47 Fun Facts About Aliens (1986)

Who wrote and directed Aliens?

James Cameron was hired after a development executive read his script for The Terminator and 'couldn't put it down'; Ridley Scott later said he was never asked to make the sequel.

Who plays Ellen Ripley in Aliens?

Sigourney Weaver was paid $1 million, her biggest fee to that point, after the director and producer walked away from the project rather than make it without her.

Who plays Corporal Dwayne Hicks in Aliens?

Michael Biehn got the call on a Friday night and was filming by Monday, a late replacement who missed the cast's military training and had to wear his predecessor's armour.

Who plays Newt in Aliens?

Carrie Henn had never acted before Aliens and chose not to make acting her career: she grew up to become a schoolteacher.

Who plays the android Bishop in Aliens?

Lance Henriksen played the android as a very innocent 12-year-old who pitied the adults around him, because he knew he was going to outlive them all.

Which panicky Marine private does Bill Paxton play in Aliens?

Hudson's wail of 'Game over, man!' grew out of the backstory Paxton invented for him: a soldier who had come up on simulators and video games.

Who plays the company man Carter Burke in Aliens?

Paul Reiser had more experience as a comedian than as an actor, with a tiny part in Beverly Hills Cop behind him, when he was cast as the smooth-talking villain.

Which actress plays Private Vasquez in Aliens?

Jenette Goldstein, a stage-trained actress, was making her very first film and has said she arrived not even knowing what a master shot was.

What is the name of the Marines' spaceship in Aliens?

Sulaco was first sketched by its designer as a huge sphere with antennas, until the director pointed out that a flatter ship would glide past the camera better.

On which moon is the colony Ripley returns to in Aliens?

LV-426 still holds the derelict ship from the first film, and the model was the original: it had spent the years between in the driveway of a film historian the studio gave it to.

At which studios near London was most of Aliens shot?

Pinewood's crew clashed so badly with the director that his farewell speech said one thought had kept him going: he would drive out of the gate and never come back, while they stayed.

How long has Ripley drifted in hypersleep when she is rescued at the start of Aliens?

57 years pass before a deep-space salvage crew stumbles on her shuttle by blind luck, long enough for a colony to be built on the very moon where her crew found the alien.

As the story goes, the director pitched Aliens by writing 'Alien' on a whiteboard, followed by what?

A dollar sign made it 'Alien$' in the tale, though the film's own producer has said she heard the story for years without knowing if it was true.

If Alien was a haunted house, the director said the sequel should be like what?

He and the producer agreed to combine the horror of the original with the action of The Terminator.

Which novel were the Marine actors in Aliens told to read to understand the space-soldier archetype?

Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein's novel, left its mark on the script as well as the cast: the Marines' phrase 'bug hunt' is borrowed from it.

Which actor was first cast as Hicks in Aliens and then fired early in the shoot?

James Remar's exit was put down to artistic differences until he admitted he was fired after an arrest for drug possession; shots of him from behind are still in the film.

Bill Paxton credited his casting in Aliens to a chance meeting with the director where?

Los Angeles airport: Paxton ran into the director there, heard that the script was on its way to England and joked, 'I hope you write me a part!'

Veterans of which military unit trained the Marine cast of Aliens before filming?

The SAS veterans drilled the Marine actors so that they would bond as a unit and treat the rest of the cast as outsiders; one star, cast late, missed the lot.

Which Vietnam veteran in the cast of Aliens helped train the actors to handle firearms?

Al Matthews, who plays Sergeant Apone, was a real Marine with two Purple Hearts from Vietnam, and his first rule for the cast was never to walk around with a finger on the trigger.

The actor first cast as Hicks in Aliens accidentally shot a hole through the set of which film next door?

Little Shop of Horrors was filming on the next stage under Frank Oz when, as the cast's weapons instructor told it, the newcomer 'blew a hole in Frank's set' with a shotgun.

Which British film-industry tradition most frustrated the Canadian director of Aliens?

Tea breaks, wheeled in on a trolley, cost him by his own reckoning about an hour of filming every day, which added up to some five hours a week.

Which machine does Ripley strap herself into to fight the queen at the end of Aliens?

A power loader, the walking forklift she drives early in the film to show the Marines she can be useful, becomes her armour for the line 'Get away from her, you bitch!'

The alien hive sets built for Aliens were left standing and reused in which 1989 film?

Batman's crew arrived at the disused Acton Lane power station to find most of the alien hive still in place, and rebuilt it as the Axis Chemicals plant.

What was used for the android Bishop's white blood in Aliens?

Milk gushed from the torn-in-half android through two or three days of filming, until it spoiled and the effects crew were holding their noses to go near the actor.

