Aliens Poster #55 Barbara Coles Chestburster James Cameron Cocooned Woman
$39.99
Description
Aliens is a 1986 American science-fiction action horror film written and directed by James Cameron, produced by his then-wife Gale Anne Hurd, and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, William Hope, and Bill Paxton. It is the sequel to the 1979 film Alien and the second installment of the Alien franchise. The film follows Weaver’s character Ellen Ripley as she returns to the planet where her crew encountered the hostile Alien creature, this time accompanied by a unit of space marines.
Mary was one of the Hadley’s Hope colonists on Acheron. She was one of the last colonists to be taken by the Xenomorphs, and was actually alive when the Colonial Marines discovered her, but she perished soon afterwards when the Chestburster inside her hatched. Mary was one of the colonists taken to the Hive inside the Hadley’s Hope Atmosphere Processor, and the only one still alive when the Colonial Marines under Lieutenant Gorman’s command arrived. She was tended to by Corporal Dietrich, despite pleading with the Hospital Corpsman to kill her; the Marines had thus far had no experience with the Xenomorph species and were unaware of the fate that awaited Mary, otherwise they may have complied. She began convulsing almost immediately and was killed moments later when the Chestburster insider her erupted from her chest. Sergeant Apone and Corporal Dietrich immediately torched the creature, and Mary’s body, with M240 Incinerator Units.
Brandywine Productions was interested in a follow-up to Alien as soon as its 1979 release, but the new management at 20th Century Fox postponed those plans until 1983. That year Brandywine picked Cameron to write after reading his script for The Terminator, and once that film became a hit in 1984, Fox greenlit Aliens, that would also be directed by Cameron, with a budget of approximately $18 million. The script was written with a war film tone influenced by the Vietnam War to contrast the horror motifs of the original Alien. It was filmed in England at Pinewood Studios and at a decommissioned power plant in Acton, London.
Aliens was a critical and commercial success, with positive reviews that considered it an entertaining film that despite the tonal shift still served as a worthy sequel to Alien, and grossed $180 million worldwide. The movie was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including a Best Actress nomination for Sigourney Weaver, winning both Sound Effects Editing and Visual Effects. It won eight Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actress for Weaver and Best Direction and Best Writing for Cameron. Aliens is frequently considered one of the best action films ever released.
A dropship delivers the expedition to the surface of LV-426, where they find the colony deserted. Inside, they find makeshift barricades and signs of a violent struggle, but no bodies. Two living facehuggers are found in containment tanks in the medical lab. They discover a traumatized young girl, nicknamed Newt, to be the lone survivor. Meanwhile, the crew uses the colony’s computer to locate the colonists, finding all of them grouped together beneath the fusion powered atmosphere processing station. The group heads to the colonists location, descending into a series of corridors covered in Alien secretions. At the center of the station, the marines find the colonists cocooned, serving as incubators for the Aliens’ offspring. When the marines kill a newborn Alien, the Aliens are roused and attack the marines, killing and capturing several.
While the producers and development executive Larry Wilson sought a writer for Alien II, Wilson came across James Cameron’s screenplay for The Terminator, and passed the script to Giler feeling Cameron was apt for the job. Giler then approached Cameron, who was completing pre-production of The Terminator. A fan of the original Alien, Cameron was interested in crafting a sequel and entered a self-imposed seclusion to brainstorm a concept for Alien II. After four days Cameron produced an initial 45-page treatment, although the Fox management put the film on hiatus, as some disliked the pitch and they felt that Alien had not generated enough profit to warrant a sequel. A scheduling conflict with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger caused filming of The Terminator to be delayed by nine months (as Schwarzenegger was filming Conan the Destroyer), allowing Cameron additional time to write a script for Aliens. While filming The Terminator, Cameron wrote 90 pages for Aliens, and although the script was not finished, Fox’s new president Larry Gordon was impressed and told him that if The Terminator was a success, he would be able to direct Aliens. Cameron even declared that he spent production of The Terminator thinking on which elements of that film could “make a good dry run” for the Alien sequel.
Following the success of The Terminator, Cameron and producing partner Gale Anne Hurd were given approval to direct and produce the sequel to Alien, scheduled for a 1986 release. Cameron was enticed by the opportunity to create a new world and opted not to follow the same formula as Alien, but to create a worthy combat sequel focusing “more on terror, less on horror”.9 Sigourney Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley in Alien, had doubts about the project, but after meeting Cameron she expressed interest in revisiting her character. 20th Century Fox, however, refused to sign a contract with Weaver over a payment dispute and asked Cameron to write a story excluding Ellen Ripley. He refused on the grounds that Fox had indicated that Weaver had signed on when he began writing the script. With Cameron’s persistence, Fox signed the contract and Weaver obtained a salary of $1 million, a sum 30 times what she was paid for the first film (and equivalent to $2,200,000 in present-day terms). Weaver nicknamed her role in the Alien sequel “Rambolina”, referring to John Rambo of the Rambo series, and stated that she approached the role as akin to the titular role in Henry V or women warriors in Chinese classical literature.
Cameron drew inspiration for the Aliens story from the Vietnam War, a situation in which a technologically superior force was mired in a hostile foreign environment: “Their training and technology are inappropriate for the specifics, and that can be seen as analogous to the inability of superior American firepower to conquer the unseen enemy in Vietnam: a lot of firepower and very little wisdom, and it didn’t work.” The attitude of the space marines was influenced by the Vietnam War; they are portrayed as cocky and confident of their inevitable victory, but when they find themselves facing a less technologically advanced but more determined enemy, the outcome is not what they expect. Cameron listed Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers as a major influence that lead to the incorporation of various themes and phrases, such as the terms “the drop” and “bug hunt”, as well as the cargo-loader exoskeleton.
Test and pre-screenings were unable to take place for Aliens due to the film not being completed until its week of release. Once it was released in cinemas, critical reaction was generally positive. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 and called it “painfully and unremittingly intense” and a “superb example of filmmaking craft.” He also stated “when I walked out of the theater, there were knots in my stomach from the film’s roller-coaster ride of violence.” Walter Goodman of The New York Times said it was a “flaming, flashing, crashing, crackling blow-’em-up show that keeps you popping from your seat despite your better instincts and the basically conventional scare tactics.” Time magazine featured the film on the cover of its July 28, 1986, issue, calling it the “summer’s scariest movie”.
Near mint condition.
Related products
-
Wolverine Poster #16 vs The Hand The End by David Finch Ninjas
$39.99 Add to cart -
Punisher Poster # 6 by Wieslaw Walkuski Born Frank Castle Origin Movie
$29.99 Add to cart -
Venom Poster # 3 by Sam Kieth MTV Maxx Issue # 1 Cover
$39.99 Add to cart -
Supreme Power Poster # 1 Joe Quesada Hyperion Doctor Spectrum Squadron
$29.99 Add to cart