Sigourney Weaver talks Alien 5... again...

[Reverend]

It also rather missed the whole point of the original Alien concept. It was about the male fear of sexual abuse and childbirth.

I'd like a few reputable sources for that please. I remember being told by someone here the android trying to suffocate Ripley was a rape scene. Also the alien raped someone else because her breathing was fast when she was captured. He was deadly serious. So y'know while men are being terrified of getting pregnant by a nasty alien raping them, the women were finding it a bit thrilling.

I think Ash trying to kill Ripley is a scene just dripping with symbolism. Not only does he try to kill her by stuffing a rolled up magazine down her throat, but it's a porn mag into the bargain.

I think when I was younger I did interpret the Lambert scene as rape, but I think it's clear that this was just a case that she hid from the Alien, was scared shitless and was hyperventalating until the Alien winkled her out and killed her. She doesn't seem to die quickly, but it seems unlikely anything sexual was happening (for starters it doesn't fit with the Alien's lifecycle) I'm willing to be proven wrong on this if anyone does have an official sources that suggests otherwise. If the Alien was doing anything it was maybe impregnating her (the way it must have impregnated Dallas given the delected scene).

The Lambert scene is absolutely a rape scene. No question. It's not even subtext as I'm pretty sure the thing actually f*cked her to death.
From the suggestive staging where the beast's taking it's time as if it's fascinated by her, the tail is almost playfully creeping up behind her...and then there's the death cries Ripley hears over the intercom. That is not someone who just got a retractable mouth to the brain (a pretty aggressively phallic thing all by itself.)
And finally, when Ripley finder their bodies you can see Lambert's bare legs dangling in the foreground. Note that in the earlier scene, Lambert was wearing a baggy jumpsuit and cowboy boots. I mean do I have to draw a diagram?

Hell, there's even a deleted scene from that sequence where Lambert turns and notices the thing sat behind her. Just look at it. If that pose isn't meant to suggest an erection I don't know what is.

The bit with Ash and the magazine was I think something they more or less improvised on set (though I may be misremembering.) But yeah, he's trying to rape her. But it's not about a female being raped, it's about sexual frustration and violence. As for his choice of implement...the suggestion is that he wasn't built to be "fully functional" in the trouser department. Hence the frustration.

As for a credible source: how's Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon? They both talk about this repeatedly in the 2004 DVD documentaries and commentaries. It's hardly a secret and it's not as if the any of this is subtle. It's fairly blatant and intentionally so. I mean just look a Giger's work. It couldn't be more overtly and aggressively sexual if the paintings leapt off the canvas and skull f*cked you.

If you want a more comprehensive rundown of the imagery, I cam across this just a few days ago.

As for going back and seeing the Alien homeworld...part of the problem with that is that they don't have one. They're bio-mechanoid weapons, not a naturally evolving species with an eco-system that can support it. Indeed, it's main function appears to be to specifically break down existing eco-systems through infestation.

The closest we might get is seeing the Engineer's homeworld, which appears to be where Prometheus 2 is headed.

 

[Candlelight]

I'd like a few reputable sources for that please. I remember being told by someone here the android trying to suffocate Ripley was a rape scene. Also the alien raped someone else because her breathing was fast when she was captured. He was deadly serious. So y'know while men are being terrified of getting pregnant by a nasty alien raping them, the women were finding it a bit thrilling.

I think Ash trying to kill Ripley is a scene just dripping with symbolism. Not only does he try to kill her by stuffing a rolled up magazine down her throat, but it's a porn mag into the bargain.

I think when I was younger I did interpret the Lambert scene as rape, but I think it's clear that this was just a case that she hid from the Alien, was scared shitless and was hyperventalating until the Alien winkled her out and killed her. She doesn't seem to die quickly, but it seems unlikely anything sexual was happening (for starters it doesn't fit with the Alien's lifecycle) I'm willing to be proven wrong on this if anyone does have an official sources that suggests otherwise. If the Alien was doing anything it was maybe impregnating her (the way it must have impregnated Dallas given the delected scene).

