyfall teaser. Pound. Pound. 23.

Pete Wright:
What do we think about this?

Andy Nelson:
Well, it’s a teaser. It’s definitely a teaser. You don’t get a whole lot out of it at all. And you know, I didn’t even really get a sense as to what the story was without reading the little blurb that came on the Apple trailers page that said that, you know, they have to deal James and Em have to deal with something coming back from her past.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
That sure doesn’t pop up in the trailer.

Pete Wright:
No. You don’t get that either.

Andy Nelson:
No. I mean, looks fun, it’s got the fun James Bond lines, I’m looking forward to it.

Pete Wright:
Some men are coming to kill us. We’re going to kill them first. I mean, could I’m gonna say that all over the I wish I could use it in more context. Really, there’s one context.

Andy Nelson:
There’s really only one context that you can use that.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. So when I find some men who are coming to kill me and another party Mm-hmm. Then I can do that. But, anyway, so I’m no. I’m excited Or about

Andy Nelson:
you could be killing them with kindness.

Pete Wright:
I could. Or comedy. Mm-hmm.

Andy Nelson:
See? There’s more use You

Pete Wright:
know, this is a fairly it turns out this is a very fluid fairly fluid line. I could use this for more places. That’s good. Yep. So I’m excited about that.

That comes out that one actually comes out pretty soon. Right? That’s it is a 2012 film. This year, Yeah. At

Andy Nelson:
October. Is it? I can’t remember what it said at the end.

Pete Wright:
I’m looking at it. I can’t either. Anyway, so that looks good. I’m excited to see that one, and so I will. I will see that one.

I don’t know. We’re gonna have to start our series, you know, like we’re doing for Aliens, if if we’re gonna do that with Bond.

Andy Nelson:
Oh my goodness.

Pete Wright:
We may have to That’s great.

Andy Nelson:
That’s gonna take us Two year well, won’t take two years. It’ll take a half a year. Boy, I’m on It’s out of my my inner ear calculations. Apparently, that’s where my math skills reside. Two years, half a year, it’s all the same.

Pete Wright:
Do you, so, you know, one of the things that, that I’ve been I mean, we’ve got let’s see. Are there any other big movies in 2012 that you’re really excited about?

Andy Nelson:
Yes. There’s well, yeah. I mean, there’s Snow White and the Huntsman, which I think is gonna be a fantastic film.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Any that we haven’t talked about, though.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, that we haven’t talked about?

Pete Wright:
Any that are sticking around?

Andy Nelson:
Have we talked about The Bourne Legacy?

Pete Wright:
You know, we haven’t. I don’t know that we’ve talked about that one much. Am I’m very excited.

Andy Nelson:
I’m excited. Yeah. I’m very excited about that Jeremy

Pete Wright:
Renner of Hawkeye and Suddenly Everything Else fame.

Andy Nelson:
Yes. That’s

Pete Wright:
of those actors who’s just kinda shown up. But Ghost Protocol, this, Avengers God, he’s been in a lot of stuff all of a sudden.

Andy Nelson:
Hurt Locker.

Pete Wright:
Hurt Locker.

Andy Nelson:
Well, I mean, it all kinda stemmed

Pete Wright:
from Yeah. All comes off of Hurt Locker. So that’s that’s terrific. Men in Black three is coming out. Looks kinda funny.

Andy Nelson:
You know, Josh Josh Burrowman, I come don’t know if I saw the second one. I think I’m gonna have to see the second one before I don’t know if I should. I’ve heard bad

Pete Wright:
don’t things about the second need to see the second one. Jermaine Jermaine Clement is in it. I’m very excited about Jermaine. So that’ll be good. I don’t know much about Jack the Giant killer.

Ewan Ewan McGregor?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Is it

Pete Wright:
This is a Brian Brian Singer’s.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Yeah. So I don’t know much about this one. I’m excited about that one. I think it’s gonna be an interesting take on the Jack and the Beanstalk story.

Pete Wright:
What do you know about Dread?

Andy Nelson:
Nothing. Is that d r e a d? D r e d d. Okay. As in judge?

Pete Wright:
As in judge. And it’s it’s, you know, Carl Urban, is playing, I assume, Judge Dredd. It’s it’s in post, and it’s coming out this year. The

Andy Nelson:
Rob Schneider vehicle that came out in the late nineties was so perfect. Why why redo it?

Pete Wright:
I well, one one would think that. But, you know, they brought they’re doing Total Recall again. Maybe I mean, it’s Lena Headley Lena Headey, Carl Urban. You know, this is Karl Urban. I love his bones from Star Trek.

Star Trek is exciting me again because I had not made the connection that and now his name is I’m gonna have a terrible time. Some something Cumberbatch. What’s his name? Cumberbatch. Sherlock.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, I know.

Pete Wright:
Oh, man. I dig

Andy Nelson:
that guy.

Pete Wright:
I’m very excited about that. And let’s see. I think that’s it. I’m not terribly excited about Battleship, but it’s been promoted so much. I’ll have to see it.

But oh oh oh oh, there is one.

Andy Nelson:
Benedict.

Pete Wright:
Benedict Cumberbatch.

Andy Nelson:
Wait a minute.

Pete Wright:
Alright. That was good. Okay. Maybe I’m maybe I’m finished.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Alright. Let’s move on and talk about this stinking movie. Shall we?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. God. Let’s just get it over with. Okay.

Pete Wright:
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about all day about this movie that has really struck me. I texted you last night while I was watching it with my cat. And my cat and I were talking about an interesting thing. Because we were talking last week about Alien.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And how Did your cat feel the Jonesy connection going on too? Like like in Aliens?

Pete Wright:
No. Actually, she was really upset. She felt like Jonesy was as I posted on Facebook, Jonesy was a grotesquely underutilized asset in this film.

Andy Nelson:
That’s for

Pete Wright:
was a part that was really missing. What was interesting, talked about last week, talked about how Alien redefined certain elements of science fiction and horror fantasy kind of a thing. The And way that movie kind of is bookmarked in our own sort of personal timeline of watching movies. And this one strikes me that I don’t remember the theatrical release of this film. Like, it’s Really?

More than any other movie, this movie has been redefined for me by the director’s cut. Seen the director’s cut so many times that I have a hard time remembering what I saw in the theaters.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, sure, sure.

Pete Wright:
It’s this movie. The director’s cut, the two hours and forty five minutes director’s cut is When I think about a director’s cut, in the back of my mind, I’m always thinking, Well, Aliens was the first that mattered to me, that did anything really significant with the movie.

Andy Nelson:
And it may have been aside from Close Encounters, was an actual theatrical director’s cut that came out a few years later. But I don’t recall there being a whole lot of director’s cuts until after Aliens came out, and then subsequently, The Abyss, and Yeah. You know, I think.

