Speaking to a panel of fans recently at the London Film and Comic Convention, 65 year old Sigourney (Susan Alexandra) Weaver spoke openly about her life long experiences starring as Warrant Officer/Lieutenant (first class) Ellen Ripley in the Alien movie franchise, a role she first played 36 years ago in Sir Ridley Scott's landmark 1979 science fiction chiller Alien, and will play again for a fifth time alongside Aliens co-star Michael Biehn in Neill Blomkamp's sequel, which is reported to begin filming this fall in Vancouver, Canada.
During the panel the American actress and science fiction icon was asked if it was her idea that her character be killed off in the franchises third instalment, which was released in 1992 after an extremely troubled production, “Well, yes – because I heard that Fox was gonna do Alien v Predator. Which really depressed me because I was very proud of the movies.”
“I’ve nothing against building a movie on a video game but at the time, it was, as [Aliens director] Jim Cameron said I think publicly, ‘why would you want to do that? It’s like making Alien meets the Wolfman. In fact Ridley Scott was about to direct a third one, until this was announced, and he dropped out, because he also wanted to do an Alien sequel. I think it [Aliens v Predator] caused more problems than it was worth.”
Of course this is not the first time Weaver has aired her dislike for the AvP movies (pictured above), the first of which was directed by British director Paul W. S. Anderson. Yet that movie was not released until 2004, an entire 12 years after the release of Alien 3, and even more amazingly 7 years after she reprised the role in 1997's Alien Resurrection.
Somewhat worrying is Weavers statement that Ridley Scott was in-line to direct Alien 3. While it is true that the third instalment did cycle through its fair share of directors (Vincent Ward, David Twohy, Renny Harlin and David Fincher), at no time was Scott attached to the project. Both Scott and Aliens writer/director James Cameron were in the early stages of producing a fifth movie together before the release of AvP coerced them to abandon the project, with Scott instead focusing his energies into a prequel to the franchise, which in time became 2012's Prometheus. Maybe Weaver got confused?
The actress, also famous for her role as Dana Barrett in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II did use the opportunity to talk about the new Alien movie (pictured above) and its director, “I’m so excited about Neill [Blomkamp] – because Neill is like you guys! He broke the tapes of these movies when he was a kid, he watched them so much. I love the fact that’s Neill’s fulfilling his childhood dream of what he hopes will be the popcorn movie, the Alien popcorn movie that he wanted as a kid to see.”
As fans of the Alien franchise, for the Scified network would not exist if it was not for the success of Prometheus-Movie.com, we are all looking forward to seeing the new Alien movie, especially when considering the movie will see the return of Biehn's character, the colonial marine Corporal Dwayne Hicks. But we hope Weaver's reference to a “popcorn movie” is a throw-away comment, and not an insight into the possibility of a PG-13 rating for the hotly anticipated movie.
With Weaver now approaching retirement age, many fans and average movie goers alike will be wondering how much longer the actress intends to keep reprising the role of Ripley, and whether or not the new movie will see the character rewarded with a happy ending, “Well – it’s certainly something we’ve discussed. I agree, she’s had kind of a crap life. Many interruptions.”
Tanks to RT for the news!
