Alien (1979) vs. Aliens (1986): Part 2

<v Speaker 1>Hello Shirley fans, and welcome back to the Sureley You
<v Speaker 1>Can't Be Serious podcast. We are here today on our
<v Speaker 1>second installment of Alien Versus Aliens, and normally we're ahead
<v Speaker 1>of the game. Normally we have several episodes in the
<v Speaker 1>queue that we have recorded, but we had summer vacation
<v Speaker 1>and we are doing things fast and on the fly,
<v Speaker 1>and we made some mistakes in the last episode, and
<v Speaker 1>we forgot some things in the last episode. We forgot
<v Speaker 1>that it was the thirty fifth anniversary of Freaking the
<v Speaker 1>release of Aliens, that last week, the thirty fifth anniversary,
<v Speaker 1>the thirty fifth anniversary. How do I forget that?
<v Speaker 2>It's fantastic. So we're recording this July twenty first. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>this was the number one movie in America in nineteen
<v Speaker 2>eighty six, on this day, thirty five years ago.
<v Speaker 1>Fantastic. I also forgot to mention when we were talking
<v Speaker 1>about Bill Paxton, Bill Paxton number one. His great great grandfather,
<v Speaker 1>Elijah Franklin Paxton, was a general in the Confederate Army
<v Speaker 1>during the Civil War.
<v Speaker 2>Stop your grinnin and drop your Lennen.
<v Speaker 1>This is even better. Bill Paxton was in the crowd
<v Speaker 1>when President John F. Kennedy came out of the Hotel
<v Speaker 1>Texas in Fort Worth on November twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
<v Speaker 1>the day he was assassinated. There are photographs of an
<v Speaker 1>eight year old Bill Paxton being lifted above the crowd
<v Speaker 1>on display at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's fantastic. I know it's crazy, right, that is insane.
<v Speaker 1>Yes. So one other mistake that I made was I
<v Speaker 1>said that the I said that, what's his name, Yafit Koto.
<v Speaker 1>I said that Yaffitkoto's real name was Parker. That was
<v Speaker 1>his character's name. His real name was Frederick. He took
<v Speaker 1>his dad's name, his mom Comfred. I'm a Comfred. But
<v Speaker 1>what do we do? I mean, what do we do?
<v Speaker 1>What are we going to do with the last episode
<v Speaker 1>is already out there?
<v Speaker 2>I say, we take off and we knew the entire
<v Speaker 2>site from Morbid all right?
<v Speaker 1>We wasted no offense, no none, take it? Okay, fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>Let's dive back in, Yeah, back in for production of
<v Speaker 1>both Alien and Aliens. Let's go back to Alien, all right.
<v Speaker 2>So Alien was filmed in London at Pinewood Studios, which
<v Speaker 2>is the same spot that Aliens is later filmed directed
<v Speaker 2>by Sir Rely Scott.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, same place that they were shooting Superman one and two.
<v Speaker 2>I think we shot Star Wars there too, if I'm
<v Speaker 2>not mistaken.
<v Speaker 1>It was a popular place to be shooting, some amazing place,
<v Speaker 1>big place.
<v Speaker 2>Hey. A couple of notes on some actors that I
<v Speaker 2>wanted to throw in here that I forgot real quick.
<v Speaker 2>Helen Muran auditioned for a role in Alien, didn't get it.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, how about that she's too hot back then? Gosh,
<v Speaker 1>she was major. She was a really good looking back then.
<v Speaker 2>And apparently we can thank Warren Batty for Sigourney Weavers Discovery.
<v Speaker 2>Really yeah, he saw her on stage and recommended.
<v Speaker 1>Her to producer David Guyler.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, probably saw her and thought rare, who's that?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, let's talk special effects?
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Okay, sounds good.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So we've got two different groups of guys that
<v Speaker 1>did special effects on these two movies. I think I
<v Speaker 1>mentioned last time that the guys responsible for kind of
<v Speaker 1>the design of the ship were Ron Cobb and Chris Foss.
<v Speaker 1>So Ron Cobb had been a Disney animator at like
<v Speaker 1>age seventeen. I ended up getting laid off on that
<v Speaker 1>got a job doing Dark Star, which is where he
<v Speaker 1>met Dan O'Bannon. He ended up working on Star Wars,
<v Speaker 1>he worked on Raiders, He worked on Conan, Back to
<v Speaker 1>the Future, the Abyss Total recall. I mean, he became
<v Speaker 1>a major hero in the special effects world. Yep. He
<v Speaker 1>had been an artist and a cartoonist, like I said,
<v Speaker 1>but like he was starving. He was a starvin artist.
<v Speaker 1>He had even done the album cover for Jefferson Airplane album,
<v Speaker 1>which is how Yeah, that's how he got the job
<v Speaker 1>on Darkstar. Okay, Yeah, they called him up and they're like, okay,
<v Speaker 1>we kind of wanted we need you to design a
<v Speaker 1>spaceship for us called the Dark Star, and he drew
<v Speaker 1>it on a napkin at the pancake house. Well. Sure,
<v Speaker 1>And so when O'Bannon goes over to do Dune with
<v Speaker 1>Porto Rowski, he brings over that guy. They hit it
<v Speaker 1>off off, but as we know, Dune fails. But then
<v Speaker 1>he goes back. He designed you know in Star Wars,
<v Speaker 1>the Hammerhead, the guy with like the kind of car, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>he designed that. He's the guy that came up with
<v Speaker 1>that in the canteena scene that's fantastic. And he helped
<v Speaker 1>Spielberg right Night Sky Night Skies, which was supposed to
<v Speaker 1>be a Close Encounter sequel but kind of got split
<v Speaker 1>into e T and Pultercrest. Okay Stielberg. Later on Okay,
<v Speaker 1>Fantastic and Back to the Future, he was listed as
<v Speaker 1>the DeLorean time travel consultant. I don't know what that means, Okay.
<v Speaker 1>And then the other guy that helped out was Chris Foss.
<v Speaker 1>He was the guy who did the original black and
<v Speaker 1>white illustrations for the Joy of Sex, the very hairy
<v Speaker 1>black and white drawings for the Joy of Sex from
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy two.
<v Speaker 2>Flash forward to our Manscape episode wherever that appears.
<v Speaker 1>We should do that now, right if you look like
<v Speaker 1>the guy a Joy of Sex book from nineteen seventy two,
<v Speaker 1>It is time to do some man's and have we
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<v Speaker 1>the lawnmower weed whacker. Yes, we've got the weed whacker
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<v Speaker 1>Four point zero has just been released. Not the seventies.
<v Speaker 1>It is time to clean your stuff up, man, smooth
<v Speaker 1>your package, all right, d it.
<v Speaker 2>Is easier to see a draft on the prairie than
<v Speaker 2>it is to see a draft than John exactly.
<v Speaker 1>So be sure and use the promo code fans cited
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<v Speaker 2>Whack it.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So those two guys were the guys who made
<v Speaker 1>the space ships, but they brought on Roger Christian, who
<v Speaker 1>was the guy from Star Wars, who was the genius
<v Speaker 1>who said make it dirty. Right. He's the guy who
<v Speaker 1>was responsible for the Millennium Falcon looking dirty, and he's
<v Speaker 1>the guy for making the guy who made the no
<v Speaker 1>Strummo look like a space truck. Right.
<v Speaker 2>The used universe philosophy, and it's that's one idea that
<v Speaker 2>really Scott carried over to Blade Runner.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, absolutely so. Roger Christian was like the third
<v Speaker 1>guy hired to do Star Wars. He ended up doing
<v Speaker 1>second unit directing second unit for Return of the Jedi,
<v Speaker 1>But he said it was a symbiosis for him and
<v Speaker 1>Dan and Ron all together. He said, if it would
<v Speaker 1>have just been Dan, it would look like Dark Star.
<v Speaker 1>If it had just been Raun, it looked like Star Trek.
<v Speaker 1>But what he did was make you believe you were
<v Speaker 1>on a space truck that had been traveling for years
<v Speaker 1>and years in space.
<v Speaker 2>That's interesting.
<v Speaker 1>Side note, he directed The Cinder, which happens to be
<v Speaker 1>Quentin Tarantino's favorite horror movie, The Cinder. Yeah, okay, so
<v Speaker 1>that covers the guys who did this special effects for Alien.
<v Speaker 1>One of the things I want to mention nuts.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if we'd call the special effects or not,
<v Speaker 2>but there's actually a scene where Ash is doing an
<v Speaker 2>autopsy on the face hug. Yeah, okay, and it looks
<v Speaker 2>incredibly real. Yes, well, that's because they were using real
<v Speaker 2>oysters and a sheep kidney in this model.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it wasn't like an inside one of those horseshoe crabs, right,
<v Speaker 1>didn't they take a horseshoe crab and put it in?
