Sigourney Weaver objected to gun use in “Aliens” before James Cameron had her shoot one
Once the actress got to test out the weapons, she found them "unfortunately very addictive."
Sigourney Weaver recently reflected on her career, remembering how James Cameron had to convince her to move past one qualm she had with Aliens.
During a “masterclass” presentation at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday, Weaver recounted how playing iconic sci-fi heroine Ellen Ripley came with an aspect she found to be objectionable. “The one thing, of course, I wasn’t thrilled about was all the guns," Weaver said, citing how Cameron was very "open to any thoughts that I might have" and "his instincts were amazing."
She continued, "I read [scripts] very quickly because I’m trying to experience the story and I had left out reading a lot of the stage directions, which had a lot of guns in them.”
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Everett
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Newt (Carrie Henn) in 'Aliens'Guns were not a big part of the first Alien. Ripley and the rest of the Nostromo crew are “truckers in space,” as Scott always described them, not soldiers, and the heroine ultimately defeated her first Xenomorph by shooting it out of the airlock.
But Aliens is set in a different milieu, with Ripley finding herself among colonial marines trying to root out a Xenomorph infestation with advanced weaponry. Yet when Cameron first brought gun props to set, Weaver objected on political grounds.
“I said, ‘Well, I’m for gun control and I’m really not going to be picking up a gun and doing anything with it,'” Weaver recalled. “He said, ‘Well, you haven’t read the script.’ I said, ‘I have, but I haven’t read all those paragraphs about guns.'”
Weaver had to be convinced that guns were a necessary part of the story, so Cameron took her outside to fire the machine guns to experience it firsthand – which she found to be “unfortunately very addictive.”
“I want you to see what happens to her,” Weaver remembers Cameron telling her.
Weaver and Cameron continued to work together on the Avatar series. Weaver played human scientist Dr. Grace Augustine in the first Avatar, and then portrayed her young Na’vi daughter Kiri via motion-capture in Avatar: The Way of Water.
Meanwhile, guns are still a part of the Alien franchise to this day. Alien: Romulus, released earlier this month, features pulse rifles similar to the ones in Aliens.
Watch the full video of Weaver’s Venice Film Festival masterclass below.
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