The Lambert scene is absolutely a rape scene. No question. It's not even subtext as I'm pretty sure the thing actually f*cked her to death.
From the suggestive staging where the beast's taking it's time as if it's fascinated by her, the tail is almost playfully creeping up behind her...and then there's the death cries Ripley hears over the intercom. That is not someone who just got a retractable mouth to the brain (a pretty aggressively phallic thing all by itself.)
And finally, when Ripley finder their bodies you can see Lambert's bare legs dangling in the foreground. Note that in the earlier scene, Lambert was wearing a baggy jumpsuit and cowboy boots. I mean do I have to draw a diagram?

Hell, there's even a deleted scene from that sequence where Lambert turns and notices the thing sat behind her. Just look at it. If that pose isn't meant to suggest an erection I don't know what is.

The bit with Ash and the magazine was I think something they more or less improvised on set (though I may be misremembering.) But yeah, he's trying to rape her. But it's not about a female being raped, it's about sexual frustration and violence. As for his choice of implement...the suggestion is that he wasn't built to be "fully functional" in the trouser department. Hence the frustration.

As for a credible source: how's Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon? They both talk about this repeatedly in the 2004 DVD documentaries and commentaries. It's hardly a secret and it's not as if the any of this is subtle. It's fairly blatant and intentionally so. I mean just look a Giger's work. It couldn't be more overtly and aggressively sexual if the paintings leapt off the canvas and skull f*cked you.

If you want a more comprehensive rundown of the imagery, I cam across this just a few days ago.

As for going back and seeing the Alien homeworld...part of the problem with that is that they don't have one. They're bio-mechanoid weapons, not a naturally evolving species with an eco-system that can support it. Indeed, it's main function appears to be to specifically break down existing eco-systems through infestation.

The closest we might get is seeing the Engineer's homeworld, which appears to be where Prometheus 2 is headed.

Up until Prometheus it was entirely plausible they had a homeworld but now that storyline is pretty much dead.

The early draft of Alien had Lambert dying in the never filmed airlock scene, though that clearly got changed to later (not sure how far through they made that decision; Ripley still has the nose bleed as she enters Mother after Dallas is killed, which was supposed to have come from the airlock scene. That said, Lambert doesn't have much dialogue for the rest of the movie so they didn't have to change too much).

It's heavily implied the Alien ripped her clothes off, which is bizarre considering the rest of the movies and in Alien itself, though you could (weakly) argue this was the first time the Alien had seen a woman. Parker is still slumped where he fell but Lambert looks like she was shoved into a vent as per the novel and alternate draft.

 

[Reverend]

^Well if I recall the early drafts correctly, the initial idea was that the planetoid was the Alien homeworld, or at least they weren't in a derelict ship but in a silo or pyramid on the surface. The derelict was there too, but they were just caught in the same trap.

Anyway, WAY before Prometheus, Ridley Scott had been consistent in saying that the eggs or spores as he puts it, were weapons or ammunition, the ship is a "battle wagon" and the creature itself was a bio-mechanoid of some sort.


As for Lambert, it's not implied, it's shown. As I said, before the attack she had been wearing a jumpsuit and after, you can clearly see her bare legs. As for why it did it: I think the implication is that it inherited the shadow of a sex drive from Kane. It may have been more specific than that, as in perhaps Kane had a thing from Lambert (IIRC they imply somewhere that Lambert and Dallas were a thing) but that's just speculation on my part.

 

[Deckerd]

There's no doubt the alien was a very sensual creature and Geiger's design is par none for finding all sorts of interpretation but Scott is too classy to have women raped all over the ship just because they're women. If the alien was into that kind of stuff if would have done it to all of its victims. Since she was wearing the wrong boots I suggest your reading is yet another supposition based on continuity errors, which Scott's films were as plagued by as many others. There might be "no question" in your mind but that might just be because it's seeing what it wants to see.

 

[Candlelight]

Since she was wearing the wrong boots I suggest your reading is yet another supposition based on continuity errors, which Scott's films were as plagued by as many others.

Exactly; that shot was supposed to be used for Brett's death but they recut it for Lambert.