Pete Wright:
Subsequently, John you know, what’s his name? Movies. What’s his name?

Andy Nelson:
James Cameron.

Pete Wright:
James Cameron. John Carmen. James Cameron’s movies. Like, he’s a he’s a dude you just

Andy Nelson:
German twin.

Pete Wright:
Yes, exactly. You just get the feeling that he’s never quite finished.

Andy Nelson:
Kinda like George. Although, at least with James Cameron, you know, to his credit, he this Aliens came out in a time when this was ’86. It came out when there were not these huge multiplexes everywhere. You know? I mean, I saw Aliens in a movie theater that had one screen.

Right?

Pete Wright:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
The biggest theater in town was, I think, I don’t think the sixth screen had opened yet, think it was still a three screen theater that was the biggest in town. So there was a much bigger fight for screen space back in those days and there was a much bigger battle going on with the studios themselves about running time because they needed, instead of having it on three or four screens like they do now, playing everywhere, they had to fight to have it on the one screen and have it playing as many times that day as they could. And so they were really, really adamant about getting movies released as two hours or under as much as possible. And so, they really fought to get it shorter and that’s why. And then, that’s why he was able later to release the Director’s Cut the way that he wanted it initially to be released, which they just wouldn’t let him do theatrically.

Pete Wright:
Alright. I’ll buy that. I don’t know if I’d like it.

Andy Nelson:
Well, it but it’s yeah, right. But it’s not like, you know, it’s not like he walked into it knowing that, you know, it’s not like Orson Welles having the film taken away from him

Pete Wright:
Yes.

Andy Nelson:
When he was doing something else, and having the whole thing just done on, you know, on their own. And him coming in and going, what’s this? This isn’t the movie that I made. Right. You know?

So it’s not it’s not that sort of thing. I mean, he still is the one who cut it down, and, you know, it’s it’s still his film.

Pete Wright:
It’s good. It’s good. Yeah. But, you know, you can kinda tell. He does this, and he says, oh, you know, if I can get away with this, maybe I could do Titanic in three d twenty years later.

And now we have Titanic in three d.

Andy Nelson:
There is that.

Pete Wright:
And that’s precedent not a that he set that led to Titanic in time. I’m just saying, this is a guy who maybe things have gotten a little out of hand. I’m thinking intervention.

Andy Nelson:
At least he hasn’t talked about Titanic two in three d. So there’s that, right?

Pete Wright:
If anybody could do Although he said, this was what he just came out, he said, I’ve shut down all other work on any properties that are outside of the Avatar universe. Did you read this?

Andy Nelson:
No, I didn’t, but

Pete Wright:
that’s He’s good to done. He’s done looking at anything that’s not involved with Avatar, somehow.

Andy Nelson:
Does that mean he was trying to work on True Lies two?

Pete Wright:
We should be so lucky. Okay.

Andy Nelson:
Or maybe it was a prequel. Was the true life prequel. Was how they met. No, really. I work in the computers.

Pete Wright:
Okay. So let’s talk about what you love about Aliens. Is it that How would you anchor a conversation about Aliens?

Andy Nelson:
Well, first off, Aliens, I very distinctly remember the theatrical release of this film. I had a something akin to like a big brother in Big Brothers Big Sisters type of person in my life. And I had the I went out, I saved my allowance, and I went and I bought the Aliens official movie magazine.

Pete Wright:
Right? Oh, told yeah. I’ve got all of my Star Wars movie magazines here.

Andy Nelson:
I am actually holding my pristine copy my Of the Aliens? Magazine for Aliens right now. I still have it to this day, I’ve never let it go. So I had this, and I read it, and I wasn’t allowed to see R rated movies yet, at this time. And so, I was, you know, 13 when this came out, and actually, I was probably still 12, because I think it came out, I don’t think it was summer when did this come out?

July 18, so I was still 12 years old. So I wasn’t allowed to watch it. However, I read my movie magazine, which has a novelized version of it across its pages, right? Sure. So I read it and I told my big brother, I convinced him because he’s 18, and I said, Hey, look, I already know the whole story.

I’ve read my magazine. I know everything that’s gonna happen and I know that the only swear word in it

Pete Wright:
Uh-h.

Andy Nelson:
Because my parents were a little sensitive about me watching movies with a lot of swear words. I know the only swear word in the whole thing is at the end when she says, Get away from her, you bitch. So I know that it’s totally fine for me to go watch. So don’t worry about asking, Mom, let’s go. I convinced him, I won out, and we went and saw it.

And of course, it was so completely there was so much more going on in the movie than was in my little novelized magazine version. And there’s obviously a lot more swearing going on than in my little magazine version. So Oh, dear. So it was a great experience for me. It was so great for that reason because it was everything and more that I wanted it to be.

And I just and I knew I shouldn’t have been watching it or, you know And I loved it, it was great. So I had a great first memory of this film. It was the only time I actually ever saw it in the theater, because I definitely wasn’t allowed to go watch it again.

Pete Wright:
Oh, yeah. In 1986, Andy Nelson became a man.

Andy Nelson:
That’s right. And then, yeah, and then, it was one of those VHS tapes that my buddy bought, and we burned through that as much as we could. Then, you know, by the time the director’s cut came out, I think that’s about when I had it on laserdisc, and I don’t think I’ve ever watched the original cut since.

Pete Wright:
But see, so that’s my point. Like, you know, I say that I don’t remember that theatrically. I remember going to the theater to see it, but I just don’t remember the movie. Yeah. This yeah.

No. I’m totally

Andy Nelson:
but I very specifically remember all the all the differences.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. That’s

Andy Nelson:
And I don’t know why I remember, but I do.

Pete Wright:
That’s like wasted cycles, man. Okay. So It’s like I’m Rain Man. Oh, that’s new.

Andy Nelson:
That’s new. That’s new. It’s like I’ve seen it, like, I don’t know, 50 times or whatever, and I’m still pointing out to myself, oh, yeah. That’s one of the new things. Oh, yeah.

That’s that’s one of the

Pete Wright:
It’s totally not new anymore.

Andy Nelson:
I know. It’s like, it’s been there

Pete Wright:
It’s for literally twenty years. It has been yeah. It has been it has been there longer than the movie was released in its original form.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, man.

Pete Wright:
Like, can you even get the original cut anymore? Like Yeah. If you were to order it somewhere, could you get it on Amazon or something?

Andy Nelson:
Well, the latest anthology that came out on Blu ray of the four films has the original cuts and the director’s cuts of all four films. Well, they don’t call them all director’s cuts, since David Fincher was not involved in the third. But, for all intents and purposes, they have extended cuts on Yeah.