<v Speaker 2>I think they combined several different I know they used
<v Speaker 2>the sheep kidney and they used oysters. Yeah, but because
<v Speaker 2>the lights were so strong, they had to move quickly
<v Speaker 2>during filming, and that sucker started to stink.
<v Speaker 1>Oh reps. Oh nasty. But he had his face right
<v Speaker 1>up in there too, Yeah, exactly. Okay.
<v Speaker 2>So one of the things I want to talk about
<v Speaker 2>is the ship. The actual alien vessel. Yeah, I don't
<v Speaker 2>think it has a name, just that horseshoe looking spacecraft.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the thing that was supposed to be a pyramid
<v Speaker 1>but then they changed it up.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so when they investigate what John Hurt goes on
<v Speaker 2>board and they're looking around, they find what the fans
<v Speaker 2>called the space jockey.
<v Speaker 1>Oh right, the old Yeah, the old carcass of the
<v Speaker 1>guy who had had his chest burst from long ago.
<v Speaker 2>Right, It's like this bigger bipedal humanoid looking thing. And
<v Speaker 2>you actually get kind of the backstory on this. Have
<v Speaker 2>you ever seen Prometheus?
<v Speaker 1>I have not seen Prometheus, But anyway, after Alioats wore,
<v Speaker 1>I was just like, I'm just done with this franchise.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sorry.
<v Speaker 2>Well, so that ship, the horseshoe ship, James Cameron wanted
<v Speaker 2>that again for Aliens, and when he contacted the people said, hey,
<v Speaker 2>I need I need that ship. Can we use that ship?
<v Speaker 2>You know that model? We don't know where it is,
<v Speaker 2>We can't find it, and so so they start looking
<v Speaker 2>around for stuff from the movie Alien, can't find the shuttle,
<v Speaker 2>can't find you know, these different models, and nobody knows
<v Speaker 2>where it is. Well, somebody finally speaks up and they're like, well,
<v Speaker 2>I think it's over it in Jimmy's backyard.
<v Speaker 1>Like by his driveway.
<v Speaker 2>Jimmy, Well, just the guy, I mean one of the guys,
<v Speaker 2>one of the guys from the movie Alien. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 2>mean somebody had it and it was sitting back just
<v Speaker 2>kind of rusting in their driveway.
<v Speaker 1>Oh wow. So the model makers.
<v Speaker 2>From Aliens went over to his house retrieved it. Now
<v Speaker 2>he can weed eat or whatever. They took it back,
<v Speaker 2>they cleaned it up, and they used the exact same
<v Speaker 2>one for Aliens.
<v Speaker 1>Oh that's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>I watched the special edition of Aliens, which Jim Cameron
<v Speaker 2>calls the definitive edition. And I know we'll talk about
<v Speaker 2>the extra scenes here in a minute, but I don't know,
<v Speaker 2>do we get a good look at that ship in
<v Speaker 2>the Okay? Really that's the special edition because you do
<v Speaker 2>see the ship. Yeah, and that's usually actually see nudes
<v Speaker 2>family discover that ship.
<v Speaker 1>Wow you don't know this? Yeah, no, so I watched
<v Speaker 1>the original version. I didn't watch the extended cut, so
<v Speaker 1>like that scene is not in the original cut.
<v Speaker 2>We will talk about the awesome, amazing additional scenes that
<v Speaker 2>were cut. Yeah, we'll talk about that here A minute
<v Speaker 2>once we get.
<v Speaker 1>Through special effects. Okay, So talking about that gigantic ship,
<v Speaker 1>he wanted it to be as big as it could
<v Speaker 1>possibly be, and it wasn't big enough for him. So
<v Speaker 1>what he ended up doing was putting little kids inside
<v Speaker 1>the space suits. As a matter of fact, he put
<v Speaker 1>his own kids, like his two sons. Really Scott's boys, right, yeah, really,
<v Speaker 1>Scott's sons are two of the astronauts and a cinematographer.
<v Speaker 1>His son is the other astronaut. To make the space
<v Speaker 1>jockey look bigger, and to make the big cavernous kind
<v Speaker 1>of you know, biomechanical thing that they're inside looked bigger,
<v Speaker 1>he had little kids inside of those. That's fantastic. That's
<v Speaker 1>a good idea. And as they were lighting the place,
<v Speaker 1>you know that you've got the set designer. And he
<v Speaker 1>starts flipping on the lights and he only hits two
<v Speaker 1>and Ridley Scott goes, stop, we are not putting any
<v Speaker 1>more lights in this. He's like, Ridley, got I've got
<v Speaker 1>like thirteen more lights to light this place up. We
<v Speaker 1>need to see all. He's like, no, this needs to
<v Speaker 1>be dark. It needs to be mysterious. He goes, you're
<v Speaker 1>never going to see it, he goes it will work,
<v Speaker 1>and it was the most effective use of mystery of
<v Speaker 1>your just catching hints of what's going on, and he's
<v Speaker 1>letting your imagination do all of the rest.
<v Speaker 2>It's the Jaws theory, right, right. We don't get a
<v Speaker 2>good look at the alien. We really don't get a
<v Speaker 2>great look at the Shark and Jaws, right, which is
<v Speaker 2>interesting because really Scott based Alien on a couple of movies, right,
<v Speaker 2>So he wanted to feel like Jaws in space. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>which Jaws in nineteen seventy five film in nineteen seventy nine.
<v Speaker 2>You can clearly see the influence of Jaws. He wanted
<v Speaker 2>it to kind of feel like Rosemary's Baby, Okay, and
<v Speaker 2>then he wanted the shock factor and the death feel
<v Speaker 2>to be like Texas Chainsaw masking.
<v Speaker 1>How about that? Oh yeah, that's great. That is great.
<v Speaker 1>So the other effective thing they did on the special
<v Speaker 1>effects was the use of the point of view cam
<v Speaker 1>and of the oh like the TV screens, like as
<v Speaker 1>they're watching what's going on, because we can, as the
<v Speaker 1>audience can accept hey, we've got this grainy image on
<v Speaker 1>the TV screen. So the special effects don't have to
<v Speaker 1>be perfect because it's on this grainy TV screen that
<v Speaker 1>we're watching it, and then we don't have to see
<v Speaker 1>a lot of action from the actors in these caverns
<v Speaker 1>because he gives us their point of view as they're
<v Speaker 1>going through intercuts. It all perfectly, so beautifully filmed. Awesome job.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, we're bouncing around here, but I want to go
<v Speaker 2>on that thought as well. So you mentioned the TV
<v Speaker 2>camera the POV version, and I remember when I first
<v Speaker 2>saw Alien. Each one of the Marines has a video
<v Speaker 2>camera on its shoulder, yes, and Gorman, Burke and Ripley
<v Speaker 2>are watching back in the APV. I remember watching this
<v Speaker 2>going what is happening?
<v Speaker 1>I can't get a good look.
<v Speaker 2>And you see, you hear shotguns, you hear the alien squealing,
<v Speaker 2>and Hudson's in the camera going.
<v Speaker 1>Lot's get the heck out of here.
<v Speaker 2>They got the sarge man, you know, switching people, and
<v Speaker 2>it's so good.
<v Speaker 1>It is what these movies are all about. It is
<v Speaker 1>the mystery and terror of the unknown, right like the
<v Speaker 1>alien is like the in literature, he is the other.
<v Speaker 1>He is that unknown. We're afraid of this thing. We
<v Speaker 1>don't know what it is, and it's that unknown that
<v Speaker 1>makes us scared and by leaving things in the dark
<v Speaker 1>and leaving things where you're just hearing what's going on
<v Speaker 1>instead of being able to see them. He captures that
<v Speaker 1>moment of the unknown for the audience. Particularly in Aliens.
<v Speaker 2>You get that one great shot where they're walking around
<v Speaker 2>the nest. Yeah you as the audience member, No, they're walking.
<v Speaker 2>It's like a hive, right right. You get that one
<v Speaker 2>great shot where the alien jumped on that one character
<v Speaker 2>back boom, and then it jumps to the TV and
<v Speaker 2>it's mass chaos.
<v Speaker 1>Yep, super scary. Okay, so let's jump back to Alien
<v Speaker 1>all right. So at the beginning of this movie, you
<v Speaker 1>have this very Kubrick two thousand and one Space Odyssey
<v Speaker 1>style of film, with this vast openness of space, this
<v Speaker 1>giant space barge, and even once they land, it's fantastical
<v Speaker 1>and huge on the outside, and then on the inside
<v Speaker 1>they find these gigantic caverns and they have these ancient
<v Speaker 1>gigantic space astronauts that leave the skeleton behind, and it's
<v Speaker 1>all leading you up to the Egg and that moment
<v Speaker 1>where Cain is struck, and from that point on it
<v Speaker 1>moves from all these big giant caverns into these tight
<v Speaker 1>almost claustrophobic, congested crawl through spaces, and you're fooled once
<v Speaker 1>Cain is freed and you think, oh, you know, we've
<v Speaker 1>we've gotten past the immediate danger. They have this very
<v Speaker 1>innimate dinner, it's all cozy, and then boom, chest bursting
<v Speaker 1>scene and we have claustrophobic tight spaces throughout the rest
<v Speaker 1>of the movie.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's fantastic. The chest bursting scene is so shocking
<v Speaker 2>to the characters. Right, we talked about how really Scott
<v Speaker 2>wanted it to be shocking to the actors. Yes, so
<v Speaker 2>he didn't tell what was going to have that high
<v Speaker 2>pressured blood squirt.