In Aliens, which relative of Ripley died while she drifted?

Her daughter, Amanda, grew old and died at 66 while her mother slept, a loss the theatrical cut left out and one that feeds her bond with the orphaned Newt.

Who composed the score for Aliens?

James Horner called the job 'a nightmare': he reached London with six weeks to write the music and nothing to write it to, because the film was still being shot and edited.

In Aliens, when does Newt say the creatures 'mostly come'?

At night: her warning proved so quotable that the actress who spoke it has had people offering her their own take on the line for years.

Where was the Aliens score recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra?

Abbey Road Studios saw sessions so rushed that the music for the final battle was written overnight, and the director first heard the score there with the whole orchestra waiting.

Unused music from the Aliens score turned up in which 1988 film?

Die Hard has a score by Michael Kamen, yet its makers cut in music written for Aliens, and for 1987's Man on Fire, in place of some of his cues.

Which concept artist designed the Marines' spaceship for Aliens?

Syd Mead, who drew the future Los Angeles of Blade Runner, got the job because the director admired the spaceship he had designed for the film 2010.

The Marines' armoured personnel carrier in Aliens was a disguised version of what vehicle?

An aircraft tug built to tow Boeing 747s was hiding under the Marines' armour, with its lead ballast stripped out to lighten it.

Aliens' smart guns were mounted on which film equipment?

A Steadicam harness carried each gun, in reality a German MG 42 dressed up with old motorcycle parts; the producer called the idea typical of the director.

The colony's nuclear explosion in Aliens was created by shining a light bulb through what?

Cotton lit by a light bulb stood in for the nuclear blast, a cheap trick beside the film's alien queen, a fourteen-foot puppet that needed two operators inside it.

Which sportswear brand made Ripley's custom laceless sneakers for Aliens?

Reebok's designer had one instruction, that a shoe must slide off Ripley's foot in the airlock finale, hence straps instead of laces; fans could not buy a pair until 2016.

Absent from Aliens, H. R. Giger instead designed the creatures for which 1986 horror sequel?

Poltergeist II got Giger's designs for its 'great beast' while Aliens went ahead without him; he was reportedly not pleased, and the director designed the alien queen himself.

Alongside stuntmen, which kind of performer wore the alien suits in Aliens?

Dancers and stuntmen wore lightweight suits so they could move fast, and were hung from wires and filmed at odd angles so that nobody would see people in costumes.

The director of Aliens compared the queen to which creature, calling it both 'hideous and beautiful'?

A black widow spider was his model for a creature that had to be large and powerful yet swift and unmistakably female.

In the mess-hall scene of Aliens, the android Bishop performs a high-speed party trick with what?

A knife, jabbed between a Marine's splayed fingers at blurring speed; the actor whose hand was pinned underneath learned he was part of the trick only on the day of filming.

Which film was 1986's biggest box-office hit in North America, well ahead of Aliens?

Top Gun actually opened smaller than Aliens, $8.2 million against $10.1 million, but it stayed in cinemas for seven months and ended with more than double its rival's total.

Which of these Oscars did Aliens win?

Best Visual Effects was one of only two wins, both technical, from seven nominations; the nominated score had been finished in such a rush that its composer never saw the whole film first.

Ripley's actress lost the Best Actress Oscar to whom?

Hers was the first Best Actress nomination ever given for a science-fiction film.

Which colony falls silent early in Aliens?

Hadley's Hope houses 'sixty, maybe seventy families', as a horrified Ripley is told; when the Marines get there, a single child is the only colonist they can save.

Who wrote the novelization of Aliens?

Alan Dean Foster novelized the first three Alien films, and before them he ghost-wrote the Star Wars novelization that was published under George Lucas's name.

In which Marvel film do Spider-Man and Iron Man borrow the queen's defeat in Aliens as a battle plan?

Avengers: Infinity War has Spider-Man ask, 'Did you ever see this really old movie, Aliens?', and the heroes then dispose of the villain Ebony Maw the way Ripley disposed of the queen.

Who produced Aliens and was married to its director during the shoot?

Gale Anne Hurd had to ask industry allies to phone Fox and vouch that she really was a producer, and the British crew still assumed she had the job only through her husband.

In Aliens, Newt says nobody uses her real first name 'except my brother'; what is it?

Rebecca is what Ripley calls her at first, and the girl, who has survived alone in the colony's air ducts, corrects her at once: her name is Newt.

What was the advertising tagline for Aliens?

"This time, it's war" told audiences the sequel had changed genre: where Alien was pure horror, Aliens was first and foremost an action thriller.