20 Things You Didn't Know About Your Favourite Action Movies

6. James Cameron Was Asked To Write A Script Without Ripley For Aliens

There are a number of factors which made the original Alien so impressive, from H R Giger€™s spectacular creature design to Ridley Scott€™s efficient direction, but perhaps the most essential element was the character Ellen Ripley, as portrayed to perfection by Sigourney Weaver. At the time of its release, the idea of an Alien franchise movie without this character was unimaginable But this is precisely what 20th Century Fox proposed to director James Cameron during the pre-production phase of Aliens. The director explained the experience to Lo Officer:

"It turned out that everybody but us thought that the film could be made without Sigourney Weaver, which completely blew my mind, and was absolutely out of the question for us. So, as far as we were concerned, we started with Ripley from the end of the last film, and it was her story. We, fortunately, were able to overcome these obstacles in the minds of the other people involved. We had to fight very hard for Sigourney to be in the picture, which to me was crazy."

Crazy indeed!