<v Speaker 1>You can tell Veronica Kart right, well.
<v Speaker 2>Didn't sign up for that, right, she got scored right
<v Speaker 2>in the face. Yeah, that's pretty good impressure. I thinks
<v Speaker 2>the first attempt on the chest purssure didn't work, but
<v Speaker 2>it actually makes.
<v Speaker 1>It to the screen. It's actually really cool.
<v Speaker 2>You see that jump in his shirt, but it doesn't
<v Speaker 2>tear through his shirt, but you have the blood that
<v Speaker 2>just starts pooling and then it rips through and everybody
<v Speaker 2>steps back, they're like, what what what's going on here?
<v Speaker 1>It makes it even better the fact that it doesn't
<v Speaker 1>get all the way out the.
<v Speaker 2>First I know, and it's got to like.
<v Speaker 1>It's a it's a it's a small shock that makes
<v Speaker 1>you go, okay, that's all.
<v Speaker 2>Oh, big shock, right, and then their two shocks to
<v Speaker 2>do anything, and that thing scarries off and now you
<v Speaker 2>got a major problem to deal with.
<v Speaker 1>So the chest bursting scene is one of the most
<v Speaker 1>iconic moments in all of film history. I agree it
<v Speaker 1>was that the chest Burster, the small Alien was not
<v Speaker 1>inspired by a Geiger painting. It was inspired by this
<v Speaker 1>artist named Francis Bacon, and he did a series of
<v Speaker 1>paintings called Three Studies at the Base of the Crucifixion.
<v Speaker 1>So if you want to go google that three Studies
<v Speaker 1>in the Base of Crucifixion Francis Bacon, you go look
<v Speaker 1>at that. It is the baby alien face for sure.
<v Speaker 2>What Yes, doesn't seem like it goes together, but okay.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, it's it's interesting that they that they'd
<v Speaker 1>grown up alien and the baby Alien came from different
<v Speaker 1>art wrists.
<v Speaker 2>That is very interesting.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>One of the things that makes the Alien Warrior scary,
<v Speaker 2>you know, there's you have the names for these things.
<v Speaker 2>You have the chest Burster yes, you have the face hugger,
<v Speaker 2>you have the Warrior, Yeah, you have the queen. Yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>the Warrior has no eyes, okay, which makes it even
<v Speaker 2>more scary. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the exoskeleton like a bug, the very phallic head.
<v Speaker 1>M m yep.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, you know you get a good look at that
<v Speaker 2>alien skull in Predator Part two?
<v Speaker 1>Oh right, you remember that?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, So Danny Glover is chasing the Predator around futuristic
<v Speaker 2>Los Angeles. He manages to get on the ship, and
<v Speaker 2>the predator has taking trophies.
<v Speaker 1>One of them is a human skull.
<v Speaker 2>That you see, and one of them is the alien skull.
<v Speaker 2>I get a good look at how the actual biology
<v Speaker 2>of the alien.
<v Speaker 1>Right, Well, you know, the Predator is a perfect survivor,
<v Speaker 1>unclouded by conscience or remorse or illusions of morality. Nice.
<v Speaker 2>We need to talk about Predator sometime, Yes we do. Okay, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>I got something to talk about. I know we're all
<v Speaker 2>over the place. A couple of things, the xenomorph.
<v Speaker 1>All we know is that there's still no contact with
<v Speaker 1>the colony and that zeno morph may be involved. A
<v Speaker 1>what a zeno morph? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>The alien Warrior from Alien Only is on screen four.
<v Speaker 1>Minutes in the retirement. I believe that four minutes. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>It goes back to that idea of what you can't
<v Speaker 2>see as scarier, right. Okay, the slime used when every
<v Speaker 2>time the alien like opens his mouth and jets out
<v Speaker 2>all this disgusting saliva slime, that's ky jelly.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, a little more on that whole rape thing exactly.
<v Speaker 2>But here's the thing I found interesting. So when Dan
<v Speaker 2>O'Bannon was writing screenplay for the Original Alien, he came
<v Speaker 2>and sort of had a block. He's like, well, what
<v Speaker 2>is a reason why these guys don't just get a
<v Speaker 2>gun and shoot this thing?
<v Speaker 1>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Well, but why don't they just go kill it?
<v Speaker 1>Right? Right?
<v Speaker 2>So that's where the acid blood comes into play. Right,
<v Speaker 2>It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>Even if they had had guns, it would have been
<v Speaker 1>potentially more damaging, as we find out when we get
<v Speaker 1>to aliens, then it would be helpful. And so what
<v Speaker 1>they resort to are these primitive like I mean, it's
<v Speaker 1>a cattle prod, but it looks like a spear right right,
<v Speaker 1>and then you've got fire like the first weapon Prometheus
<v Speaker 1>bringing it down. Yeah, that's the way that they have
<v Speaker 1>to fight it. In the Original Alien, because there are
<v Speaker 1>no guns.
<v Speaker 2>When they make that first incision on the face Hugger
<v Speaker 2>and it bleeds, it's going to go through the hole,
<v Speaker 2>they have to go and stop it from burning through
<v Speaker 2>the ship.
<v Speaker 1>Right. Okay, So, unlike most horror movies, the characters and
<v Speaker 1>the actors in this are all old. I mean, you
<v Speaker 1>think about your standard horror movie, it's typically teenage romping
<v Speaker 1>in the you know, you get busy and then you
<v Speaker 1>get killed. Right, That's what happens with most horror movies.
<v Speaker 1>You get busy, then you get killed. Right. But Sigourney
<v Speaker 1>Weaver was the youngest actor among these guys, and she
<v Speaker 1>was twenty nine at the time. And so I think
<v Speaker 1>that is a part of why this movie was successful,
<v Speaker 1>beyond just its appeal as an entertaining movie, is that
<v Speaker 1>the audience could identify with these working Joe older folks. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So here's another little tidbit. The actors nearly passed out
<v Speaker 1>from the space suits that they had to wear.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, when you talk about the hot space suits, like
<v Speaker 2>Tom Scarett, Veronica Cartwright, they were like they kept passing
<v Speaker 2>out because it's so hot, and they're like, ah, you
<v Speaker 2>guys would be fine. It's no problem. Well, really, Scott
<v Speaker 2>put his kids in there, and when his kids passed out,
<v Speaker 2>then they're like, okay, we need to fix the space suits.
<v Speaker 1>All right. So let's just run through the plot of
<v Speaker 1>both of these movies, because they're so so different but
<v Speaker 1>so the same as well. All right. So in both movies,
<v Speaker 1>you start off with someone awakening to what appears to
<v Speaker 1>be a peaceful situation. Right, they've come out of hypersleep.
<v Speaker 1>In Alien, it was all of the crew members. You
<v Speaker 1>got a page blowing. I don't know why there's wind
<v Speaker 1>on spacecraft, but you've got the pages blowing, but everything
<v Speaker 1>is quiet, and Serene, I was just gonna say, there's
<v Speaker 1>wind on a spacecraft, the same reason why there's like
<v Speaker 1>a waterfall on the spacecraft?
<v Speaker 2>Right, who knows it looks good on screen?
<v Speaker 1>Right? And then you've got Ripley in Aliens being woken
<v Speaker 1>from her world. Then bad news. We're not at Earth.
<v Speaker 1>An alien mother has woken us up because there's a
<v Speaker 1>distress signal coming right, right, And bad news on Aliens,
<v Speaker 1>you've been asleep for fifty seven years. You're having these
<v Speaker 1>horrible dreams because you've destroyed this giant cargo ship. You're
<v Speaker 1>now demoted, and then uh oh, turns out we've lost
<v Speaker 1>communication with LV four two six. Then in both scenarios
<v Speaker 1>you've got different characters in each of them going no,
<v Speaker 1>this is a bad idea, we should not do that.
<v Speaker 1>In alien, it was Lambert who was like, maybe we
<v Speaker 1>should just go home, Maybe we should just forget about
<v Speaker 1>this the ship go back and say we didn't find
<v Speaker 1>any right, right, And she was right, right, she was right.
<v Speaker 1>That was the thing. I mean, it was. It was
<v Speaker 1>this great, much deeper message going on the low class workers,
<v Speaker 1>like the guys who were the grunts, who were only
<v Speaker 1>getting a half share, they're the ones with the right idea.