Pete Wright:
We’ll see. Fascinating. Okay. Well, alright. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about because I well, I don’t know.

Do you have a direction? I sort of have a direction. This is a tough one to talk about. So this movie Well, let’s start at the beginning.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. Start it with the origins of the story. Because I think it’s interesting how it, you know, how it came about,

Pete Wright:
and then Are you’re talking about the actual dramatic storyline? Or the No. The writing of the script and everything. Yeah. That part is interesting.

So alright. So go for it. Talk about James Cameron. The young James Cameron.

Andy Nelson:
The young and, you know, kind of untested to that point.

Pete Wright:
James Yeah. I mean, he had just done Terminator. Well He was in the middle of doing of rapid

Andy Nelson:
actually Terminator. Started having meetings with David Giler about this movie, while The Terminator, as his spec script, was still kind of making its way around Hollywood. Right. And so, you know, James Cameron at the time was actually married to Gail Ann Heard, so he kind of had an in. But they had somebody at Fox had said, Oh, you should read this script, the Terminator, it’s pretty good.

Giler liked it, and he had a meeting with James Cameron, and they kind of talked about some ideas, nothing was really working. And then, Giler was just like, Well, you know, we’re thinking about maybe doing a sequel to Alien. And, you know, that was extremely exciting to James Cameron, even though he played it He like, oh, that’d be that’d be interesting. And so, they kind of batted around ideas, and he said that he’d go off and write it. Now, he was already I think he’d already done the Piranha two sequel, The Spawning.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
And he from that, and working with Roger Corman on something, he had gosh. Let’s see. He had a couple writing assignments that he was doing right then. Like, he was writing Rambo, First Blood Part two, and something else, I can’t remember. Oh, and the Terminator.

Well, he wasn’t doing it. He already had the Terminator. There’s something else that he was also writing. And then, he said that he would also write Aliens, and basically had like three months to get three scripts done, and he crammed them all out somehow.

Pete Wright:
Well, and it what I thought was interesting about that is that, you know, according to Gale Anne Hurd and David Giler, they or Gale Anne Hurd says that, you know, we they gave Cameron the opportunity to write the script and said, you know, we like what we’re seeing with Terminator, and, you know, we like where this is going, and we like your writing credits. If you keep this same kind of energy and Terminator is a success, yeah, you know, we might let you direct it.

Andy Nelson:
Right.

Pete Wright:
But according to Gale Anne Hurd said nobody at that time thought took that seriously. Like, we just we knew it was a carrot, and nobody took that seriously. So when he actually got the nod to direct this movie, everybody was still sort of surprised that had come.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. I think a lot of that was because, you know, it’s at the time, I mean, it’s the Terminator was a spec script, and they were they weren’t even sure if it would work. So

Pete Wright:
So he ends up or does that is that an important characterization that he the in just sort of how the script came to him? And I mean, what how does that how does that relate to you, do you think, the success of the movie? Like, his

Andy Nelson:
Well, I think here’s here’s what I think is important about it is because James Cameron was so taken by Alien, by Ridley Scott’s Alien when he saw it, and that entire universe. And he said to himself, he’s like, there’s no way that you can just write a sequel to this that’s just another horror movie that, that is going to be effective. You’re basically just dumping a new group of people into the same world, and it’s just like any other horror sequel that’s out there. It’s just going to be junk. And so he said, we have to do something new with it.

We have to do something different. We have to take those elements that worked, but we have to find a way to do something new and unique to make it its own amazing story. And so what he did, and I think it was very smart, and, you know, there’s always the battle between the rid you know, Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens as far as which is better, but he said, I am gonna from the horror universe, and I’m going to create a combat movie. I’m gonna create kind of a sci fi action movie instead. And that’s what he did, and that’s why I think it became a very standalone film and a very successful film on its own.

And that’s why I think the origin of the story is important, because of the direction that he chose to take it and the way that he decided to define that film.

Pete Wright:
I think you have a really good point and I think that’s why these movies work in particularly as a pair. We’ll talk next week about how subsequent films did and did not meet the bar that was set by these movies, but really you get the feeling, the way I find it fascinating, because Aliens picks up fifty seven years after the close of Alien. There are so many stylistic choices that were made in this movie and sort of tempo choices, pacing choices, structural choices, set design choices that make it feel just really perfectly advanced for fifty seven years. Right? Yeah.

I mean, she wakes up and yet, the most important point is that it feels like it’s you are you are really part of the exact same universe. When you watch these two movies side by side, like one after the other, I mean, you really could, with great fidelity, I think, just roll straight from one into the other and cut them together and end up with a great, very long single film experience that works really well together and ends up being, over the course of the two movie story arc, really well paced. Sort of a six act, seven act you know, screenplay structure, but it ends up being something that really works.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. You’re right. It’s they’re they’re great films and I think that’s James Cameron set a precedent when he began working on this film by being very specific in his paying homage and his respects to what Ridley Scott had done before and his and Ridley’s team of people. You know, he very specifically wanted it to look and feel just like the same world. He actually studied the shooting style that Ridley had and watched how, you know, like so much so, like what types of lenses was he using.

Like he saw that Ridley used a lot more long lens shots with a lot of, you know, things, foreground objects between, you know, or in front of the, what we’re watching. And so, that’s something that he hadn’t really done in his films, and so he wanted to pattern himself after that as much as possible. And I think that is a testament to how important it was to make sure that it did feel like it was completely part of the same universe.

Pete Wright:
You know, one of the things I think is really interesting that is a sort of a difference is how the film uses the mystery of the universe that we exist in, inside of. You know, in the first film, one of the things we talked about was the mystery surrounding sort of the prime alien, right? Not the horror alien, but the alien represented by the space jockey. And how, in the first half of the movie, there is if you’ve never seen it before, you think you’re going in this direction. Right?

You think you’re going in a direction that, you know, ultimately Ridley Scott knows he’s not taking you. The mystery itself ends up being kind of the MacGuffin. You think that this is going to be a film about stumbling across this alien spaceship, and what is this alien spaceship? And suddenly, you run into the eggs and there’s a facehugger. The big And the key point, and what I stumbled on was this video, this recent interview with Damon Lindelof from On the Verge with Joshua Topolski, and he said something that I think was really key.

Now Damon Lindelof is a credited co writer on Prometheus, and so this ends up being part and partial to the overall alien discussion. He says, What’s so fascinating about the use of mystery is that the resolution to those early questions is secondary to their own survival, like the character’s survival. Right. What Ridley Scott ends up doing is taking us down this path and showing us this story that ultimately we don’t need to care about, we can let go. That is not the same in Aliens, and I think that’s part of James Cameron’s choice to kind of be more upfront with the combat movie.