There's a list here for those that haven't seen it:

http://www.moviemistakes.com/film37

 

[Reverend]

There's no doubt the alien was a very sensual creature and Geiger's design is par none for finding all sorts of interpretation but Scott is too classy to have women raped all over the ship just because they're women. If the alien was into that kind of stuff if would have done it to all of its victims. Since she was wearing the wrong boots I suggest your reading is yet another supposition based on continuity errors, which Scott's films were as plagued by as many others. There might be "no question" in your mind but that might just be because it's seeing what it wants to see.

Wow. Strawman arguing 101. Where the hell did I say, or even suggest that woman in this film are "raped all over the ship just because they're women".

Let's get this straight. Kane (who is a man BTW) was raped because the author has specifically and repeated said that's what happened. That's what he intended to convey and was absolutely the crux of the whole film for him. Indeed, him being a man who was impregnated and "gave birth" was the whole point.

Ash *tried* to sort-of rape Ripley because he's a malfunctioning android and she was his major source of frustration. Being a woman was beside the point.

Now while what happened to Lambert wasn't explicitly shown, it was HEAVILY implied. If you want to get it straight from the horse's mouth, then listen to the DVD commentary. Both Scott and Cartwright flat out say so while that scene is playing (emphasis mine): -

"Cartwright: And here he comes. See now this is the thing - he's like fascinating in a weird sort of way. I mean... How am I supposed? I mean look at him. He's like looking at me. He's checking me out.
So I was going off of the fact that I would end up in a locker somehow, you know. But obviously he's doing other things to me."

"Scott: I mean we didn't know how she died, but the implication that there was a kind of sexuality to this androgynous male-female, who could give birth to itself, but it could also impregnate. So it's like uh--there are insects like that, so we based that on a bit of good old Mother Nature. Was that some dreadful ending? Was that some terrible invasion of her body, a rape?..."

And here's the shot where Ripley discovers their bodies.

And here's a wider angle of the same shot where you can get a clearer sense of what's going on.


Bare legs. Body facing the opposite direction from where she'd been before. Swaying as if she's been hung up on something.

QED.

Since she was wearing the wrong boots I suggest your reading is yet another supposition based on continuity errors, which Scott's films were as plagued by as many others.

Exactly; that shot was supposed to be used for Brett's death but they recut it for Lambert.

There's a list here for those that haven't seen it:

http://www.moviemistakes.com/film37

Regardless of where they actually got that shot from, the narrative of the scene as presented is unaffected. We are clearly meant to see that as Lambert and not Brett since he's dead/being cocooned.

Films are full of continuity irregularities both intentional and otherwise. Nobody in their right mind would suggest that for example, Kane Lambert and Dallas suddenly morphed into children during that one shot of them outside the ship, or that Ash's head drastically changed shape during that awkward mid-scene cut. It's just the realities of filmaking and has no impact in the subtext or themes.

 

[Teelie]

Hell, there's even a deleted scene from that sequence where Lambert turns and notices the thing sat behind her. Just look at it. If that pose isn't meant to suggest an erection I don't know what is.

To stray slightly off the post here, I had never seen this angle of the video before and it shows despite the obvious man in the suit costume, it's still remarkably better looking than I would have thought in such openness.

 

[Reverend]

Hell, there's even a deleted scene from that sequence where Lambert turns and notices the thing sat behind her. Just look at it. If that pose isn't meant to suggest an erection I don't know what is.

To stray slightly off the post here, I had never seen this angle of the video before and it shows despite the obvious man in the suit costume, it's still remarkably better looking than I would have thought in such openness.

It looks fine and you can see that they were trying to disguise the humanoid shape by having the him contort into an unnatural pose...but the second he moves the illusion is spoilt and it's clearly a bloke in a rubber suit.

I can see why Scott chose to re-edit this scene. What we ended up seeing conveyed much more menace and suspense. Still, this raw footage is hardly a fair representation. Just for the sake of curiosity I'd be interested to see it cut back in with the music and audio tracks to get the full effect.

 

[Teelie]

It was just in that well lit open room like that I was surprised how good a job they did on the costume. The scenes where he isn't moving is what impressed me more.