<v Speaker 1>Why don't we freeze Kane. Just freeze him now and
<v Speaker 1>then take him back and then we can fix the
<v Speaker 1>problem when we get someplace.
<v Speaker 2>We're we're just truckers, right, we're not doctors, right, right?
<v Speaker 1>Hey.
<v Speaker 2>Even before that, yes, when Kin gets a thing attached
<v Speaker 2>to his face, they come back to the ship, Yep,
<v Speaker 2>they're like, Ripley, let us in. Ripley's like, what's going on.
<v Speaker 2>He's got a thing on his face. I need to
<v Speaker 2>know what's happening. And Dallas is like open the door.
<v Speaker 2>Ripley just open the freaking door. We need to get
<v Speaker 2>him in here and get him treated. She's like, no,
<v Speaker 2>The answer is no, you know the quarantine rules. If
<v Speaker 2>Ripley would have been able to do her job, the
<v Speaker 2>ship would have been.
<v Speaker 1>Safe and people would have saved life.
<v Speaker 2>And Ash is the one one if you'll remember who
<v Speaker 2>pushes the button. I'll let him in, yep, because he
<v Speaker 2>knows what's happening, and he's working against everybody the whole time.
<v Speaker 1>Right. And then of course in Aliens, when they say Ripley,
<v Speaker 1>we need you to go along as a consultant, she
<v Speaker 1>very wisely says, screw you. I'm not gonna do that.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not gonna do it. And it's only upon the
<v Speaker 1>promise that you're going there to kill it, right, not
<v Speaker 1>to study it, not to bring it back, but to
<v Speaker 1>kill it.
<v Speaker 2>That and the idea that there's families involved, and that
<v Speaker 2>concerns are because Ripley just lost her daughter, right, which
<v Speaker 2>is another incredible scene in a special mission.
<v Speaker 1>And okay, let's talk about let's talk about the scenes
<v Speaker 1>that are not in it.
<v Speaker 2>Go okay, So there's four important scenes that are cut
<v Speaker 2>from the director's cut of Aliens.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Okay, If you get the DVD.
<v Speaker 2>James Cameron has said this is the best cut of Aliens. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>so you have some really cool stuff. You see LV
<v Speaker 2>four twenty six, like a workday Okay, there's like guys working,
<v Speaker 2>there's a guy in charge, and there's even kids like
<v Speaker 2>riding bicycles down the hallway. You see families doing stuff.
<v Speaker 1>At L six. That makes it a little more meaningful. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Which the name of their town. I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>you know this, it's called Hadley's Hope.
<v Speaker 1>Oh I did, I did not?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, okay, so you see them and they're talking and
<v Speaker 2>like one guy's talking to the boss. He's like, hey, boss,
<v Speaker 2>there's this guy and he's found this object and he
<v Speaker 2>wants to know if you'll get credit for this, if
<v Speaker 2>you can get credit. And guy's like, well, okay, just.
<v Speaker 1>Tell him it's fine. Just go check it out, take
<v Speaker 1>a look at it.
<v Speaker 2>Well that's Nut's family, Nude's mom, dad, brother, and of
<v Speaker 2>course Newt are on board. They're scavenging, they're running around,
<v Speaker 2>they're doing whatever. They come across the big horsho ship.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so they're like, sweet, whatever we find is ours,
<v Speaker 2>We're gonna go in check it out right, Nude's dad.
<v Speaker 2>He's the one who comes out. He's got the face
<v Speaker 2>hugger on his face.
<v Speaker 1>This is interesting. The way that they have it in
<v Speaker 1>the original cut is a very it's weird because here
<v Speaker 1>we've got again, let's compare, you've got two surprise enemies,
<v Speaker 1>right in an alien surprise ash the lowly scientific offer. Right.
<v Speaker 1>Turns out he's the one that's got the secret info
<v Speaker 1>from mother the ship, right, from the company whatever that
<v Speaker 1>and they just call it the company buyl and new Tawny. Yeah. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And so he's the one that is the surprise enemy, right,
<v Speaker 1>He's the one that ends up trying to sabotage the
<v Speaker 1>rest of the crew because the most important thing is
<v Speaker 1>bring the alien back. And then again, alien's another surprise enemy,
<v Speaker 1>the guy that you think you can trust, the guy
<v Speaker 1>with that sweet face. No, turns out, not only is
<v Speaker 1>he trying to bring the aliens back, but he's the
<v Speaker 1>guy who sent Newt's family to go investigate. Right. She's
<v Speaker 1>Ripley's confronting him and she's like, I read the report.
<v Speaker 1>It says Burke Carter j need to go investigate, right,
<v Speaker 1>and yeah, he's the one that not only is trying
<v Speaker 1>to sabotage the mission, but he's the one that sent
<v Speaker 1>those people to die in the first place and seems
<v Speaker 1>to have no remorse. Is a mistake, it's a bad call.
<v Speaker 1>It was a bad call.
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna nail you to the wall, Burke.
<v Speaker 1>And so it's I can't believe that she doesn't out
<v Speaker 1>Burke instantaneously, like how did she not already?
<v Speaker 2>She defends I still don't understand that scene. They're like,
<v Speaker 2>I say, we wasted them, and Ripley's.
<v Speaker 1>Like, no, we can't waste it. Why not? Who cares?
<v Speaker 1>Right wasting?
<v Speaker 2>But two other scenes from director's cut, Burke is visiting Ripley.
<v Speaker 2>She's dealing with her PTSD.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, right, and Ripley.
<v Speaker 2>Says to Burke, where's my daughter. He's like, well, we
<v Speaker 2>looked her up. Here she is, and he gives her
<v Speaker 2>a picture she died, right, and it's a picture. He
<v Speaker 2>hands her a picture she looks at she starts crying.
<v Speaker 2>She's like, I was supposed to be on for her
<v Speaker 2>tenth birthday whatever.
<v Speaker 1>That's a picture of.
<v Speaker 2>Sigourney Weaver's mother, which is pretty cool. Yes, And then
<v Speaker 2>there's a fantastic scene where the Marines set up and
<v Speaker 2>they're like at this they're they're honed in, they're bunker down,
<v Speaker 2>and they're ready for the aliens to start to come.
<v Speaker 2>But they've set up these sentry guns. All they do
<v Speaker 2>is just firefire, fire, fire, firefire, And it is the
<v Speaker 2>coolest scene. I can't believe they cut. It's unbelieve pievably
<v Speaker 2>tense because they're coming, like hordes of aliens are coming
<v Speaker 2>and these guns are set up to shoot like motion detecting.
<v Speaker 1>Nice. Right. And I had a friend.
<v Speaker 2>Chris Alexander who is one of our patreons.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you Chris and Genie.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, he told us about this when it was shown
<v Speaker 2>on like ABC or something. He's like, they had these
<v Speaker 2>sentry guns and they're firing and it was the coolest thing.
<v Speaker 2>We're like, I don't think you saw the same movie.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, no, it was, I'm telling you so sorry.
<v Speaker 1>The Ice police come and arrest od.
<v Speaker 2>He swore up and down about these centry guns, and
<v Speaker 2>when I finally saw it, of course, Chris sorry.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So then we've got facing off with the alien, right, yes,
<v Speaker 1>and facing off with the aliens, yes. So facing off
<v Speaker 1>with the alien. Interestingly, we have Ripley doing it all
<v Speaker 1>by yourself. By the end, right, everybody's done in and out,
<v Speaker 1>and it's really with it's in Aliens that she learns
<v Speaker 1>to work with a team, right, Okay, And this goes
<v Speaker 1>back to on the first one. She is learning to
<v Speaker 1>be a leader. Right, She's been kind of overridden and ignored.
<v Speaker 1>Even the space truckers down in the motor room are
<v Speaker 1>kind of laughing at her and dismissing her, right, sure.
<v Speaker 1>And so it's through all of this that she becomes
<v Speaker 1>a leader. But it's in Aliens that she learns to
<v Speaker 1>trust others to help her out, and she learns to
<v Speaker 1>care for little Newt and to trust of all of them. Bishop.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's a great scene where she meets Bishop for
<v Speaker 2>the first time. Right, the knife scenes.
<v Speaker 1>Stay away from me, Bishop, yeah, the synthetic I prefer
<v Speaker 1>the term artificial person myself. Okay. So then in both
<v Speaker 1>movies we have the surprise stowaway, right, this is the
<v Speaker 1>fourth scene like we had act one, Act two at three,
<v Speaker 1>this is act four where in alien she is she's
<v Speaker 1>done right, She's in the getaway craft. She's just her
<v Speaker 1>and Jonesy in the craft. She's taken off her clothes,
<v Speaker 1>she's done closing log. It's just we're done. And then
<v Speaker 1>there's the surprise still away, and how do we find
<v Speaker 1>out about it? This slow moving hand comes out from
<v Speaker 1>the pipes and the mechanics inside the ship, and it's
<v Speaker 1>this very subtle, like gasp. Right on the other hand,
<v Speaker 1>with Aliens, our surprise stowaway does the complete opposite, and
<v Speaker 1>you think, you're like, everything's okay. Oh, Bishop is chest bursting.