There is no mystery about setting, the gestalt of aliens, that we are left saying, oh my gosh, what are we going to fight about at the end of this movie? What is the big mystery that is not resolved? I mean, know how it’s going to be resolved. What is intense for us is the experience as we’re having it. And that’s in contrast to Alien.

What is intense for us ends up being how the film unfolds in our minds after we see it. That’s what makes Alien, I think, such a such a perfect film. Yeah. Whereas Aliens is such a present film. It’s you enjoy it while you’re in it.

Like, you know, Chinese food.

Andy Nelson:
But it’s great Chinese food.

Pete Wright:
No. It’s abs I’m I’m a major fan of Chinese food. Major fan. Is Chinese food that delivers to your house. It’s that good.

It’s it is I love Aliens. It is high on my list of movies we like. It works and that’s why I say it works so well as a partner to Alien in the way the stories are constructed. It’s just a different way to do it. I think it’s worth noting how Alien Alien, in so many ways, as horrific as the horror was,

Andy Nelson:
was

Pete Wright:
much more gentle about how the story unfolded, in my opinion. And I think Aliens, you know, I think was more traditionally paced.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, I agree. And I think that’s okay. I don’t think there’s any anything wrong with No. And I think but I think you’re right. I think it does create something about Alien that will always retain that mystery and that air about it that makes it such a unique film.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think that’s yeah.

Andy Nelson:
And Aliens, while, you know, I think it’s, you know, also just as close to a perfect film as you can get, it’s much more of just a genre specific film. And it’s like a perfect sci fi action film, know, in the vein of Predator or something like that. But it’s so well done. But you’re right, it doesn’t have that, you know, that general mystery about it that will that just makes it stick in your mind, like it hasn’t it doesn’t sear into your mind the way that alien does.

Pete Wright:
I think that’s it, and I think that’s I think that’s an, you know, maybe that’s a contextual point where we’re looking at, you know, Alien, which is crafted by, you know, you know, Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett and Ridley Scott, these guys who had already had, you know, significant careers in crafting story. And James Cameron was still pretty new, and, you know, his his role model was Roger Corman. And, you know, I it just reads to me as not quite as sophisticated a story structure when you compare it to Alien. That’s all. That’s my point.

Andy Nelson:
Sure. Sure.

Pete Wright:
I’m gonna belabor that some more. No, I’m not. I’m gonna stop talking. The

Andy Nelson:
great thing about the director’s cut, I think, is that at least it’s giving us a more depth to the story. Because a lot of the stuff that I think had been taken out was some of the maternal nurturing stuff that’s that Ripley felt. Like, she finds out that her daughter she gets that picture of her daughter from Burke, finds out her daughter’s been dead for years and died of old age while she was in hypersleep drifting across the universe. Those sorts of moments, I think, pepper the film with a lot more depth and heart than than the theatrical release had. And I think that’s what makes it a stronger film.

You’re right. It’s still not going to be kind of that same defining thing that Alien was. But it’s it’s it’s still is a

Pete Wright:
great That was the feeling that I got the first time I saw the director’s cut, was that it was one of those forehead, like, slapping moments, where you think, how how could he have let this bit go? Like this bit ends up being so important to Ripley’s character.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And to her connection to Newt and that whole relationship and why she

Pete Wright:
cares at all about Newt. People are like the entire colony has been decimated and she is putting it all on the line for this little girl and you see why this connection ends up being so important to her. Just that magnified importance. I think that’s a big deal. It also makes, I think, Carter Burke’s role even more sort of worthy of disdain when all of the secrets start to come out, and he ends up being I think Paul Reiser is a terrific performance from Paul Reiser.

Andy Nelson:
Gosh. I wish that he did more films like this.

Pete Wright:
I know. I know.

Andy Nelson:
I mean, I he’s a funny guy, but, man, it’s just so great seeing him in something like this.

Pete Wright:
It really I mean, he was it’s one of those keystone roles in the in the film, and it was just I thought it was just pitch perfect.

Andy Nelson:
Mm-hmm.

Pete Wright:
So okay. Do you wanna talk a little bit about casting and how that came together? Or do you wanna go somewhere else first?

Andy Nelson:
No. I think I think we let’s yeah. Let’s jump into casting. I think the first interesting note about the casting though is in this whole process of getting the script written and perfected and, you know, twentieth Century Fox ended up once there’s a changing of the guard there. And once they decided to start moving forward with it, which was several years later after he had done the Terminator and all that stuff.

They were kind of geared up and ready to go, and then they went and presented the script to Sigourney Weaver, and they’re like, hey. We’re gonna be shooting this in September. Are you interested in being on board? And she’s like, oh, I wish somebody had told me. Like, nobody had talked to her or told her that they were really gonna be moving forward with this.

And so she ended up I believe she from this film, she was the first actress because she kind of had them over the ringer, she was paid a million dollars for the role, and I think she was the first actress to be paid a million dollars

Pete Wright:
for believe that is her true. The way I understood it, she said, This is I want a million dollars, and they said, You’re insane, and went back to James Cameron and said, You know what? We really think you should go down the road of doing an alien script with no Ripley. Right. And he threatened to walk.

Yeah. And once once the sort of House of Cards starts to fall apart, you know, they probably could have ended up with a with a nice predator feeling kind of a film, but, you know, she ended up getting exactly what she wanted, as you say.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And thank the heavens that they decided to do that, because it’s I think it was so important to keep that story going, for these films to be successful.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think so too. And it ends up being an important film, an important contribution because of it. So that was that was Sigourney Weaver. She was This film really became about her, and I remember reading that she was surprised when she read the script and found that it was quite so much a Ripley script.

Andy Nelson:
And

Pete Wright:
I think that ends up being a good decision. The thing that I found interesting in looking at was Michael Bean and how he ended up in the film. He plays a principal character, Corporal Dwayne Hicks, but he was a replacement. It was originally supposed to be James Remar.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Who, you know, I think we know James Remar most recently as Dexter’s dad, but he’s been in a lot of stuff. He’s usually the grizzled police chief.

Andy Nelson:
Yep. Right. Right. Sex and the City.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. He’s

Andy Nelson:
in the Cotton Club forty eight hours. He’s been

Pete Wright:
in a

Andy Nelson:
lot of stuff.

Pete Wright:
He’s done a lot of voice over work, animated voice over work. But this was an interesting one, that he was originally supposed to do that and was ousted.

Andy Nelson:
I don’t think he was ousted. He walked.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Artistic differences between James Cameron. I mean, I think, So you they bring Michael Bean in, who was originally not supposed to be cast, but knew Cameron from Terminator, and ended up walking flying out on a Friday to start shooting on a Monday. Skip Yeah. All of the pre kind of the pre drill training that the marines went through, for weeks and weeks and just walked in to shoot.

