Quote from: Kimarhi on Feb 14, 2011, 12:43:24 AM
A finished product would've been subject to the same tamperings via fox. You know this.
Doesn't matter, the script provided for the final movie was already, by the accounts of the writers, lacklustre. TYou seem to think I'm arguing that any of the pre-Alien 3 Alien III scripts were any better. They weren't. Neither the addition nor subtraction Ripley helped.
QuoteThat's rather like saying the first hive battle in Aliens was a complete waste of time, since we have no name knockoff characters dying here as well. These Marines dominated the film as much as Ripley just as the prisoners did and Ripley did in the second.
Except the Marines were written to be
endearing. People cared when they died. And the simply tag of 'murderer' 'rapist' or 'child molester' goes a
long way in the audience's mind.
QuoteLOLZ. Hold the phone. People dying of old age is quite different than your own kid being killed in a violent accident. Ripelys daughter has a chance of happiness. As did any earth or colony based friends.
LOLZ. Ripley wouldn't care that they died happily in their beds, [of course, not that her daughter did - she died of cancer, never knowing what happened to her mother. People today die in their beds anguishing over the unknown fates of close relatives.] Ripley's mental anguish is, as is a lot of personal pain, subjective to herself. The other side to Ripley's trauma, as explained by Weaver, is that A] She lost her entire life, her entire world, and B] She had suffered an understandably traumatic event and had everything [job, title, credibility] stripped. Many people lose themselves over this alone.
'The emotional content is much greater in Aliens. I tried to imagine and comprehend something like that ... Coming back to a whole different world and haunted by the other one. Ripley's personal situation is so bleak. I know I'm playing the same character, but I feel she has changed so utterly by what happens to her early in the film.'
Sigourney Weaver.'I started the synopsis we gave to FOX with the line, "Sometimes, survival is not enough." Ripley survived her first encounter with the Alien, but this film takes her to the point where she's probably ready to blow her brains out because that's what it can be like ... The whole idea of a little girl is the 'light at the end of the tunnel' concept. If Ripley was going to go into it alone and survive another encounter with these organisms after I've set up in the first act that the first time completely destroyed her life, then that's not going to be a satisfying ending. There must be a sense that, when she comes through the fire this time, it's an end to a cycle, she will have the tools to go on. So, the relationship with the little girl is absolutely critical.'
James Cameron, Starlog, 1986.After Aliens, after rebuilding her life, this is all destroyed yet again. Don't tell me that it's not understandable that someone would find suicide to be an attractive option.
QuoteI wouldn't count the crew of the Nostromo as being anything more than coworkers for the most part. She seems particularly annoyed at Parker + Brett. Doubt she wished death on either, but they weren't people she shared her soul with. Hicks and Newt were close bonds. That lasted a couple of days.
Doesn't matter what you count. The film-makers and actors feel and intend differently.
'Ripley still feels respnosible for what happened on the Nostromo. She has a feeling that she could have done more to help the crew to survive. It's nonsense of course; but she can't help thinking that she could have done a better job.'
Sigourney Weaver.As for the importance of the Newt relationship, see quote above,
the 'light at the end of the tunnel' concept.QuoteCameron wrote the script in hopes that Ripley would sign on after Fox offered her the contract.
No, Cameron wrote the script thinking Weaver was already in the know.
QuoteIn both instances the contract offered made her a top tier paid actress in Hollywood, and she discussed hesitancy about going back to the film in BOTH instances.
Her hesitance in relation to Aliens was
'I didn't want to do a sequel unless we all felt that there was something else that needed said about it. I had a frank talk with the producer, Gale Anne Hurd, about the director, Jim Cameron, before the film started and I felt their purpose in doing it was their own. Not to cash in on the success of the first but [because] there was something in that story they wanted to finish. They certainly don't intend to duplicate the first, which has a kind of eerie majesty to it. This one is completely different. Ours is much more action [orientated] and, hopefully, more personal.'Weaver has never said explicitly what changed her mind about Alien 3. But she WAS offered a massive amount of money [enough fo HR Giger to complain about it in an interview], a co-producer credit, a % of the film's gross, anda pay-or-play contract, ie, once hired, FOX couldn't do a thing to her without paying her, including firing her. I trust her co-star to have noticed her sentiments on the movie, and I think it's noteworthy that, in the absence for Weaver's stark explanation of taking on Alien 3, Charles Dance explained:
'I don't think -and I could be talking completely out of my arse here- that Sigourney wanted to do another one, but she was paid quite a sum of money.'
QuoteI don't seem to remember Dillon bullying her into battling the Alien. I seem to remember him saying help us out or f**k yourself. She chose the former because it was beneficial to both of them. Had she wanted to kill herself she could've done it at ANYTIME in the film. Pick the highest balcony in the cellblock and jump off. Easy.
Throwing her against the bars and seething in her face, whilst essentially blackmailing her into helping deal with the Alien, seems bullying to me. She couldn't have taken her own life because, as I'm sure she explains, she's afraid too. She doesn't have it in her.