<v Speaker 1>How can this happen? How can Bishop be chest bursting?
<v Speaker 1>He's not really and you're like, oh, it's the tail
<v Speaker 1>and then he's torn in half and his two halves
<v Speaker 1>of his body are cast in different directions. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you couldn't get less subtle than the stowaway in Aliens.
<v Speaker 2>Well, the first time I saw Alien, I was like, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>that thing is not gone. We're not done with the story.
<v Speaker 1>In Aliens, I was like.
<v Speaker 2>They took off, they barely made it. She risk you
<v Speaker 2>knew they're done. And then that stinger thing comes through
<v Speaker 2>his chest and I was like, what is going on here?
<v Speaker 1>Okay? So with the original Alien, the movie was supposed
<v Speaker 1>to end with the destruction of the Nostromo right right.
<v Speaker 1>Quick side note Nostromo. You know this, Joseph. Joseph Conrad,
<v Speaker 1>who wrote Heart of Darkness also wrote Nostromo. Do you
<v Speaker 1>know what the name of the town that Nostromo was from. No, Silaco.
<v Speaker 2>Silaco is the name of the ship in Aliens. Right,
<v Speaker 2>So James Cameron, I love it.
<v Speaker 1>He sees that Dan O'Bannon or whoever it is, that
<v Speaker 1>his name the ship has done this Joseph Conrad reference,
<v Speaker 1>and so he goes to the reference and finds another
<v Speaker 1>ship name. I thought it was brilliant. By the way.
<v Speaker 1>At the same time this is interesting. At the same
<v Speaker 1>time that Ridley Scott is filming this, Francis Ford Coppola
<v Speaker 1>is filming Apocalypse Now, which is just Heart of Darkness,
<v Speaker 1>which is also by Joseph Conrad. He must have been
<v Speaker 1>he must have been a guy on the scene at
<v Speaker 1>that point. Must have been big in the late seventies.
<v Speaker 1>So anyw the movie Alien was supposed to end with
<v Speaker 1>the destruction of the Nostromo, but really said we need
<v Speaker 1>a fourth act, and he convinced Fox to finance let
<v Speaker 1>him go back and film more stuff. And what he
<v Speaker 1>wanted to happen was the Alien to win it was
<v Speaker 1>supposed to end with the alien biting off Ripley's head,
<v Speaker 1>but the studio said, no freaking way, what Yes, that
<v Speaker 1>is true. That's interesting.
<v Speaker 2>I was thinking to myself, how much Alien if you
<v Speaker 2>kind of reversed who the protagonists the antagonists are, it's
<v Speaker 2>kind of like die Hard, right, there's like one man
<v Speaker 2>or alien running through the hallways trying to survive, people
<v Speaker 2>trying to kill him.
<v Speaker 1>And whoa, I took out this guy. I'm still alive. WHOA,
<v Speaker 1>I took out this guy. I'm still alive. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>that's good. I hadn't really thought that maybe the first
<v Speaker 1>connection I ever heard, Like, okay, and speaking of connections
<v Speaker 1>that I believe exists that I have not been able
<v Speaker 1>to very anywhere on Google. Okay, okay, Captain Marvel, Yes
<v Speaker 1>you have a cat. Yes, and the cat's name is Goose.
<v Speaker 1>Nice throwback to top Gun. But the Aliens are frightened
<v Speaker 1>of this cat because it's not really a cat, it's
<v Speaker 1>a flirkin' Yes. I think I mentioned last time that
<v Speaker 1>my dad was sure that Jonesy, the cat in Alien
<v Speaker 1>who is also in Aliens, and that scene where things
<v Speaker 1>start to go bad, the cat is going crazy and
<v Speaker 1>you're like, oh, is the cat going to have a
<v Speaker 1>chest burster? So he was convinced that the alien had
<v Speaker 1>implanted inside the cat. I'm putting forth this theory. Now,
<v Speaker 1>the cat from Captain Marvel is the same cat from
<v Speaker 1>Alien and Aliens, and it was never a cat. It
<v Speaker 1>was always a flurkin. That is why the alien was
<v Speaker 1>not able to implant it at the time that Ripley
<v Speaker 1>was running away in Alien. Okay, yeah, prove me wrong.
<v Speaker 1>Internet proved me wrong. Okay, Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Also when you say to yourself, hey, I think those
<v Speaker 2>actors have been in the same movies together and stuff.
<v Speaker 1>So listen to this.
<v Speaker 2>Bill Paxton and Michael Bean and Rick Rossovich from Terminator,
<v Speaker 2>we're all in Lords of Discipline. So in Leath the
<v Speaker 2>Weapon two, Jeanette Goldstein and Mark Rolston who plays Drake
<v Speaker 2>and Aliens, they both get killed in like the first
<v Speaker 2>twenty minutes of Leath.
<v Speaker 1>The Webon two.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Agen Johnson right, the other one yeses right, And
<v Speaker 2>then of course Sigourney Weaver and James Cameron get together
<v Speaker 2>again an Avatar. The bad guy in Avatar is played
<v Speaker 2>by Stephen Lang. They originally wanted Michael Bean, but James
<v Speaker 2>Cameron's like, I don't want this to be an Aliens reunion.
<v Speaker 1>So it was, but it was still a bad guy
<v Speaker 1>from Tombstone because he was Curly Bill, and he was
<v Speaker 1>Curly Bill and Tymestone wait to go nice. Okay, last thought.
<v Speaker 1>They both go out of the airlock, right, both movies,
<v Speaker 1>and with this alien getting shot out of the airlock.
<v Speaker 1>The first one just like the movie, more thoughtful. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>he's moving slow, she's slowly getting into the spacesuit. She's
<v Speaker 1>singing herself a little song about the starlight and star
<v Speaker 1>Wright and I don't know what she's singing, but right,
<v Speaker 1>it's very slow and methodical and thoughtful. And the last one,
<v Speaker 1>just like the movie and Aliens is war intents. I
<v Speaker 1>mean she's about to go out the airlock with the
<v Speaker 1>alien holding on by the crook of her elbow as
<v Speaker 1>it's getting sucked out. Yeah. I mean the end of
<v Speaker 1>the Alien defines the difference in these two movies, thoughtful
<v Speaker 1>versus intent. Okay, love it, thanks, Okay, we're ready to
<v Speaker 1>talk soundtrack.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, let's talk about Aliens for a moment. Okay, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>So during filming, they're over in Pinewood, James Cameron is
<v Speaker 2>an American director taking over a project that British people
<v Speaker 2>revere and they review Ridley Scott yep and James Cameron's
<v Speaker 2>not famous, right, He's done Terminator, but they are not
<v Speaker 2>familiar with it. So his British crew is openly uncooperative
<v Speaker 2>and difficult perspective.
<v Speaker 1>Right from their perspective, He's demanding and he's bully America.
<v Speaker 1>Know he're trying to make all movies. Apologies to all
<v Speaker 1>of ours making none of that.
<v Speaker 2>I know, I'm just I'm just vimentation.
<v Speaker 1>But he did he disregarded the importance of tea time.
<v Speaker 1>James Cameron is like, what the f is tea time?
<v Speaker 2>We don't stop making our movie at four o'clock for
<v Speaker 2>everybody to have tea. But there's a great story about
<v Speaker 2>how the tea lady, this wonderful little lady who's pushing
<v Speaker 2>her trolley around, Hello traps, would you like some tea?
<v Speaker 2>And he exploded at her, right.
<v Speaker 1>Almost as good as Dick van Dyke, almost, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like like Bridrick suckson.
<v Speaker 2>But anyway, the tea lady came around at the wrong
<v Speaker 2>time for an American director who is not used to
<v Speaker 2>this and under pressure trying to get everything, and of
<v Speaker 2>course these guys are happy to take tea time, and
<v Speaker 2>she got both barrels from James Cameron. Just a couple
<v Speaker 2>of other additional things I want to throw in on
<v Speaker 2>the filming process.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so you know most movies.
<v Speaker 2>Are filmed kind of out of sequence, but Aliens was
<v Speaker 2>intentionally filmed with this particular scene shot last where we
<v Speaker 2>meet the Marines. That was one of the last shots
<v Speaker 2>film for the movie, because they wanted that camaraderie of
<v Speaker 2>the actors who had been around each other for all
<v Speaker 2>this time.
<v Speaker 1>So brilliant that and they have that camaraderie. It's just
<v Speaker 1>like the space truck and Alien. You don't doubt for
<v Speaker 1>a second that those guys have been working together and
<v Speaker 1>hunting bugs or doing whatever four years.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, hey, you mentioned that one of the model
<v Speaker 2>makers made this great little painting on the side of
<v Speaker 2>the ship and it's called bug Stompers. Oh yeah, and
<v Speaker 2>it's kind of like a World War two thing where
<v Speaker 2>they would paint their the outside of their ship.