Right. Ends up being, you know I don’t know. I would would you say which how would you compare his, you know, grizzled, male hero roles between this and, Terminator? Well, What I do remember him for more?

Andy Nelson:
Oh, boy. That’s tricky. I think they’re both so important. I think I think I remember him more for this film. You know, I don’t know.

That’s an interesting question. They’re both such different characters, but I feel like I remember him more for this one, just because Aliens stands out in my head more than the Terminator. I saw it at a younger age.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. So Yeah. I know. I’m I mean, I asked that question because it’s a loaded question.

I think this is ends up being, kind of pivotal for his his career, certainly. And I think he’s I this is where I remember him from, sir. Yeah. The rest of the marines well,

Andy Nelson:
who would you like to Jenette Goldstein. Right. I you know, I’ll just throw throw her out there, mainly because she’s kind of a James Cameron regular. She’s appeared in, I think, all of his films except for Avatar, if I recall. She and the funny thing about her is she’s not Hispanic, but she played Vasquez in Aliens, and Right.

And had kind of a tan. But, she’s the Irish mother with the children in Titanic.

Pete Wright:
Right.

Andy Nelson:
And so it just always strikes me that’s that’s very funny, that she is kind of

Pete Wright:
And she gets a doesn’t she get a sword through her skull? The t 1,000 sword through her skull in Terminator two?

Andy Nelson:
Nope. She has the sword. Oh. And she puts the sword through her husband’s

Pete Wright:
That’s that’s what it is.

Andy Nelson:
That’s what it is.

Pete Wright:
There’s something about a sword and a skull. Yes. The sword and a skull.

Andy Nelson:
She’s already been killed by the t one. Right.

Pete Wright:
So, Carrie Henn well, you know what’s interesting about this about the casting of this film is that because they shot it at Pinewood Studios in, in, London. Right. And I had not thought about this, that in order to make this movie, they had to go to great lengths to satisfy union regulations to find, to go through every British union member who could possibly be in this film. And because Cameron had set the standard that it needs to be an American American American military organization. Right?

He wanted the American accents, American English accents, he wanted all of that sort of grizzled feel. You know, the casting director, whose name escapes me all of a sudden, but she, you know, she said it was grueling to do that because all the British, know, even the British actors who came in to test for the part who had convincing, passable American accents, She said they were too soft. And even Americans who had been living and gotten their union cards, British union cards, to come in and act, you know, as a local, They were Americans and they had grown too soft.

Andy Nelson:
So funny.

Pete Wright:
And so they ended up starting to ship people over from The US. That’s how they got around the regulations. I hadn’t made that connection that would be a flaming hoop that they would need to jump through, is to go through the process of getting through all the British actors. Especially when you have guys like Bill Paxton and Paul Reiser and Lance Henriksen.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Well, we should probably go ahead.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, yeah. No. It’s just it’s interesting that he that he chose that. I mean, I can see why why he did, and I, you know, I mean, it’s hard to picture anyone else in this film because I think they all work so well. But it’s it is interesting that he went through such a rigmarole to make sure that he cast it with just Americans.

Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm. So, Lance Henriksen.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, yeah.

Pete Wright:
First of all, talk talk a little bit about your impression of the android roles in this movie, in these two movies.

Andy Nelson:
Well, it’s it’s great the way that they played them off of each other. And I think that was, you know, to James Cameron’s screenwriting smarts that he chose to keep an android in the story even but allow us to know about it from the from the start so that we were kind of skeptical as to whether he would be just working for the company. And the fact that he ends up really kind of helping all the way through to the end, I thought it was just it was great. It’s a nice way to kind of keep that element of the story going. It’s You know?

They continue through well, I guess there aren’t any androids in the third one, but there is in the fourth. So it’s something that they keep going with.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. The fourth is an interesting playoff of that. I look forward to talking to that one, and it’s but it’s even more interesting in Prometheus, where it looks like we see, some of the universe. That’s one of the areas where the universe sort of universes sort of collide here. Mm-hmm.

Right. Is looking at the, kind of the kickoff of the android revolution.

Andy Nelson:
Right. Right. Which will be very interesting to see. I’m excited. Right.

Pete Wright:
Lance Henriksen ends up being and no disrespect to Ian Holm, But I think Lance Henriksen is really the definitive android in the series. I mean, that guy

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Is he just crushed it. He was

Andy Nelson:
He’s great.

Pete Wright:
He was the he so brilliantly captured the blend of just sort of ego free intelligence

Andy Nelson:
Mm-hmm.

Pete Wright:
And 12 year old pride.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
You know, it was that space between, you know, I can I’m gonna I’ll be your trained monkey. I’ll do the knife trick. Mm-hmm. But, you know, I really would rather you not call me a, you know, an android or robot, but rather an artificial Synthetic. Or synthetic human.

Andy Nelson:
Right. So And I take it back. There is an android in the third movie, and it’s Lance Henriksen again. It’s another one of him.

Pete Wright:
So yeah. Well, I’m not gonna lie to you. I this is one of those where I need I’m I desperately need to see Alien three again. That’s not one of those movies that I put in very often. I didn’t actually remember that there was an Alien three.

Andy Nelson:
Well, we’ll have to discuss our plans for that after this Right. Okay. Yeah. But Lance Henriksen, he’s fantastic. He’s Carrie Henn, we mentioned her.

Right. She was I mean, I think it was, you know, other than somebody who’d done some commercials, her first film, and as far as I know, one of her only ones.

Pete Wright:
Yes. Yeah. Her brother was in it and cut.

Andy Nelson:
Well, he’s in the director’s cut.

Pete Wright:
He’s in the director’s cut. Yeah. Right.

Andy Nelson:
Her brother plays her brother.

Pete Wright:
Right. Yeah. Lucky lucky find. Bill Paxton.

Andy Nelson:
Game over, man. That is one of the defining lines in cinema history. You know, that line, I think, goes down with so many great movie lines that are just in fact, I think that’s almost more quotable than so many other movie lines. Like, Frankly My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn, that is a fantastic movie line. You don’t hear quoted that often, but Game Over Man, I hear quoted probably more than any other movie line because you could reference it in so many different ways.

Pete Wright:
But it’s the way he says it. It’s

Andy Nelson:
just And that’s what makes it a great line, is because Bill Paxton as Hudson, man, the way that he delivered that line, the way he played the character, spot on perfect.

Pete Wright:
The you know, what I was surprised in terms of his his quotability, it’s peppered throughout the film. I remembered Game Over Man and that whole bit, but, you know

Andy Nelson:
I don’t know if you’ve been keeping score, but we’ve been getting our asses kicked.

Pete Wright:
Like that just sort of whiny tone, just it comes every time he speaks. Once they get into it, every time he speaks, there’s something worth quoting. He’s great. Do you think this role did this did this role damage your impression of him in other parts that he’s played since?

