Big Chap's Fun Shack

Trivia, behind-the-scenes info, and general bizarre aspects of the Alien franchise. Because let's be real, there's a LOT of weird stuff to come out of this series.

[bigchapfunshack]

Concept art from Vincent Ward’s bizarre draft of Alien3, which dealt with Luddite monks on a wooden monastery satellite. Some sets were built (at a not-insignificant cost), but Ward would ultimately leave the project after 20th Century Fox’s executive meddling became too excessive to work under.

[bigchapfunshack]

The friend-shaped alien from Dark Star, a sci-fi comedy that served as the feature film debut for Jon Carpenter and Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon. When audiences failed to laugh at a number of sequences that were intended to be humorous, O’Bannon was inspired to take the same basic concepts - a worn-out spaceship, a turbulent crew, an uninvited guest - and revisit them as a horror film rather than a comedy.

[bigchapfunshack]

Warrior suits from Aliens. One of the biggest challenges in adapting Giger’s designs for the sequel was allowing the suit actors sufficient mobility, as the costume from the original film was a clunky, fragile monstrosity of latex and hand-painted macaroni noodles (among other things) that could barely move without splitting at the seams. The solution to the problem came in the form of the new suit’s modular construction - whereas the detail on the original suit was largely built up from the outside by attaching details on top of the already-made suit, the suits from Aliens were fully sculpted and molded as large chunks that could be glued onto lycra bodysuits one piece at a time.

[bigchapfunshack]

A two-pack of action figures based on the climax of Prometheus, made by NECA as a Toys R Us exclusive. The company managed to get away with selling a figure with a realistic articulated penis-tentacle in a multinational toy store chain by placing a foil "R EXCLUSIVE” sticker over the glans.

[bigchapfunshack]

Clockwise from top-left: A cocooned Brett, a set photo of the prop, and a Giger piece which influenced the above. In Alien, a deleted scene would have shown audiences the final step of the xenomorph life cycle, in which organic material is transformed into eggs (or rather, is used as a “yolk” for the egg). This scene was written and filmed, and was included in 2003′s Director’s Cut of Alien, but its absence from the initial release left a gap that Aliens would go on to fill by introducing the concept of Queens that lay the eggs. The concept of xenomorphs turning bodies into eggs has since become a retconned curio.

[bigchapfunshack]

“Wreckage and Rage: The Making of Alien3“ was a feature-length documentary chronicling the infamously turbulent production of Alien3. Made for the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy box set, 20th Century Fox cut around 20 minutes of footage that showed just how frustrated the cast, crew, and director David Fincher were about Fox’s constant interference in the production, titling this new cut “The Making of Alien3.” After fans and documentary staff called them out on this, Fox reinstated the cut footage when the box set was released on Blu-ray in 2010.

[bigchapfunshack]

Model painters at work on one of Prometheus’s “Hammerpedes.” A total of 15 Hammerpede puppets were made for the film, each designed to perform a different function (opening and closing the head, wrapping around an actor’s arm, snapping a dummy version of said actor’s arm in half, etc.).

[bigchapfunshack]

In 1987, Squaresoft developed and published Aliens: Alien 2, ostensibly an adaptation of Aliens. While versions for both the MSX and the Famicom Disk System were planned, only the MSX version made it to market. This game was only released for the Japanese market, while other territories got an unrelated Aliens game made by the imaginatively-named Software Studios.

[bigchapfunshack]

To depict the quadrupedal newborn alien in Alien3, the original plan was to film a Whippet in a specially-made Xenomorph costume. The costume was made and test footage was filmed, but it would be scrapped because the dog was distressed by any attempts to cover its face (meaning that it could only be filmed from the back), and its movements were a little too dog-like. The effect in the final film would be achieved via a rod puppet blue-screened into the shot.

[bigchapfunshack]

Commercial for an 18″ action figure of the Alien, released by Kenner in 1979 to accompany the release of the original film. Between parents disapproving of its frightening design and box art and the fact that not many kids would be familiar with a then-newly-released, R-rated horror film, the toy sold poorly and would go on to be clearanced out in many stores. Ironically, it would go on to be worth hundreds of dollars in the modern era.