<v Speaker 1>And he spent all this time.
<v Speaker 2>He's real proud of it. Bug Stompers. It says we
<v Speaker 2>endanger species nice And he was real proud of it.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, you can't see it. Yeah, you know, you
<v Speaker 2>spend all this time and after it's not on the screen.
<v Speaker 1>And we failed to talk about the special effects guys
<v Speaker 1>from Aliens. I talked about them from Alien, but we
<v Speaker 1>didn't talk about the special effects guys from Aliens.
<v Speaker 2>You've got mister stan Winston, stan freakan Winston, holy smokes.
<v Speaker 2>So stan Winston was in charge of all of the
<v Speaker 2>creature stuff, right, And so he's the guy who gives
<v Speaker 2>us the chest burster that can move around and wiggle
<v Speaker 2>and has hands and arms, Like they looked at the
<v Speaker 2>original chest burster and it had like little nubs where
<v Speaker 2>the arms would be like, we're gonna go ahead and
<v Speaker 2>make those arms for our guy. And they gave him
<v Speaker 2>vertebrate where he could like move like a snake.
<v Speaker 1>Oh, it was so good. So they did some amazing
<v Speaker 1>special effects and I'm just going to touch on some
<v Speaker 1>of them here, but they had a running face hugger.
<v Speaker 1>How did they do that? Right? It's amazing. So the
<v Speaker 1>first shot like this is the scene where Burke has
<v Speaker 1>trapped Newt and Ripley inside of the place where the
<v Speaker 1>face huggers were being studied. And has let the face
<v Speaker 1>huggers loose. Right, they wake up and the face hugger
<v Speaker 1>is trying to get them from beside the bed, right,
<v Speaker 1>and then you see them run around. They do this
<v Speaker 1>beautiful thing where she sets off the fire alarm. So
<v Speaker 1>you get this intense, scary scene with flashing red lights.
<v Speaker 1>Brilliant number one. But then they've got this face hugger
<v Speaker 1>who's running. There's no CGI at this point, right, CGI
<v Speaker 1>non existent in this movie. So what they do. They've
<v Speaker 1>got this face hugger that runs along, appears to jump
<v Speaker 1>onto a chair and then jump at your face as
<v Speaker 1>the audience member is their point of view that's jumping in.
<v Speaker 1>So how do they do that? How do they make
<v Speaker 1>it run and jump? So the first shot they shoot
<v Speaker 1>with animatronic moving legs and it gets to a spot.
<v Speaker 1>Then they put a little eyelet in that spot. They
<v Speaker 1>tie a little string to it, and then they put
<v Speaker 1>the face hugger on the chair. And then they shoot
<v Speaker 1>a reverse shot and they take a string and they
<v Speaker 1>ganged the face hugger backwards to the islet, and then
<v Speaker 1>they put the face hugger back on the chair. They
<v Speaker 1>put the string from the camera's perspective, pull it toward
<v Speaker 1>the camera, and then run those three shots sequentially, so
<v Speaker 1>you have it animatronics running reverse shot of it being
<v Speaker 1>pulled backwards so it looks like it's jumping forwards, and
<v Speaker 1>then the point of view shot where it appears to
<v Speaker 1>jump at your face.
<v Speaker 2>And it's fantastic, it's incredible. You know, we haven't talked
<v Speaker 2>about the Queen. First of all, is a new creation
<v Speaker 2>for Aliens. Yeah, all James Cameron, It's all James Cameron.
<v Speaker 2>Hr Geyer was not involved in the second Aliens. These
<v Speaker 2>are Cameron's drawings and it's a full model. Like you said,
<v Speaker 2>there's no CGI, there's puppeteers. We're talking like, I think
<v Speaker 2>it's six guys to operate this. When I'm watching this,
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, wow, this is like Big Bird on steroids, right,
<v Speaker 2>So it's truly amazing how they made that work.
<v Speaker 1>Another reverse shot that they did was the shot where
<v Speaker 1>Hicks sticks his sho shotgun in the mouth. He did
<v Speaker 1>he had tried over and over to shove it and
<v Speaker 1>it kept missing them, And James Cameron's like, we'll just
<v Speaker 1>do it in reverse. Put it in there. I'll have
<v Speaker 1>you pull it out and then I'll run it backwards.
<v Speaker 1>Brilliant genius. One of the guys who was a special
<v Speaker 1>effects guy in the movie was Steve Norrington. He would
<v Speaker 1>go on to direct The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which
<v Speaker 1>wasn't that good, But he also directed Marvel's first movie
<v Speaker 1>Blade whoa Wow.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so Hadley's hope the power plant where they're running
<v Speaker 2>around If that looks familiar, that turned out to be
<v Speaker 2>excess chemicals in the Batman movie.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, they used that scene to
<v Speaker 1>do to do Batman. I forgot about that. Okay, So
<v Speaker 1>that scene where Bishop gets impaled by the Queen's tail, Yes,
<v Speaker 1>and he spurts all of the same you know milky
<v Speaker 1>stuff that we saw ash few out alien. Yes, that
<v Speaker 1>was yogurt mixed with milk. Uh huh. The problem was
<v Speaker 1>they left it sitting unrefrigerated all day out of frame,
<v Speaker 1>and he actually got sick. Yeah, he got food poisoning
<v Speaker 1>from it. Was up all night sick to his stomach
<v Speaker 1>and had to come in the next day and continue
<v Speaker 1>throwing that stuff in his mouth. He's like, hey, hey, guys,
<v Speaker 1>can we put in the refrigerator this time?
<v Speaker 2>I know it's supposed to vombit, but can I pretend
<v Speaker 2>this done? One of the scenes we haven't really talked
<v Speaker 2>about is when Sigourney Weaver gets in the Powerloader and
<v Speaker 2>she squares off against the Queen. It's the most fantastic
<v Speaker 2>scene in the movie. Dayleen Hurd says that as a producer,
<v Speaker 2>that's her single best moment of her career when she
<v Speaker 2>watched this in the theater and Sigourney Weaver comes out
<v Speaker 2>in the power Loader and says, get away from her,
<v Speaker 2>you bitch.
<v Speaker 1>Right, so awesome, and it's you got two different special
<v Speaker 1>effects guys on that one. The mechanical effects were handled
<v Speaker 1>by John Richardson and the creature effects were handled by
<v Speaker 1>Stan Winston, and so you get this awesome end where
<v Speaker 1>they put their two special effects into battle, the Powerloader
<v Speaker 1>and the alien. Two different effects crews develop each of them.
<v Speaker 1>And Powerloader they actually had a guy behind Sigourney Weaver
<v Speaker 1>who was really controlling the Powerloader right right, but basically
<v Speaker 1>she's like he's spooning her the whole time, and so
<v Speaker 1>the guys thought it would be hysterical if they put
<v Speaker 1>a little balloon.
<v Speaker 2>In his crotch area, and.
<v Speaker 1>So as they're filming, as they're filming the scene, all
<v Speaker 1>of a sudden, they start pumping this balloon and Sigourney
<v Speaker 1>was like, excuse me, excuse me, uh hello, what are
<v Speaker 1>you doing, sir John John, what's going on? That is hilarious.
<v Speaker 1>I'm giving it up to those guys. That is funny.
<v Speaker 2>You know, there were companies that contacted the movie studio
<v Speaker 2>because they wanted to buy these powerloaders.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's the special effects guys.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk score interception, okay.
<v Speaker 1>In Alien, Ridley Scott had wanted to use this guy
<v Speaker 1>named Isao Tomatilla, who was did like a bunch of
<v Speaker 1>from Japan, did a bunch of synthesizer kind of music.
<v Speaker 1>Would have sounded much more like a video game, more
<v Speaker 1>like Space Invaders went a Space Invader's music done done? Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Alan Ladd Junior said, why don't we go with Jerry
<v Speaker 1>Goldsmith because he's an icon and he's ridiculously tanalented, and
<v Speaker 1>this has got enough space stuff in it. We don't
<v Speaker 1>need video game sound effects, right.
<v Speaker 2>Jerry Goldsmith did the Grimlins soundtrack among many other things.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, many other things. And so Goldsmith had this original
<v Speaker 1>main title that was supposed to be beautiful and kind
<v Speaker 1>of almost romantic because he wanted to capture, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the beauty of space on that opening scene. And really
<v Speaker 1>Scott was like, I no, like this, can we do
<v Speaker 1>something else? And so Jerry Goldsmith said, so I rewrote
<v Speaker 1>it to be weird and strange and everybody loved it.