Andy Nelson:
No. I don’t think so. Because I don’t think like, I don’t think when I watch something like Apollo 13, I don’t go, gosh. All I see is Hudson. You know, I like, that doesn’t happen to me.

Pete Wright:
See, the thing is, he had just come off a weird science where he was also that same sort of character. Yeah. And then he does Aliens, and then he’s, you know, Apollo 13, Twister, Titanic, True Lies. But I still, to this day, have trouble taking him seriously. I really do.

I think he’s one of the actors that I just really, when I see him trying to speak normally I see, listen to me talk about it. Think he’s trying to speak normally because he’s he played that he played Hudson so convincingly. Yeah. So a testament to his role here, and I’m sorry, Billy.

Andy Nelson:
You did too good a should see him in Near Dark, because he’s great in that.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I’ve forgotten about Near Dark, that’s right.

Andy Nelson:
And A Simple Plan. I thought he was great in A Simple Plan. And Frailty. Did you see Frailty?

Pete Wright:
Wow.

Andy Nelson:
Him and Matthew McConaughey and No.

Pete Wright:
I didn’t think that saw I didn’t actually see Frailty.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, we should put that on our list.

Pete Wright:
Really?

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. It’s a great movie. It’s surprisingly a great movie. Really, really kind of a creepy little film.

Pete Wright:
Yep. Okay. Alright. Alright. I’ll see that.

He’s anyway, I think he did he did a terrific job in this movie, it makes it he’s sort of the masthead, I think, of the film, the character the character masthead of the film that is one of the most memorable pieces. Obviously, we talked about Paul Reiser. What a terrific job he did. You know, Mark Rolston, was, you know, marine in the first, part of the film. I just think he’s an interesting guy to look at.

Andy Nelson:
He is.

Pete Wright:
He’s just this tall

Andy Nelson:
Mean. Mean. Why does he look mean?

Pete Wright:
He looks mean. And he

Andy Nelson:
looks he looks like somebody who who would regularly have a big thing of acid Yes. Into his skin. Doesn’t he like look like that sort of mean guy?

Pete Wright:
Yes. Exactly. And But you know what I think is so interesting about the relationship between Mark Rolston’s character and Jenette Goldstein’s character is that she still Vasquez still sort of feels like she has him as subservient to her, and I think that’s a they play that really well. And they are the two smart gunners. And you know, the tallest guy in the unit and the shortest woman in the unit both have the biggest weapons.

Think that was a great play and it adds some interesting character to the unit, personality of the unit.

Andy Nelson:
Right.

Pete Wright:
But we need to talk about the alien, and how the aliens changed from that movie to this movie.

Andy Nelson:
Lot of thought went into it, and I’m glad it did because they really wanted these aliens to not just look like people running around in costumes. We were gonna be saying seeing so many of them that they had to do something to make them look unique. And so, yeah, so they cast a lot of, like, dancers and acrobats and gymnasts and people who could really move in interesting ways to play these aliens. And I think they only had the budget to make, I wanna say, like, 16 of the costumes. Not a lot.

Right. And those costume unique ways. And aside from that, they also did a lot with puppets. They had about 10 different articulated puppets that they could move through hallways and things and have them creeping around on walls in ways that really were not things that looked human. And I think that’s the biggest strength with this film.

And I’ll tell you the one the one of the two weaknesses I always have a problem with still in Alien is the one moment when the alien reaches out to Dallas, when it’s about to get Dallas, and it just looks like a man going boo. You know? Moment?

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I do.

Andy Nelson:
And then the other problem is always the android head when it’s not Ian Holm. Right. But they real they worked so hard on this film to make the aliens always look real. And the moment for me that always defines it is when they realize that the aliens are in the ceiling. Mm-hmm.

And Hicks sticks his head up and looks in the with his light, with his flashlight, and you see all these aliens, like, they’re all moving in these creepy ways coming toward him. And for me, that just defines these aliens in this film.

Pete Wright:
Oh, just the way they’re hanging on the ceiling.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, just the way they move. It just it looks like insects. It doesn’t look like people.

Pete Wright:
Well, and I think that’s a that’s the that was the big change for me. Like, when you when you see how they how, you know, the Ridley Scott alien sort of evolved over fifty seven years, right? You know, I got the feeling that the thought that they put into the single alien versus the hive of aliens, really is that insect mentality, and you get to see how the behavior of the alien changes when it is kind of in the context of other aliens. Yeah. And I really like that.

I really like the way the way the film moved through time like that with this with this sort of singular character.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. And that’s not even mentioning the queen Right. Which, you know, we haven’t even talked about here, but that was a huge addition that James Cameron brought into this, knowing that he had to do something new, not just the same thing that people had seen, but we needed to get a chance to see something unique in this film as well.

Pete Wright:
Alright. Where do you stand on the Queen controversy?

Andy Nelson:
Is there a controversy?

Pete Wright:
Well, think there is kind of a controversy, particularly in the context of the of Alien and the way Alien ended, the director’s cut of Alien.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, you’re talking about the eggs?

Pete Wright:
Yeah, the eggs and the sort of metamorphosis process, right? Like, there was some you know, when I was looking at the at the pre Aliens reporting on Alien. Right? When you go back and you look at what people had written and the videos, the old videos that you can find on YouTube where you know, Ridley Scott and team are talking about, you know, what is going on at the end of Alien, and there is this sort of sense that, well, you know, when they when they when they cocoon people, they are somehow, you know, changing into, you know, some part of the alien gestation process. And that there wasn’t really a need for a queen, or in fact that when James Cameron went and put the queen in Aliens, you end up with a conflict or at least some sort of kind of dramatic dissonance.

Why do they need a queen when the alien, this perfect this perfect creature specimen, can already reproduce without it. That was that was part of the controversy. It sounds like you stand, you don’t even care. You don’t didn’t even I know.

Andy Nelson:
No. And here’s here’s my take. I am of the mind that, as has been proven in, in, you know, science and history with animals.

Pete Wright:
Oh, good. This is you’re gonna bring in science to the show. I’m bringing Science in and history.

Andy Nelson:
That’s right. That’s right. Oh, man. That there are instances where if a species does not have any other of its kind to mate with, that it will it has like, somehow built into its system, a way that basically allows it to reproduce with itself, or kind of create another of itself. Right?

Pete Wright:
I don’t know.

Andy Nelson:
From learned all Jurassic Park when the dinosaur got pregnant.

Pete Wright:
Life finds a way, man. Life finds Exactly. A

Andy Nelson:
Life finds a way. So my philosophy is We

Pete Wright:
are so sunk. Like, this is like, why would go ahead.

