Sigourney Weaver isn’t sitting around and thinking about a potential return as Ripley but if another great ‘Alien’ film was presented to her, she’s open to the idea…
When it comes to ass-kicking heroines in cinema, it’s impossible to start that conversation without mentioning Sigourney Weaver’s transcended role as Ellen Ripley in the “Alien” franchise.
Starting with Ridley Scott’s terrifying original film “Alien” from 1979 to her Oscar nominated performance in James Cameron’s sequel “Aliens” all the way through “Alien 3” and “Alien Resurrection,” Weaver helped to create one of the greatest female characters in film history much less for horror and science-fiction.
While her last appearance as Ripley came all the way back in 1997, Weaver rarely escapes a career retrospective interview without talking about her work in the “Alien” franchise but even more so now with the success of Fede Alvarez’s film “Alien: Romulus,” which takes place between the events of “Alien” and “Aliens.”
There’s no telling where the “Alien” franchise goes from here but is there a chance that Weaver would ever consider strapping on the pulse rifle again to tackle another sequel as Ripley?
“I feel like she’s never far away from me, but on the other hand I have yet to read a script that said “you have got to do this,'” Weaver told Deadline. “So for me, she is in this other dimension, safe from the Alien for the time being. I don’t really think about it, but you know, it’s not completely impossible, and certainly a lot of good filmmakers are inspired by the material.
“How much does the public really need or want another Ripley movie? I don’t really sit around and think about it, but if it came up, I would consider it. It has come up a bunch of times, but I’m also busy doing other things. Ripley has earned her rest.”
As far as her experience in past “Alien” films, Weaver also discussed the much maligned “Alien 3,” which served as a directorial debut for David Fincher.
Long before he was one of the most sought after directors in Hollywood, Fincher was a young up and comer who got stuck battling with the studio almost every day during production, which turned the entire process into a nightmare for him. Despite the film showing up on his resume, Fincher has basically disowned the movie and his association with it.
“Well, I could feel that David had to get on the phone and fight every day for us to shoot what he wanted to the next day,” Weaver said about working on ‘Alien 3.’ “And I’m sorry that he didn’t get a chance to make the script his own before we started. That makes filmmaking very difficult. I recall that Vincent Ward’s original script had been about monks in a monastery and Ripley was in a coma for half of it. So, I keenly felt the lack of studio support. That was a transition moment when studios stopped being about “let’s make great films” and started being about “let’s not lose money.”
“They had the great idea to put David Fincher aboard for his first film, but then not to support the guy was very idiotic. It helped shooting in England so we could get on with things to an extent. I heard recently that David has disowned the project and I’m sorry about that because I loved working with him, and I think we made a good film. I’m glad he got a chance to do his version. It was a great ensemble.”
When it comes to “Alien,” that was Weaver’s first real film role after mostly starring in theater productions and a few TV series but nothing like what Scott put together for the classic movie from 1979. There are dozens of reasons why that worked so well from the writing to the direction to the spot on casting.
Of course, Weaver understands just how integral her role as Ripley was to the film, especially considering the impact that character made over the next two decades.
“What I love about it, which I think endures, is that the character of Ripley is almost an everyman character [most of the characters were written as unisex so they could be played by male or female actors],” Weaver said. “That freed me up from ever having to act like a girl, or dress like a girl.
“That was very astute of the writers. At a certain point you even forget that it’s a woman. You just know it’s Ripley and you’re hoping she survives.”
When it comes to originals and their sequels, few films in history measure up to “Alien” and “Aliens” but Weaver understood they were totally different movies.
“I recall that I was filming in France when I received the script for ‘Aliens,'” Weaver explained. “It was this almost operatic role for Ridley. I was stunned. It was such a different way of approaching the material, much more muscular and much more akin to an action picture. ‘Alien’ is perfect. It’s so claustrophobic, frightening, and unsettling. And Aliens is this big kick-ass movie of scale, which actually has a more conventional story.
“But it’s hard to compare them as filmmakers. They are very different. I can say that all four of the Alien filmmakers I worked with [Scott, Cameron, David Fincher and Jean-Pierre Jeunet] all made the material their own.”
With the success of “Alien: Romulus” it’s difficult to imagine that another “Alien” sequel won’t happen in the near future but it remains to be seen if Weaver would ever return to the franchise or not. She may have already stared down a Xenomorph for the final time but she will get to go back to space again with a role in the upcoming “Star Wars” film “The Mandalorian and Grogu.”