That is ruined once he moves and you can see why would cut the angle close to only see part of it or have it in the dark where it was hard to make out the full body.

 

[Deckerd]

QED.

Why? because they're having a discussion about possible readings of the film you take that as a true fact? You're only latching on to this because you've made up your mind and won't brook any discussion about it.

 

[Solariabsg25]

As for "xenomorphs", what else would you call them? You can't just say "aliens", because Aliens establishes humans have come into contact with numerous other alien lifeforms, just none with the characteristics Ripley describes.

Anyone who takes that word seriously doesn't really get Aliens IMO.

Actually, the use of the word "xenomorph" by Gorman was just to show him as a by-the-book officer. That's probably the official designation for any alien life-form used in the field-manual, whereas it's pretty much implied by Hudson, Frost and Hicks that they call alien creatures simply bugs, though there is some discussion as to whether the term bugs is taken from the novel Starship Troopers or bug-eyed monsters.

 

[Reverend]

QED.

Why? because they're having a discussion about possible readings of the film you take that as a true fact? You're only latching on to this because you've made up your mind and won't brook any discussion about it.

Again with the straw man argument and out of context quoting. If you actually bothered to read my post, you'd see I said that a violation is heavily implied and gave ample evidence to support this. I specificity did not say the scene explicitly showed this. Do try and keep up and if you come up with an actual logical argument, be sure to let me know. I'm all ears.

I can see why Scott chose to re-edit this scene.

Because it takes the actor almost 40 seconds to raise to a standing position? Yaphet Kotto could likely have burned, or forced back, the alien without endangering Veronica Cartwright at that point. It's not as swift or threatening as usual.

Some sci-fi conventions do sell an ALIEN workprint cut about 130 minutes long with this moment re-edited back in, and Jerry Goldsmith's music cues adjusted, along with additional deleted bits placed into certain moments.

Well to be fair it's pretty raw footage. One imagines that if Scott had decided to use more of this, it would have been more tightly edited for suspense.

One of the unfortunate tendencies of fan edits and even some supposed "director's cuts" is that the makes seem to think that more footage = better film. I've see a few over the years and for the most part, the pacing of these things can be downright awful.

By comparison, Scott's 2004 cut of 'Alien' manages to be several minutes shorter than the theatrical cut, despite having several deleted scenes reintegrated.

 

[Marsden]

As for "xenomorphs", what else would you call them? You can't just say "aliens", because Aliens establishes humans have come into contact with numerous other alien lifeforms, just none with the characteristics Ripley describes.

Anyone who takes that word seriously doesn't really get Aliens IMO.

Actually, the use of the word "xenomorph" by Gorman was just to show him as a by-the-book officer. That's probably the official designation for any alien life-form used in the field-manual, whereas it's pretty much implied by Hudson, Frost and Hicks that they call alien creatures simply bugs, though there is some discussion as to whether the term bugs is taken from the novel Starship Troopers or bug-eyed monsters.

I can't say which, but I did read that Cameron had the cast read Starship Troopers, so it probably was at least partially taken from that.

BTW, I'm asking this with no sarcasm or to argue, but why is Xenomorph a bad name for the aliens?

Xeno refers to alien and morph is form, so it's generic, but they also come out in different forms depending what kind of alien (to them) they burst out of. I realize most of them aren't from the movies, like the Bull Alien and the Crusher Alien, but even the Alien in Alien 3 was different from the dog.

 

[Candlelight]

I can see why Scott chose to re-edit this scene.

Because it takes the actor almost 40 seconds to raise to a standing position? Yaphet Kotto could likely have burned, or forced back, the alien without endangering Veronica Cartwright at that point. It's not as swift or threatening as usual.

Some sci-fi conventions do sell an ALIEN workprint cut about 130 minutes long with this moment re-edited back in, and Jerry Goldsmith's music cues adjusted, along with additional deleted bits placed into certain moments.

I've got that cut, it's an interesting watch but the 1979 version is obviously better.

