Aliens: How The Queen Creature Design Honors An Original Xenomorph Idea - Screen Rant

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Aliens is a sequel that cleverly finds ways to honor ideas that didn’t make it into Ridley Scott’s original movie, such as the original design for the Xenomorphs. Aliens is a pivotal entry in the horror, science fiction, and action genres as well as an immensely satisfying sequel to an already iconic movie. It throws Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley back into the fray with the deadly Xenomorphs and pits her and her crew against a whole pack of aliens, as well as the truly intimidating Xenomorph Queen at the center of the carnivorous extraterrestrial species.

Ridley Scott’s original Alien is often viewed as more of a horror film than James Cameron’s more action-heavy sequel, but Aliens is still full of moments that are as genuinely frightening as anything in Alien. Many of the changes and concepts that were introduced in Aliens are largely responsible for how Alien has been able to grow into a franchise that remains relevant and still has a healthy future ahead of it, including an Alien television series.

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Aliens was a sequel that’s added so much to the larger Alien franchise, but it’s also a movie that deeply respected its past. It started a narrative around its history and mythology that continues to this day in the more recent Ridley Scott productions like Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Some of the sequel's connections to the history of the first movie in the franchise are more apparent than others, but there’s also a subtle tie to the original. James Cameron worked in a nod to the Xenomorph history by including a reference to a creature design that didn’t make the cut back in the first movie.

Part of the reason the Alien films have been such successes is that the Xenomorph design that H.R. Giger and Ridley Scott developed together is such a uniquely horrifying creation. The finished Xenomorph model still reflects some of Giger’s best work, but the Xenomorph creature design went through several revisions during the first film’s production. Initially, Giger was interested in a translucent monster where the skeleton, organs, and inner circulatory system could all be seen and help intensify the terror. Scott also liked this angle for the Xenomorph, but a translucent creature couldn’t realistically be used since the translucent material was more prone to tearing and less resistant to damage. James Cameron was also taken with the idea but couldn’t make a translucent Xenomorph and ignore what Scott’s film had established. The compromise Cameron landed on was that his new Xenomorph Queen had translucent teeth, a clever homage to Giger’s original vision. While the final Xenomorph design is more effective is it blends in with the shadows and can come out of nowhere, there's still something disturbing about being able to see the insides of the predator.

The translucent approach to the Xenomorph couldn’t be cracked upon the original film’s release, but it’s gone on to be reflected not just through Cameron's Xenomorph Queen in Aliens, but also in Prometheus, which came full circle with its translucent Hammerpede Xenomorph creature. Like the original, there were other translucent Xenomorph designs in Prometheus that didn't make the final cut. Nevertheless, it's quite impressive how the franchise has slowly been able to integrate unused species and designs envisioned by Giger and Scott from the start without sacrificing the design that has come to be known as the "classic" design. Aliens was the start of the Alien franchise's strange and brilliant way of integrating its rejected past into its future.

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Daniel Kurland (387 Articles Published)

Daniel Kurland is a freelance writer, comedian, and critic, who lives in the cultural mosaic that is Brooklyn, New York. Daniel’s work can be read on ScreenRant, Splitsider, Bloody Disgusting, Den of Geek, and across the Internet. He recently completed work on a noir anthology graphic novel titled, "Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Noir: A Rag of Bizarre Noir and Hard Boiled Tales" and he’s currently toiling away on his first novel. Daniel knows that "Psycho II" is better than the original, that the finale of "How I Met Your Mother" doesn’t deserve the hate that it receives, and that Garth Ennis’ run of "Animal Man" may be the best superhero story of all time. He’s a fan of white grape juice and appreciates a good Fuji apple. The owls are not what they seem.