Aliens - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Aliens or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Aliens

[kristen]

The pulse rifles that the Marines use are made from a Thompson M1A1 machine gun with a Remington 870 shotgun (shortened to just 15 inches and covered by the also-cut-down shroud and fore-grip from a Franchi SPAS 12 shotgun) underneath.

[leo]

In a deleted scene, the portrait of Ripley's daughter is of Elizabeth Inglis, Sigourney Weaver's real-life mother. This was restored in the director's cut.

[duane]

The various screens and displays, seen mostly in the backgrounds, are actually TV screens with a video running. The film was shot in the UK where televisions run at 25 frames per second, however, film is normally shot and projected at 24 frames per second! Filming the TV monitors at that speed would cause the TV screens to run out of sync with the film, so they would have flickered terribly. Instead, the shots containing the monitors were taken at 25 frames per second to keep the monitors in sync, so when these are then projected at the standard rate of 24 fps, they now run a bit slower than real-life.

[norma]

Like Dan O'Bannon who had changed the name of his screenplay for the previous film from 'Star Beast' to Alien (1979) because he noted how often the word 'Alien' was used in it, James Cameron similarly changed his screenplay from 'Alien II' to 'Aliens' after realizing how often that word appeared in it. It was also rumored that he convinced the studio of the name change by spelling 'Aliens' as 'Alien$', highlighting its box office potential.

[janice]

If Hudson was really getting close to days before getting out, more than likely, the marines would have pulled him from duty.

[tammy]

The portable computers used in the sentry gun scenes are GRiD GridCase 1535EXPs. Rugged and light due to their magnesium alloy enclosures, GRiD computers were used by the US military in combat and by NASA on early 1980s Space Shuttle missions.

[brent]

The helmets the Marines wear are modified M-1 ballistic helmets.

[terry]

Many of the characters in the movie whose first names are never mentioned, actually share their first name of the actor/actress portraying them: e.g. Sgt. Al Apone (Al Matthews), Cpl. Collette Ferro (Colette Hiller), Pfc. Jenette Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein), Pvt. Mark Drake (Mark Rolston), Pvt. William Hudson (Bill Paxton), Pvt. Daniel Spunkmeyer (Daniel Kash), Pvt. Ricco Frost (Ricco Ross), Pvt. Trevor Wierzbowski (Trevor Steedman), and director Paul van Leuwen (Paul Maxwell).

[darrell]

The marines ship "Sulaco" takes it's name from the port city in Joseph Conrad's Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard. This is in reference to the space freighter in Alien (1979) being called "Nostromo".

[willard]

Ripley suggests nuking the site from orbit and Hicks agrees. The site ends up nuking itself when the damaged power plant explodes.

[ronnie]

None of the models or the original designs of the Narcissus (the Nostromo's shuttle) from Alien (1979) could be found, so set designers and model-makers had to reconstruct the model of the ship and the interior set from watching Alien (1979).

[leo]

James Horner wasn't particularly happy with the treatment of his score for the film despite receiving his first Oscar nomination. He delivered a finished score which didn't sit well with the edited film. Because Horner was unavailable as he was working on another film at the time, James Cameron had to heavily chop up the score to fit his edit. (A Deluxe Edition soundtrack of the score has since been released by Varèse Sarabande.)

[ethel]

Some of the sound effects for this film were created with help from the Fairlight, an early Australian-made digital sampler. The then state-of-the art Fairlight machine sampled at 8 bit resolution. Musicians such as Jan Hammer, Kate Bush, and Prince have used it extensively throughout their careers.

[edgar]

In the original script, while Ripley is rescuing Newt, she encounters a cocooned Burke (Paul Reiser) in the power plant. He claims he can feel the chestburster inside him and asks for help. Ripley simply gives him a live grenade and moves on. This scene was filmed, but James Cameron didn't like it visually, and cut it from the theatrical cut. It was not among the restored scenes in the Special Edition either, so for decades, the only proof that it existed was a single still image from a magazine. The scene was finally made available in full on the film's Blu-Ray bonus content.

[fred]

Filming took place in an abandoned power station in London, England

[amber]

Bill Paxton ran into friend and colleague James Cameron shortly after the latter had been given the director's job on the movie. Paxton jokingly told Cameron "I hope you write me a good part in it", and was subsequently called to audition. He got a fake plasma rifle to use, but he got too enthusiastic, and later thought that his performance had been too over the top. Luckily, Cameron loved the energy that Paxton had displayed, and cast him as the Private Hudson, the movie's comic relief character.

[frederick]

In the first half of all four Alien films, one or two characters are introduced and built up in a way to make the audience think that they are going to be important characters throughout the story, only to have them killed off less than halfway through. In Aliens, it is Sergeant Apone (Al Matthews).

[christina]

It's never explained how the aliens reproduce so rapidly when there's no more live humans on this planet; only Newt. (When Ripley and the rest of the crew show up on the planet they find literally hundreds of alien eggs, and just one girl left over from the colony. How is the queen going to hatch all those eggs without humans, which they need to be their surrogates? Theres no other life on the planet that we can see either to act as substitute surrogates.) And if the aliens reproduce without humans; what are they doing raping and impregnating the humans in the first place.

[chad]

The text that is superimposed over the video feeds (from the marine's cameras) seen on the video monitors in the APV were created using BBC model B microcomputers, commonplace in England at the time. The built-in teletext character generator was employed, and the output was gen-locked with the signal from the helmet cameras, before being fed to the monitors on the set.