Andy Nelson:
This is good stuff. This is good stuff. Share me your philosophy. The aliens naturally come from these, you know, this reproductive cycle that we’ve seen, and it all starts with these eggs that are laid by the queen. Right?

However, if an alien gets to a place where it is separated from its colony, the only way that it has to reproduce is by using this thing that’s deep within its genetic core of creating another egg out of its victims so that and it may be a different type of egg that normally the queen would lay, but it still is gonna be an egg that is going to be able to create a face hugger and start the cycle over again and create a whole new branch of the alien family. So that’s my philosophy, and that’s why I think they work together still. I’ve never had a problem even once I saw Alien, the director’s cut, and I saw that. I was like, you know what? It’s all by itself.

It’s the only way that it has to keep its species going.

Pete Wright:
That was amazing. That was that was amazing. I don’t know if that was amazing because I honestly can’t tell you if I feel like you just totally made that up off the spot. Like you just manufactured a philosophy to answer my question. Almost think that you did and I’m really impressed by that.

You did an amazing job there. I just want you to know that.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, I thank you. Thank you.

Pete Wright:
The budget of this film was $18,000,000.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. That’s that is so little compared to today’s dollars,

Pete Wright:
isn’t it? That is stunning. Yeah. That I mean, you just have to kinda let that sink in, because this is a this is what I would classify as a big movie. Like, this is a big movie.

This was the biggest movie of the year that I saw it, certainly. I don’t remember I don’t remember any movie that has stuck with me like this movie. It sticks with me as the biggest production, the most significant kind of in investment in production design Yeah. At $18,000,000.

Andy Nelson:
Just for perspective sake, Avatar, $425,000,000.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, yeah. Man. Yeah. It’s it’s a it’s a small chunk of change. I mean, it’s $86 we’re talking about.

So, I mean, obviously, there’s Yeah. Some time put between it.

Pete Wright:
Sure. Sure.

Andy Nelson:
But, you know, it, they, these were days when people would use that money and they would do a lot with it. You know, Ridley Scott proved that with Alien, with the little money he had, and I think James Cameron proved that with this one as well.

Pete Wright:
Well, this is and it has performed, how we say, well. Yeah. It did very well in the theaters. Do you have the box office in front of you?

Andy Nelson:
I do.

Pete Wright:
I know you do.

Andy Nelson:
It, domestically, it, ended up making, just over $85,000,000 internationally, dollars 98,000,000. So worldwide, it made $183,000,000.183000000

Pete Wright:
on an $18,000,000 bet.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah. So they did they did good with that one. And it got seven Oscar nominations. Sigourney Weaver got her first Academy Award nomination for best actress for this, And I think a lot of that came from the development of the story with Newt. I think that was a very important element.

Also, best music for James Horner’s score. He’s one of the Js. We got another Js.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I know. I have that list ready to post. James James Jerry Jerry Joe

Andy Nelson:
John John John John John.

Pete Wright:
Yes. I do. I thought you were just BS ing me when you said that last week, and it turns out you’re totally not. That you actually have that list in exactly that order.

Andy Nelson:
It’s the list of my j composers. See what

Pete Wright:
I wanna do, I wanna put a special page up that only has lists.

Andy Nelson:
Well, we’ve got enough of them.

Pete Wright:
I know. Now we do. And I still haven’t still haven’t finished my Cornfields list. Best movies I’m

Andy Nelson:
I’m waiting.

Pete Wright:
So that I will do that. This week, I’m gonna put up our page of lists. And it’s gonna start with composers whose name begins with a j. This is gonna be the most obscure page of lists.

Andy Nelson:
I know. I know. People will go there when they’re looking for something to help them sleep.

Pete Wright:
Movies, we like lists of lists.

Andy Nelson:
Oh, man. That is too funny.

Pete Wright:
So alright. So oh, so other

Andy Nelson:
best so James Horner was nominated for best score, and, you know, this was for a score that he wrote in a very short period of time. He didn’t even have a film to watch essentially because James Cameron was still shooting it. And so Jerry or sorry, James Horner had to kind of wing it, especially like the last scene when Ripley’s fighting the alien. He had no idea what he was writing. He just he winged it and hoped that it fit, basically.

And he got an Oscar nomination for it, so kudos to him. It stressed out the relationship between him and James Cameron, and he was convinced he’d never work with James Cameron again. But lo and behold, James came knocking on his door for Titanic, and look who walked away with the Oscar on that one. Yeah. So and, of course, they’ve been working ever since.

Well, on Avatar, the one other movie

Pete Wright:
Well since Yeah. I know that this I have a real problem with the with the score. And it’s all it’s all my fault because when this came around, you know, I was making movies with my friends in my neighborhood. Mm-hmm. And we were cribbing, you know, scores as soundtracks.

Yes. And this one is actually the soundtrack serves as the soundtrack to the hit neighborhood film Doctor Turbo Shots and his sidekick, Throttle Nice. In which I played the lead. Aw. And so I can’t when I listen to this movie, I realize how do I how do I know that and why is this why is the music so does just not fit this movie?

It’s because it turns out it was destined to be in my neighborhood film, Doctor. Triple Shot and his Psychic Throttle.

Andy Nelson:
And you know what’s funny? Is it also ended up in my film. The Wired Gate. The classic serial killer movie about a serial killer who wires people’s back gates. It was, you it was pretty silly.

But, yeah, I think the exact same thing.

Pete Wright:
It’s just it’s ruined to me. I listened to it. I was like, what is this what is this goofball fight with the alien? It’s just a kids now. It’s a comedy.

It’s a vaudeville. What’s supposed to be happening is this early pagan to, you know, to Michael Bay. It’s a tribute to the Michael Bay films to come. That’s what Doctor Turbo Shots was. And so Yeah.

Andy Nelson:
That’s awesome. Yeah. Alright. So it also was nominated for best let me just read finish

Pete Wright:
the Yeah. Finish. Do

Andy Nelson:
your thing. The best art direction for Peter Lamonten and Crispian Salas. Did a great job. Best editing, Ray Lovejoy. Another person working under the gun, along with James Horner, frantically trying to cut this thing together because it was being released in a very short period of time.