<v Speaker 1>That's great. So okay. Now for Aliens, we have our
<v Speaker 1>friend mister James Horner, who we've spoken about before. We
<v Speaker 1>talked about him in our Brave Heart episode. Detail in
<v Speaker 1>his history if you want to go check out our
<v Speaker 1>Brave Heart versus Gladiator episode. Interesting and ironic that really
<v Speaker 1>Scott did Gladiator. Of course, Now James Cameron is gonna
<v Speaker 1>go use James Horner for Aliens. Yeah, he uses James Horner, right,
<v Speaker 1>and James Horner, I mean Titanic best selling score in history, right, right,
<v Speaker 1>And they bring him in. He's got six weeks to
<v Speaker 1>write the score, which he says, he's okay, a problem,
<v Speaker 1>except for three weeks they don't have a movie to
<v Speaker 1>give him. They're still editing, and he's like, I felt
<v Speaker 1>bad for the editor too, because they keep filming and
<v Speaker 1>they keep bringing him new stuff and he cuts it
<v Speaker 1>all and then they come back in with new stuff
<v Speaker 1>and they're like, Okay, we've got to put all this in.
<v Speaker 1>And this isn't iMovie, guys. This is like Cape and
<v Speaker 1>Razor cutting film. This is hard stuff. So the editor
<v Speaker 1>is struggling to get it done, and until he's done
<v Speaker 1>with his part, James Horner can't do anything because there
<v Speaker 1>are literally thousands of music cues that he's got to write.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, and so he ends up with just a
<v Speaker 1>couple of weeks to write it. He puts all of
<v Speaker 1>this music together based on the way that it's edited,
<v Speaker 1>and then James Cameron and Gail Hurd go in and
<v Speaker 1>re edited everything. And so they come back and he's
<v Speaker 1>like done his best to put it together and they're like,
<v Speaker 1>wait a minute. I thought that this piece of music
<v Speaker 1>went with the scene. And I thought that this piece
<v Speaker 1>of music went with this cue. And he's like, it did,
<v Speaker 1>but you went and changed everything so I and they're like, well,
<v Speaker 1>then just you know, redo it. He goes, guys, I
<v Speaker 1>have an orchestra. I have to write music for them, right,
<v Speaker 1>He goes, if you want to give me four days,
<v Speaker 1>I can do it. I can get this done perfectly
<v Speaker 1>in four days. And Gale Hurt's like, we don't have
<v Speaker 1>that time. He goes, then I can't get it done,
<v Speaker 1>and she goes, well, I guess we'll just have to
<v Speaker 1>find someone who can. And he said, please do go
<v Speaker 1>for it. Please go do that, because if you can
<v Speaker 1>find somebody who can re edit, rewrite, do everything that
<v Speaker 1>you're asking in the time that you're asking, I've got
<v Speaker 1>something to learn from yep. And she said, yeah, we'll
<v Speaker 1>go ahead and use me. Okay. I was just bluffed.
<v Speaker 1>But as bad as that went, obviously James Cameron and
<v Speaker 1>James Horner got back to there. Okay, So I saw
<v Speaker 1>an interview with James Horner.
<v Speaker 2>He said basically that that situation went so bad he
<v Speaker 2>did not think he would ever work with James Cameron again. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>off the rails, super frustrating. Everybody was mad at each other.
<v Speaker 2>They left, good luck, that's close enough. That's the best
<v Speaker 2>I can do. Sorry, guys, good luck. And when James
<v Speaker 2>Cameron saw Braveheart, He's like, man, that score is so great.
<v Speaker 2>I'm calling Jamie again for my next project, Titanic. And
<v Speaker 2>I guess enough time had passed that Jamie was like, yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 2>let's do this.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, or enough money right right, that's fantastic. I think
<v Speaker 1>I think James Cameron had a little bit bigger budget
<v Speaker 1>for Titanic.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, okay, we were ready to talk reception of these
<v Speaker 2>two movies. Yeah, let's go for it, reception and final judgment.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So on Alien, okay, somebody came out the door
<v Speaker 1>and went hated it. No, nobody hated it. People were
<v Speaker 1>blown away, of course they were right.
<v Speaker 2>People fainted during the Chessburster scene, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>In fact, there's a Texas movie theater owner who got
<v Speaker 2>sick of people fainting and vomiting in his theater that
<v Speaker 2>he cut the Chessburster seat. So when people would watch
<v Speaker 2>the movie, if you watch Alien and there's no chest pursture, it.
<v Speaker 1>Doesn't make any sense. But there's no drama.
<v Speaker 2>What Yeah, No, so people were like, what what the heck?
<v Speaker 1>What what is going on here? It's like the Titanic?
<v Speaker 1>What the boat doesn't say.
<v Speaker 2>It, It's like watching Galaxy of Terror.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>The scene where Ash is decapitated, this is not even
<v Speaker 2>the chest pressure scene. He gets hit in the head
<v Speaker 2>with a fire extinguisher so hard they take his head off.
<v Speaker 1>It's a great scene.
<v Speaker 2>An usher in London in a movie theater just did
<v Speaker 2>a total face plank hit the deck.
<v Speaker 1>Oh you know.
<v Speaker 2>Karaoke, he said, Oh my gosh, here we go. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>So reception for aliens, Like I said, Gayleen Hurd said,
<v Speaker 2>the single greatest moment in her career is attending the
<v Speaker 2>theater in Hollywood and when Ripley comes out in the
<v Speaker 2>paralletter and says get away from her, you bet, and
<v Speaker 2>the whole theater erupts. She's like, this is the greatest
<v Speaker 2>moment of my life.
<v Speaker 1>Okay.
<v Speaker 2>Individually, when the actors saw the movie for the first time, okay, So,
<v Speaker 2>Michael Bean and Bill Paxton saw this movie together. They
<v Speaker 2>watched it from the projection room. They thought they had
<v Speaker 2>a hit, but they hadn't seen it yet. So Michael
<v Speaker 2>Bean said that when they're watching this that Bill Paxton,
<v Speaker 2>who originally went by Wild Bill Paxton, was going crazy.
<v Speaker 1>Huh.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, God, this is am effing roller coaster and
<v Speaker 2>he couldn't contain himself, just going crazy about this. So
<v Speaker 2>and Lance Hendrickson watched it with James Cameron.
<v Speaker 1>They watched it together.
<v Speaker 2>When they walked out, Lance Henderson was so stunned by
<v Speaker 2>what he had seen. He said, Jim, I don't even
<v Speaker 2>know what to say to you. I can't even put
<v Speaker 2>into words. So I'm going to write you a letter.
<v Speaker 1>Yea, And he said.
<v Speaker 2>James Cameron's like okay, And of course the critics praised it.
<v Speaker 2>So Lance Henderson's like, well, I guess everybody's kind of
<v Speaker 2>said what they said. So he like, six months later
<v Speaker 2>he hadn't turned in the letter. So for six months
<v Speaker 2>James Cameron thought that Lance Henderson hated the movie. No,
<v Speaker 2>and Lance Henderson's like, no, that is not the case.
<v Speaker 2>I think amazing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, that's awesome. I've got a couple of awesome tidbits
<v Speaker 1>to throw.
<v Speaker 2>In and then we'll do final judgment on these two.
<v Speaker 2>Give me what you got, Okay, quick shout out to
<v Speaker 2>my wife, Catherine Colbyn, who allows me to do this
<v Speaker 2>awesome podcast. Vasquez has painted on her armor el riasgo
<v Speaker 2>ciampre bibe. My wife's the Spanish teacher. So I call
<v Speaker 2>her and I say, what does that mean? She says,
<v Speaker 2>the risk always lives. Interesting, that's on Vasquez's armor.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Okay, Yeah, when.
<v Speaker 2>Hudson says the line stop your grinnin and drop your linen, yes,
<v Speaker 2>those are lyrics from an ac DC song. Shake your
<v Speaker 2>leg off of Back in Black flashback to Our Appetite
<v Speaker 2>for Destruction versus Back in Black episodes from last summer.
<v Speaker 1>Nice.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, here's another one for you. Melissa jo and Hart
<v Speaker 2>is one of the kids at Hadley's Hope and one
<v Speaker 2>of the cut scenes. In one of the cut scenes,
<v Speaker 2>she's running around. She's like one of the little little
<v Speaker 2>kids at Hadley's Hope.
<v Speaker 1>All right, Okay, one more thing.
<v Speaker 2>In an interview with movie Phone Sigourney Weaver said that
<v Speaker 2>each time one of the actors was to die, she
<v Speaker 2>would send them a.
<v Speaker 1>Book of flowers.
<v Speaker 2>Aw right, nice, except when Burt died, she said, a
<v Speaker 2>dead bouquet of flowers.
<v Speaker 1>That's awesome. Okay. I got one last tidbit. Okay, And
<v Speaker 1>this goes to this is this is kind of an
<v Speaker 1>underlying thing. And I started this off saying Alien a
<v Speaker 1>movie about an unwanted pregnancy, right, right. But there it's
<v Speaker 1>literally all over the place, Like their sleeping chamber is
<v Speaker 1>egg shaped. It is if they are being released from
<v Speaker 1>their eggs when they come out of their hyper sleep. Right,
<v Speaker 1>obviously they've got the eggs everywhere. The name of the
<v Speaker 1>computer is Mother, Mother. Right, It's all over the place
<v Speaker 1>in there right. It is unwanted pregnancy, it is eggs,
<v Speaker 1>it is berths, it is rape. But here's my tidbit. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>the voice. We've named all of the actors an alien
<v Speaker 1>except for one. The lady who voiced mother. He is.
