7. Sigourney Weaver Didn't Realise Aliens Featured Guns Until She Arrived On Set
One of the most obvious distinctions between Alien and Aliens is the presence of weaponry - in the original movie, Ellen Ripley has nothing but a flamethrower with which to defend herself from the xenomorph which hunts her through the corridors and vents of the Nostromo. Aliens, on the other hand, equips its Marines with an entire arsenal of weapons, from pistols and smart guns to remote sentries and grenades. Given that Sigourney Weaver at the time was a strong advocate for gun control legislation, it's perhaps surprising that she agreed to appear in a movie with such a reliance on the use of weaponry. The reason she did is entirely her own doing - she didn't bother to read the script carefully before signing up to the film. Having missed all the stage directions in the script describing her character wielding and firing machine guns she was baffled to say the least when the props department handed her a weapon on set - fortunately she was happy with the context of their use and didn't kick up a fuss, although by this late stage in the production it's highly unlikely she'd have been able to pull out of the project.
