BEST.

MOVIE.

EVER.

It's just so...just so...

Ahem...

- In 1983, the heads at 20th Century Fox were so impressed by James Cameron's then uncompleted screenplay for the film, they actually waited for him to complete The Terminator before finishing it up; they wanted him to write the whole thing.

- James Cameron designed the Queen himself. The final puppet/animatronic/behemoth used in the film required 14 to 16 operators.

- Newt, aka one of the few child characters in horror movie history who wasn't annoying as all-get-out, was the only role ever played by Carrie Henn. She currently works as a school teacher.

- James Cameron wanted the interactions and attitudes of the space marines as authentic as possible, so before their introductory scene onboard Sullaco, he shot every scene that only featured them first, so their conversing and camaraderie would come from the actors being friends with each other at that point, while Ripley would feel like the outsider because Sigourney Weaver had not shot anything with them yet.

- Lance Henrikson actually learned how to to do five finger fillet for the scene where his character, Bishop, does "the thing with the knife."

- Every tweak to the xenomorphs' design in the movie was done to accommodate the more stunt-oriented nature of their scenes: the transparent dome was removed because it would break too easily, and the bonier look was established so the stuntmen could essentially wear spandex covered by a few xenomorph costume bits.

- "Game over, man, game over!" was improvised by Bill Paxton.

- The actors playing the marines each got to customize their armor.

- In a rare feat for an action movie, the 15 minute countdown at the end of the movie is indeed 15 minutes.

- The little jump scare in the lab where the facehugger in the tank wigs out was not scripted; James Cameron wanted a realistic jump out of actor Paul Reiser.

- Corporal Hicks was originally supposed to be played by James Remar, but he left after one shot was completed due to "creative differences". So he was replaced by Michael Biehn. A shot featuring Remar actually made it into the finished film, but his back is towards the camera, so you can't tell.

- Speaking of which, Hicks's shotgun is the exact same one used by Biehn's character in The Terminator. For the gag where Hicks uses it to blow away an xenomorph's head, the shot of the barrel going into the mouth had to be done in reverse because it was too hard to get it in there.

- Composer James Horner felt he wasn't given the proper amount of time needed to make a completely satisfactory score. He had to start writing music before even seeing any of the film, had to rewrite entire scenes as they were reedited, and recorded the whole thing in four days. Despite all these issues, it remains one of the greatest action scores of all time and earned him his first Oscar nomination.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-7rVdXXwds&feature=player_detailpage#t=187

- The picture of Ripley's elderly daughter was a actually a picture of Sigourney Weaver's mother.

- Xenomorph shriek = altered baboon shriek.

- The film's crew and the crew of Full Metal Jacket were working close to each other, so they often had parties, which is probably necessary when you are working with Cameron and Kubrick.

- The fire in the APC created a cloud of noxious fumes that was actually suffocating the actors.

- Just like in the first movie, the white substance inside inside the android character was milk. Unfortunately for Lance Henrikson, the milk he had to store in his mouth between takes went bad fast. The food poisoning followed soon after.

- In all three of the James Cameron movies Michael Biehn has starred in, his character was bitten on the hand by another character.

- The mechanics of the walking facehugger that attacks Ripley was modeled after the Spydor action figure from the He-Man franchise.

- Sigourney Weaver gave each actor a bouquet of flowers whenever they were about to shoot their character's death scene.

- Stephen Lang auditioned for the part of the main human antagonist Carter Burke. He didn't get the part, but James Cameron later cast him as the villain in Avatar.

- When Jenette Goldstein auditioned for the role, she thought the title was referring to illegal aliens and the U.S./Mexican border. She was cast as Vasquez as a result, and the story ended up in the movie as a joke.

- The power plant where the scenes taking place in the hive had a bad case of asbestos when the crew arrived, so the whole place had to be cleaned up to make it safe. They left the location cleaner than when how they found it, which was good news for the filmmakers behind Batman (1989), who later used the plant as the Joker's lair. The bad news is that they still had to clean up all the xenomorph crap left everywhere.

- This movie explains why Ash the Android went berserk in Alien: he was a Cyberdyne Systems model.

- Sigourney Weaver should have won Best Actress. This is a fact.

I love you, Aliens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=XKSQmYUaIyE

The risk always lives.