Alien Universe - 2104
Ati
MemberPraetorianJune 04, 20173889 Views13 RepliesRon Cobb’s creative contributions extended beyond the look of the film: he also inspired O’Bannon to give the Alien acidic blood, coined ‘Weylan-Yutani’, and crafted with costume designer John Mollo all manner of fictional corporate insignias and emblems intended to give the film additional depth, even though the majority of their work would not be seen or even referenced on screen.
“One of the things I enjoyed most about Alien was its subtle satirical content,” explained Cobb. “Science Fiction films offer golden opportunities to throw in little scraps of information that suggest enormous changes in the world. There’s a certain potency in those kinds of remarks. Weylan-Yutani for instance is almost a joke, but not quite. I wanted to imply that poor old England is back on its feet and has united with the Japanese, who have taken over the building of spaceships the same way they have now with cars and supertankers. In coming up with a strange company name I thought of British Leyland and Toyota, but we obviously couldn’t use Leyland-Toyota in the film. Changing one letter gave me Weylan, and Yutani was a Japanese neighbor of mine.” The Company would be called Weyland-Yutani in the following movies, with the ‘d’ added sometime during Aliens’ production by Cobb for an unspecified reason – perhaps it was an error, or he was no longer shy about the ‘Weyland/Leyland’ allusion.
For the Company’s logo Ron figured that “It would be fun to develop a logo using the W and Y interlocking. We tried a lot of variations and came up with some very industrial looking symbols, which were to be stenciled all over the ship. By that time though Ridley was already set on using the Egyptian wing motif. We tried some combinations, but they didn’t really work. Weylan-Yutani now only appears on the beer can, underwear and some stationary, so the joke sort of got lost.” Though it’s not obvious at a glance, Cobb’s Egyptian motif logo appears on virtually every piece of equipment on the Nostromo, including dinner bowls and coffee cups. The crew wear blue Weylan-Yutani wing emblems on their chests, except for Kane, who wears a silver patch, and Dallas, whose gold patch is possibly coloured to denote his captaincy.
Cobb and Mollo also conceived a pseudo-historical backdrop over which Alien takes place, creating space corporations like Farside Lunar Mining and Red Star Lines that went virtually unseen and absolutely unmentioned in the film, but which, for its creators, helped flesh out the unseen universe permeating the movie frame. Cobb also designed a flag for the United Americas - the union of South, Central and North America which took place in 2104, at least in the Alien universe - which is essentially the stars and stripes with one unitary star rather than fifty.
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As you know, Alien Covenant takes place in 2104.
In the Dedication of ALIEN: Manticore I give R. Cobb an unabashed nod, as well as with the description of Manticore's bridge layout. The man does wonderful work and I have a small collection of pics having to do with his work for ALIEN :)
IN SPACE THERE IS NO WARNING
An interesting and very entertaining read!! Also some beautiful pics I've grabbed for future refernce, so TY!! :D
IN SPACE THERE IS NO WARNING
the only plausible reason is as a Fail-Safe in the event there's a catastrophic failure in helm and nav systems and you have the ship as well as any attached cargo on a collision course with an inhabited planet, or a star which such a world orbits.
Even at sublight speeds, space vessels move at extremely high velocities, and when you factor in the mass of ship and cargo, the potential catastrophe such could inflict via collision is frightening.
NOW, factor in it's ability to travel faster than light.
If such a FtL collision occured with a planet, it's completely destroy it, and thus destablize an entire star system.
Collision with a star guarantees at minimum an absolutely monstrous coronal mass ejection, and quite likely a Nova, which again wrecks a star system pretty seriously.
IN SPACE THERE IS NO WARNING
If you take into account that the cost of replacing the Nostromo was quoted as $42 million (adjusted) that puts commercial starships in the same price ranges as any oceangoing vessel in the real world today, so there's likely MANY companies of assorted sizes as well as privately-owned trampers roaming the starlanes.
IN SPACE THERE IS NO WARNING