 

[borgboy]

I love Ripley and the Alien series. If they made a new movie, I'd be excited and want to see it. I wouldn't want a tie in with the inferior Prometheus.
I don't know that I feel any need for a sense of closure though, Ripley was alive and ok at the end, in a better place than she'd been in any of the other movies, where she was in cyro-sleep or dead.
I also don't know what you could do to give her story closure short of killing her. Again.

 

[Solariabsg25]

Anyone who takes that word seriously doesn't really get Aliens IMO.

Actually, the use of the word "xenomorph" by Gorman was just to show him as a by-the-book officer. That's probably the official designation for any alien life-form used in the field-manual, whereas it's pretty much implied by Hudson, Frost and Hicks that they call alien creatures simply bugs, though there is some discussion as to whether the term bugs is taken from the novel Starship Troopers or bug-eyed monsters.

I can't say which, but I did read that Cameron had the cast read Starship Troopers, so it probably was at least partially taken from that.

BTW, I'm asking this with no sarcasm or to argue, but why is Xenomorph a bad name for the aliens?

Xeno refers to alien and morph is form, so it's generic, but they also come out in different forms depending what kind of alien (to them) they burst out of. I realize most of them aren't from the movies, like the Bull Alien and the Crusher Alien, but even the Alien in Alien 3 was different from the dog.

Xenomorph is NOT a bad name for them, and in fact is quite a good descriptive word for the species which is why, although the original intention was not to do so, it's been generally accepted in fandom and in media such as comics, books and games to specifically refer to them.

The problem of course stems from the fact that if Xenomorph DOES specifically refer to that species, then the implication of Gorman's briefing is that the USCM has encountered these things before, so nothing about them in Aliens should have been a surprise to the marines. Strange to take this viewpoint alongside the "Something never before encountered" statement during Ripley's debrief.

The "official" FOX name for them (taken from DVD) is Internecivus Raptus - but you can't use that as a convenient "roll off the tongue" name!

One of the greater mysteries is how Weyland-Yutani knew the Engineer transmission indicated there was a valuable specimen on the Derelict in the first place!

 

[Mr Light]

<<The problem of course stems from the fact that if Xenomorph DOES specifically refer to that species, then the implication of Gorman's briefing is that the USCM has encountered these things before, so nothing about them in Aliens should have been a surprise to the marines. Strange to take this viewpoint alongside the "Something never before encountered" statement during Ripley's debrief.>>

I don't see that interpretation at all. Nobody believes a single word of Ripley's story about killer aliens. They invented the name based on Ripley's theoretical description. All the Marines thought she was insane and making it all up.

 

[Solariabsg25]

A lot of the Marine dialogue has been analysed to death, some assume that bug-hunt refers to a fruitless search for alien life, but if that is the case why the Bug-Stomper nose-art on Dropship 01?

My take on it is that the USCM has two major functions.

First "Stand-Up Fights", battling other national armies, insurgencies, putting down colonial rebellions, etc.

Then "Bug-Hunts", where a colony reports a hostile local life-form and the Marines are called in to burn them out, which will explain the disparaging comments by Ferro, Hudson and Vasquez concerning Ripley's description of the threat. They've dealt with hundreds, maybe thousands of creatures with no problems, so Snow White, some dumb-ass civilian was probably scared out of her wits by something and her imagination is wildly exaggerating the capabilities and size of the life-form involved.

I love Ripley and the Alien series. If they made a new movie, I'd be excited and want to see it. I wouldn't want a tie in with the inferior Prometheus.
I don't know that I feel any need for a sense of closure though, Ripley was alive and ok at the end, in a better place than she'd been in any of the other movies, where she was in cyro-sleep or dead.
I also don't know what you could do to give her story closure short of killing her. Again.

Yeah Ripley would become the Rory Williams of the Alien Franchise!

 

[Mr Light]

^^
I guess that could work, but I always interpreted that movie to be saying that they've NEVER encountered an alien life form before, and "bug hunt" means "wild good chase" in that people think they see alien monsters but it's always fake.

 

[Tosk]

Then what's with the "Bug Stomper" art on the dropship? (Or the "We Endanger Species" one, for that matter?)

In my view, Aliens makes it clear that non-sentient aliens are reasonably common by that point.