Best sound, Graham Heartstone, Nicholas Le Maisonsieux, Michael Carter, and Roy Charman. And then best sound editing by Don Sharp, which he won for that. And best visual effects for Robert Skotak, Stan Winston, John Richardson, and Suzanne Benson, and they won for that. So it got two out of seven nominations it won for. So kudos to them, it was well worth it.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, was one of the pieces that I was watching on this one was David. I should say, actually, the John well, I need to bring up the link here because I actually need to credit it. I don’t even know if he’s a friend of the show, but he’s a friend of mine on Facebook, and when I posted my picture of me and the cat watching Aliens last night, my friend John Foster posted a link to Superior Firepower, The Making of Aliens, is the full three hour feature length documentary plus extras of the extras made for the 2003 release, which is actually available in its entirety on YouTube. I don’t know how they

Andy Nelson:
I don’t

Pete Wright:
either. But the whole thing is up there and I had not looked for it and I hadn’t seen that in a long, long time and it’s really worth watching. I, you know, we’ll post a link to that video in particular to John for posting that link.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, and it’s on the Blu ray if you get it that way, but if you don’t have it, then definitely check it out on YouTube.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, it ends up, it’s great that it is there and we have access to it, and you know, I, now that I said that out loud, Oh, no, David Giler, it says in there, you know, as a people who worked on the film, you know. There were a lot of people on this film who left because of sort of artistic differences. Know, you can kind of write those off. Working with James Cameron I think it was David Giler who said, you know, a lot of people said that it was just hard to work with James. He’s tough, tough to work with, and he’s prone to these fits of kind of rage when things don’t go his way, and there’s a funny clip of him trying to do in the lab scene, you know, when Ripley and Newt wake up and they realize that the facehugger jar has been tossed over, and they’re alone without a weapon and in this room with two facehuggers.

And he is trying to shoot the scene where the facehugger leaps from a cabinet directly into the camera. And there is a guy standing directly to camera right, and he’s holding a piece of fishwire, and you hear James Cameron’s voice say, really fairly calmly, he says, I just did this with my video just now. It took me seven minutes, and I did the whole thing, and I just I don’t know why we can’t do this. I did what are you? You’re not wearing gloves.

Talking to the guy holding the fish line. And the guy says, I’m fine. And he says, No. You’re not wearing gloves. You can’t pull this hard when you’re not wearing gloves.

You go get some gloves and call me when you’re ready to work. I thought that’s Brad. That would be a guy who quit.

Andy Nelson:
That’s funny. That is

Pete Wright:
funny. Well, know, it was it didn’t seem to be like they captured a huge gigantic rage, you know, rage fest, but

Andy Nelson:
Right. But he seems like an exacting guy. Well, and that’s interesting because he and Ridley Scott, I both think, that way. And Ridley Scott says something interesting on the making of on the Alien film, where he says, you know, you have to be the you’re the one calling the shots. If you start giving in to people, you’re not going to end up with what it is that you want.

And you may end up, you know, not getting into fights with people, and you may end up, you know, feeling like you’ve got these kind of great relationships, all that. And I’m totally botching how he actually put this very nicely. But he said, you’re not going to end up with what you want. And in the end, people are going to it’s it’s gonna be obvious that it’s not the vision that you were trying to create, and it’s less of a less of a film. And, yes, you’re going to create that dissension at the time, but after the fact, when people look back on it, they’ll be able to say, You know what, he was right.

Pete Wright:
You know, it’s funny you bring that up. That was another bit that Lindelof said in his interview regarding working with Ridley Scott. He says, You know, in many respects, the way I wrote this film was to sit down with Ridley and ask him a bunch of questions and treat it much more like Mad Libs. Ridley tells you exactly what he wants to see and then you go write it. Yeah, you inject kind of why they brought you in, but this was a very different movie to write because he has such a clear, clear vision of what he wants and ends up taking a deep ownership of the screenwriting process.

And, you know, James Cameron having having actually written the screenplay Yeah. Has even more of a pen. And you know, I mean, you write your own, work, you have such a vested, interest in having it come out just the way you want it.

Andy Nelson:
Well, you’re the one who has the picture in your head. So

Pete Wright:
I found that really compelling, and I love this movie, I love what came together out of it. It’s a movie that just absolutely stands up in as as a real highlight. And I say again, I have trouble watching this movie out of the context of Alien. I think I think I get a much better experience actually watching these two movies back to back. And I think I think, in fact, it should be required that you only watch these movies sequentially.

Andy Nelson:
You know, it’s funny it’s funny that you say that because I you know, thinking back on it, I realized I actually saw Aliens first. Oh. And then I saw Alien. I think my my stepmother was, like, horrified that I saw Aliens without having seen Alien. And so I saw Alien after the fact.

And so for me, I mean, I think between the two, I still would put alien as the one that I like more, you know, as vague as that may be when you say things like that. But Aliens will always stand out as kind of a just a strong film by itself for me. I don’t have that same sense that you do.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. I well, I’m I’m gonna go. I’m gonna It’s valid. I’m gonna re cut.

Andy Nelson:
Very valid. You’re gonna re cut it?

Pete Wright:
I’m gonna re cut it, and I’m gonna I’m gonna send it to you. The re cut.

Andy Nelson:
What are you gonna call it?

Pete Wright:
Aliens. Aliens. Alien, but the s will be in parentheses. Or just, like, maybe redacted. Nice.

Oh, I need a I’m gonna need a good good tagline. Mm-hmm. I’ll I’ll work on that. I got I got you know, this is this is when I sort of feel like we’re we’re skipping a really significant, part, which is the, you know, act three, the rescue. But I don’t need to talk about it.

Andy Nelson:
I just yeah. I don’t need to either, I guess. I just I only regarding that, I will say everything with the queen and the battle and bishop And by the way, this is complete aside, but there’s a track on the soundtrack called Queen Takes Bishop, which I just I always get a hoot at that track name because it’s just a great, you know, reference to chess. But, that whole bit, I think, is just so solid and it’s just testament to the great film that has led up to that point. Truly.

Yeah. Fantastic film.

Pete Wright:
Any other closing closing remarks, your honor?

Andy Nelson:
I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think we covered it pretty well and I’m pretty happy with this film.

Pete Wright:
Me too. We did a we did a great job with this film. Really did.

Andy Nelson:
On the cover of my official movie magazine. Yes. Bean in savage combat with the alien army.

Pete Wright:
That’s awesome.

Andy Nelson:
I love it.

Pete Wright:
And it’s, you know, better than Starship Troopers.

Andy Nelson:
Better than Starship Troopers. Yes, it is.

Pete Wright:
Did you just one final housekeeping note, did your actual piece get picked up by Entertainment Weekly?

Andy Nelson:
I was off by a week. They asked me if they could publish it, but it’s not coming out until this Friday.

Pete Wright:
Oh. So Something to look forward to then.

Andy Nelson:
I know. So I’m still, you know, I’m, yeah, looking forward to opening it up and seeing if they used my little Prometheus.

Pete Wright:
Oh, I can’t wait. I know. Alright. Go to bed, Andrew. Take care of yourself.

Andy Nelson:
Yes. Yes. Thank you, sir. Have a wonderful, rest of your evening.

Pete Wright:
And you.

The Next Reel. A show about movies and how they connect.