James Cameron names the one movie that “stepped over the line”
When it comes to sci-fi, there are few arguments when it comes to the greatest movies of the genre. Indeed, many would say the two greatest of all time come from the same director, with Ridley Scott creating the terrifying extra-terrestrial horror Alien in 1979, three years before he would adapt Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in the form of Blade Runner.
The first of his sci-fi flicks would spark an unlikely franchise, with each one continuing the mythology behind the Xenomorph aliens that consistently terrorise a brave team of space explorers. Though a controversial opinion, many consider the 1986 sequel, Aliens, directed by James Cameron, to be superior to the original, continuing the adventures of Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley.
One of the many features of the sequel that were heralded above its predecessor was its depiction of Ripley, a female heroine who became an action icon in Cameron’s movie. In fact, many went so far as to criticise Scott’s sexual depiction of Ripley in the original film, with contemporary audiences having a particular problem with the scene in which the protagonist needlessly removes her clothes.
“People have said, ‘Aw how could you demean yourself by doing a striptease?’” Weaver stated in an interview back in 1981, “I say, ‘Are you kidding? After five days of blood and guts, and fear, and sweat and urine, do you think Ripley wouldn’t take off her clothes?”. Yet, the scene was toned down far more than the original draft, which included a “quasi-sexual” between the Xenomorph and Ripley whilst the latter was having a shower.
“We actually wanted to have more of a quasi-sex scene,” Weaver stated in the 2003 DVD special edition of Aliens, “We wanted the alien to come and look at her through the glass and be intrigued by the soft pinkness of her compared to him. We wanted him to be that intelligent, and that it kind of turned him on. Beauty and the Beast, I think we were going for”.
The sexual elements of Alien, particularly in regards to Ripley, was something that Cameron wished to actively avoid when he came on board for the sequel.
In a conversation with News AU, the director stated, “For me, that stepped over the line, [when I took over] I said I think I can make a movie with a compelling female character who doesn’t have to do that, so that’s been my goal and my mission throughout…I follow my own muse for what I think is right. My films continue to be successful, and they continue to not objectify women, so I think that speaks for itself…I made it my goal to make women interesting without making them sex objects, and I think I was pretty successful at doing that”.
Take a look at a classic scene of Ripley in action in Cameron’s sequel, Aliens, below.