<v Speaker 1>The actress is named Helen Horton. Okay, and you will
<v Speaker 1>recognize her from your favorite Superman movie, Superman three. She
<v Speaker 1>was Perry White's helper whenever they were doing the bingo
<v Speaker 1>for the for the trip to the to the Caribbean,
<v Speaker 1>or wherever it was get out of town, same lady.
<v Speaker 2>That is a fantastic tidbit. Wow, good job. Okay, here
<v Speaker 2>we are final judgment. Where are you between these two?
<v Speaker 1>D you go first? Talk to me? Hot fun huh Okay.
<v Speaker 1>For the last thirty five years, I have maintained that
<v Speaker 1>Aliens is better than Alien. It is more action packed,
<v Speaker 1>it is more guns, it is more fun, it is
<v Speaker 1>more intense, and it is an amazing, amazing movie. James
<v Speaker 1>Cameron took something that was incredible and turned it and
<v Speaker 1>still kept all of the essence and made it something beautiful,
<v Speaker 1>and so I still think it is one of the
<v Speaker 1>best action movies of all time. Almost as good, but
<v Speaker 1>I have changed my opinion after rewatching these movies and
<v Speaker 1>studying these movies. I think that the pacing, although it's slow,
<v Speaker 1>the pacing that goes from slow to stab and horror,
<v Speaker 1>and the deeper meaning behind everything that's going on and
<v Speaker 1>Alien makes it a better movie. And looking back at
<v Speaker 1>it now, to me, special effects, acting, all of it
<v Speaker 1>holds up better than Aliens. Does I still love Aliens?
<v Speaker 1>Please don't send me hate mail. I still love it,
<v Speaker 1>but I think that the special effects and the story
<v Speaker 1>behind the original Alien movie must win the day.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, you are smoking, that's right. Okay, it's not especially recently.
<v Speaker 1>We haven't disagreed on a whole lot of things.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I absolutely disagree with you one hundred percent. And
<v Speaker 2>I know that it's kind of the critics opinion that
<v Speaker 2>Alien is the all time greatest horror movie.
<v Speaker 1>And it is. It's super scary.
<v Speaker 2>And I told you as a kid, when I realized
<v Speaker 2>what was happening, I knew I had to see this movie.
<v Speaker 2>And when I saw it, it thrilled me and scared
<v Speaker 2>me to death. It is a epically scary science fiction movie.
<v Speaker 2>And you were on the right track just a minute ago.
<v Speaker 2>Aliens was something great. Cameron camera along and made it greater.
<v Speaker 2>Aliens is one of the greatest action movies I have
<v Speaker 2>all time. You said it yourself, without a doubt, maybe
<v Speaker 2>the best action movie of the eighties, die Hard.
<v Speaker 1>I mean it's it's in the conversation.
<v Speaker 2>Right when you have Marines and you have Aliens, and
<v Speaker 2>you have the Queen, and you have that incredible when
<v Speaker 2>they invade the Hive and it's flamethrowers and guns.
<v Speaker 1>And grenades and nuclear blasts.
<v Speaker 2>It's everything a teenage boy wants in a movie. And
<v Speaker 2>I was blown away.
<v Speaker 1>I loved it.
<v Speaker 2>For me, hands down, Aliens all the way, although I
<v Speaker 2>love Alien as well. We asked a friend of ours,
<v Speaker 2>John rated the thirty something Movie podcast, to weigh in
<v Speaker 2>on this as well. Here's what he said.
<v Speaker 3>Hey Jason, Hey d it's John from podcast Full of Kryptonite,
<v Speaker 3>your co host and the thirty something Movie podcast. You
<v Speaker 3>guys had reached out to me and let me know
<v Speaker 3>that you were doing an Alien versus Aliens episode, and
<v Speaker 3>I got to tell you that would be a tough choice.
<v Speaker 3>Those are two I've mentioned on our show several times.
<v Speaker 3>Those are two of my favorite movies growing up. I
<v Speaker 3>was obsessed with Alien when I moved over to England.
<v Speaker 3>England just a hotbed of alien fanatics over there. They
<v Speaker 3>had the Alien War exhibit that I got to go
<v Speaker 3>through as a as a twelve year old kid and
<v Speaker 3>loved it, absolutely loved actually found the poster for it
<v Speaker 3>that I bought. In some ways, Alien and Aliens are
<v Speaker 3>an apple and an orange. Alien is one of the
<v Speaker 3>best sci fi horror movies that exists. Aliens is one
<v Speaker 3>of the best sci fi action movies that exists. And
<v Speaker 3>I think I mentioned you guys several times too. You
<v Speaker 3>know my undying, irrational love for Alien three. I do
<v Speaker 3>love that movie. It's not on the same level as
<v Speaker 3>Alien and Aliens anyway. For me, I think it comes
<v Speaker 3>down to I get to pick Alien between those two.
<v Speaker 3>Love Aliens. Like I said, it's a great action movie,
<v Speaker 3>but just the depth of the horror and the claustrophobia
<v Speaker 3>and the tension, it's a beautiful, dark, grotesque movie. There
<v Speaker 3>is so much to fear about the alien that to
<v Speaker 3>a certain degree, when you throw so many Aliens into
<v Speaker 3>the mix and you can just mow them down with
<v Speaker 3>an automatic weapon.
<v Speaker 1>It's still cool.
<v Speaker 3>But for me, I love the straight up horror of
<v Speaker 3>being stack by the lone alien. You have no weapons
<v Speaker 3>or improvised weapons. You are not soldiers. You're on a
<v Speaker 3>mining ship, and you've got what's at your disposal. I
<v Speaker 3>love that it's going to take your ingenuity to try
<v Speaker 3>to stop this thing. For me, it's got to be alien.
<v Speaker 3>It's got to be alien. I look forward to hearing
<v Speaker 3>what you guys have to say. Which one you guys choose,
<v Speaker 3>I don't think either of you are going to be wrong,
<v Speaker 3>regardless of what your choice is. They are both amazing movies,
<v Speaker 3>and so I'm just really excited to really excited to
<v Speaker 3>hear what you guys come up with. All Right, thanks
<v Speaker 3>a lot, guys.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so once again John and I agree. I can't
<v Speaker 1>tell you how often I've listened to the thirty something
<v Speaker 1>movie podcast and I've been thinking something and then John
<v Speaker 1>says it, like it is amazing to me how our
<v Speaker 1>minds work in the same way. And I want to
<v Speaker 1>say this one more thing about what aliens did. This
<v Speaker 1>was the best part for me. Right, it's the little
<v Speaker 1>radar that they have for the aliens. Right, So that
<v Speaker 1>was in alien. I didn't even remember it being an
<v Speaker 1>alien but they had the an Alien, but it was
<v Speaker 1>just one beep and she's freaking out. Veronica Cartwright Lambert
<v Speaker 1>is freaking out because oh my gosh, she's gonna doorsy.
<v Speaker 1>It's freaking out right, And that's such an intense scene.
<v Speaker 1>And James Cameron took it and amplified it, put Bill
<v Speaker 1>Paxson in the going They're all overs man six meters
<v Speaker 1>man five, Oh so good, he's turning that screw. I
<v Speaker 1>love it. I love it, And I had a point
<v Speaker 1>that I've forgotten nowrap Your point is Aliens is freaking awesome.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want you to think that I don't love Aliens.
<v Speaker 1>And I'll watch Aliens again and again, and I'll watch
<v Speaker 1>Alien again and again. But when we first started talking
<v Speaker 1>about this, we said Aliens versus Terminator to the best
<v Speaker 1>of the sequels, right where the sequel was better than
<v Speaker 1>the original. And so that was totally my opinion before.
<v Speaker 1>It was only upon coming back to it and watching
<v Speaker 1>it again. So I encourage everybody out there who has
<v Speaker 1>the same opinion as Jason, go back and watch both
<v Speaker 1>of them. Now that you've heard the history, now that
<v Speaker 1>you've heard the stories behind it, go back and watch
<v Speaker 1>both of these movies and hit us up on Facebook
<v Speaker 1>and tell us what do you think which is the best.
<v Speaker 2>Please weigh in on Facebook. We can't wait to hear
<v Speaker 2>what you have to say on this. Come back next week,
<v Speaker 2>Terminator one, Terminator two, More Cameron Full Throttle Action and Horror.
<v Speaker 1>All right, guys, don't forget to go to our Facebook page,
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<v Speaker 1>Look forward to seeing you guys next week.
<v Speaker 2>Usta Lavista Baby,