35 years of the Aliens
On July 14, 1986 in Westwood, California, USA, the premiere of James Cameron's fantastic action movie "Aliens", which is the sequel to Ridley Scott's "Alien", took place.
The idea to shoot a sequel was born from the creators of the film "Alien", the film companies Brandywine Productions and 20th Century Fox, literally immediately after the release of this film on the screens in 1979. Actually, it could not have been any other way, since the box office of Ridley Scott's movie amounted to $ 204 million, which was 18.5 times higher than the budget of the picture of $ 11 million.
However, the implementation of the idea of a sequel was prevented by personnel changes in the 20th Century Fox film company. Its president, Alan Ladd Jr., left the company to create a new, wholly owned production company, the Ladd Company. And the man who replaced him, Norman Levi, turned out to be extremely cautious and for a very long time did not dare to launch a project called "Alien II".
To the indecision of Norman Levy, more court proceedings were added. 20th Century Fox, for some unknown reasons, declared Ridley Scott's film "Alien" unprofitable and on this basis refused to pay Brandywine Productions the share of profit due to it under the contract. The court proceedings continued until the beginning of 1983.
The end of the litigation between Brandywine Productions and 20th Century Fox coincided with another change in the management of the latter. The new president of 20th Century Fox, Joe Wisan, has shown a deep interest in creating a sequel to "Alien". The relevant services were assigned to search for a screenwriter and develop a script for a future sequel.
James Cameron, who started working on the film "Terminator" according to his own script, and who participated in the development of the script for the film "Rambo: First Blood 2", came to the attention of 20th Century Fox. Cameron was asked to prepare a script for the future sequel of "Alien"on the basis of the developments available to the studio. In 3 days, Cameron prepared a 42-page draft of the future script. Cameron's project received a characteristic from the company's management: "a constant stream of horrors without character development." The process of creating a sequel has stopped again.
But again, the changed circumstances allowed us to resume work on the sequel. First, the management of the 20th Century Fox film company has once again changed: Joe Wisan was replaced by Lawrence Gordon. And secondly, there was a pause in the filming of "Terminator": Arnold Schwarzenegger was "transferred" for 9 months to shoot in the film "Conan the Destroyer". Cameron took advantage of the pause, finalized his draft script and presented a 90-page version to the new management of the 20th Century Fox film company.
The new version of the script was received much more warmly by the new management of the company. But there was another snag: Cameron said that he would like to make a film himself according to his script. This claim of Cameron puzzled the management of 20th Century Fox, because by that time Cameron had only one full-length feature film on his account - "Piranha Part Two: The Spawning", shot together with other directors and the quality of which was very low in all respects. "Terminator" had not yet been completed. At the same time, the candidacy of Ridley Scott was not considered at all. Scott later explained that he and the company had suffered with each other during the filming of "Alien".
Somehow they managed to convince the management of 20th Century Fox that James Cameron should shoot the film, but then new problems arose: the budget. And first of all - participation in the sequel of Sigourney Weaver. The role in" Alien "made this actress extremely popular, during the time that has passed since the filming of "Alien", she starred in several films, including "Ghostbusters", which enjoyed a stunning box office success. The management of 20th Century Fox rightly believed that she would not be satisfied with a fee of 30 thousand dollars, which Sigourney Weaver had in "Alien", and therefore wanted to do without this actress. But James Cameron and the producer who supported him, Gail Ann Hurd (who later became Cameron's wife), insisted exclusively on the candidacy of Sigourney Weaver as the performer of the main role. Cameron and Hurd got their way: Weaver got the main role in the film. And a fee of one million dollars.
After financial, legal and personnel issues were finally settled, filming began in September 1985. It was decided to shoot in England, on the basis of the Pinewood film studio. This decision was dictated, firstly, by economic considerations (lower cost compared to the American one), and secondly, by the fact that the original film was shot at this studio, and the studio staff was familiar with the specifics of shooting a fantastic action movie.
But this decision to shoot in England cost Cameron a lot of nerves. The fact is that, being of Canadian origin, Cameron did not know many English customs and traditions, and about some, for example, the mandatory daily "five-o-clock", if he knew, he did not consider it mandatory to observe. In order not to waste extra time and thereby increase the budget of the picture. An even bigger problem was that the staff of the English studio literally idolized Ridley Scott, who was British by birth, and almost openly despised Cameron, considering him a completely inexperienced and unqualified director. Cameron, in order to prove his worth to the studio staff, even organized a viewing of "The Terminator", which was released shortly before the start of filming. But most of the Pinewood Studios employees simply ignored the invitation to watch.
The tension in the relationship between James Cameron and the staff of Pinewood Studios is evidenced by the fact that on the day of the end of filming, Cameron said instead of the traditional " Thank you all!", that one thing kept him going through it all: "The certain knowledge that one day I would drive out of Pinewood and never come back, and that you sorry bastards would still be here".
James Cameron's film "Aliens" received a total of 20 film awards and 23 nominations. However, the vast majority of these awards and nominations are awarded to films in technical categories. Of all the awards and nominations, from the point of view of FilmGourmand's Methodology, the most prestigious is the nomination of the Japanese Film Academy in the category Best Foreign Film. However, Cameron's film lost this nomination to the film "Back to the Future" by Robert Zemeckis.
Leading film critics rated James Cameron's film "Aliens" quite high, but not as high as possible. For example, the guru of American film criticism, Roger Ebert, gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4 possible ones and noted in his review: "I have never seen a movie that maintains such a pitch of intensity for so long; it's like being on some kind of hair-raising carnival ride that never stops. I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft."
Another authoritative American film critic James Berardinelli rated the film "Aliens" with a maximum of 4 stars and wrote in his review: "Perhaps the best single word to describe James Cameron's Aliens is relentless. Tautly paced and expertly directed, this roller coaster ride of a motion picture offers a little bit of everything, all wrapped up in a tidy science fiction/action package. From the point when the opening half-hour of exposition ends and the real movie begins, Cameron barely gives viewers a chance to catch their breaths or ease their grips on their armrests as he plunges his characters from one dire situation to the next. This is one of those rare motion pictures that involves the audience so completely in the story that we're as worn out at the end as our on-screen counterparts."
Sergey Kudryavtsev, one of the most authoritative Russian film critics, rated the film "Aliens" with 8 points out of 10 and noted in his review: "Cameron, unlike Scott, builds his picture in a different way - in a more adventurous way. It is somewhat delayed in the first half, but the rapid, stunning, mind-blowing development of the action in the second part of the film, especially in the super-energetic finale (the experience of "Terminator" was very useful to the director here), more than meets the expectations of the most demanding viewers. ..James Cameron's film is no longer a dystopia about an attempt to establish contact with unknown matter, about a person's meeting with the Incomprehensible, but a dashing action movie with a cosmic entourage and horrors."
The film was not shown in Soviet cinemas, but thanks to perestroika and technological progress, Soviet moviegoers were able to watch the film on VHS and in video salons quite soon after the premiere. In 1994, the film was already shown in Russian cinemas.
The following figures indicate the assessment of James Cameron's film "Aliens" by ordinary moviegoers. First, the box office of the film exceeded $ 183 million, which is 10 times higher than the film's budget of $ 18.5 million. Secondly, 76% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users gave the film ratings from 8 to 10. And 23% of users rated the film with the highest score - "ten".
Taking into account the above, the rating of James Cameron's film "Aliens" according to FilmGourmand was 8,316, thanks to which it took 398th place in the Golden Thousand.