leading from
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| "organic box-like thing " |
In the comic book version of the original Alien movie illustrated by Goodwin and Simonson, there is a scene where the Alien has squashed itself into something that looks like in the illustration of a stuffed back pack lying on the ground and it suddenly unfolds. Walter Simonson was flown from America to England to see a roughcut and about two or three weeks before Christmas where, and he saw this particular as he described it, Ripley is running around the spaceship and comes to a dead stop, and there ten feet down the corridor there is a box in the middle of the floor, the viewer doesn't recognise the shape, the silhouette means nothing, but the coloring and the metallic lustre leads one to realise that it is the alien creature. There is this moments pause and the box begins to shrug and move before it begins to unfold itself and that great spectacular alien head comes up and it’s the alien all folded up into this kind of organic box, and it’s between her and the life boat and this thing is there revealing itself to be the alien waiting there for her in the hallway. She leaps back and drops the cat, and she goes back around the corner. There's a moments pause and then about seven feet off the ground, the alien's head slides around the corner. Walter liked the scene very much but someone that he talked to from the audience thought that it looked very cheesy.
b) Foreshadowing
However for Walter as a storyteller, what that did for the story, it foreshadowed what the alien did later when Ripley got into the lifeboat and she isn't at all aware that the alien was there. He thought it was wonderful that they would do something in the story where you begin to understand that the alien can fold up in ways that doesn't look like itself and it moves the alien a few feet further away from just being a man in a rubber suit.
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| Walt Simonson |
c) To put in or not to put in
When it came to including it in the comic book, there seemed to be some concern about whether that scene would be in or not, Walter Simons phoned up Charlie Lippincott the Public Relations man for 20th Century Fox and said to him " Ok, I’m at the point where I have to draw that scene or not draw that scene, so what do I do? " since putting it in or not would effect the left and right sides of the pages of the story.
Charlie Lippincot said "Well, Right now, it's in"
Walter replied "okay" and added it back in, but when the movie came out, the scene was no longer in the film
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| Charlie Lippincott |
d) Dan O'Bannon mentions the "box" in 1979
In November 1979, Ross the reporter on the Hollywood scene for Famous Monsters made a report about what Dan O'Bannon said at a preview about the scenes cut from Alien and then proceeded to mention that there was a scene of the alien "folded like a weird-looking box", but this along with various closeups would give us too graphic a look at the creature.
e) Walter Simonson mentions the "box" in a magazine from the fall of 1979
Walter Simonson talked about the scene regarding the Alien in the box shape
f) Walter Simonson mentions the "box" in 1998
In 1998 Walter in a post to a newsgroup suddenly referred to the shape as "an organic box-like thing" as well and would continue to refer to it as a box in interviews relating to Alien the Illustrated Story.
g) Watching the scene in the rough cut
Given that there is no one telling able to tell us how the effect was done, since Walter Simons was a witness to the scene in the rough cut, although he didn't actually know how the effect was done, he was able to say that he didn't think that he was seeing some inflatable suit, and given how some people can fold themselves up in remarkable ways, he leant towards the idea that either somebody was unfolding himself from within the box or perhaps it was a mix of a person inside and animatronic operation.
h) Ridley's intentions.
It was mentioned that Ridley Scott wanted the alien creature to be able to roll up into a little ball but the first costume was so cumbersome that the actor couldn't do a great deal of movement in it and so the costume had to be divided into a dozen different parts. However still, when he attempted to have Bolaji Badejo and then the stuntman attempt to roll up into a ball and then stretch out while suspended about a dozen feet in the air held by a harness around the stomach area, but they failed to achieve this.
i) See also Intermediary Stage
j) And also a variation of the idea is used by Ridley Scott in Prometheus : See Fifield found rolled up
Quote sources:
- Dan O'Bannon(?): Some scenes were shot of the alien closeup, of it folded like a weird-looking box, but it was decided this would give us too graphic a look at the beastie, so snip! snip!! snip!!! (Reported by "ROSS-Our Man About Hollyweird and active filmonster buff" conversation with Dan O'Bannon, in Famous Monsters of Film Land, #159, p29)
- Walter Simonson: There's one scene in the graphic novel, towards the end, when Ripley is trying to escape. She runs around the corner in a corridor and there's this box in the middle of the corridor, and as she looks, the box unfolds and becomes the alien, and it's between her and the lifeboat and it was really creepy. I thought it was kind of cool to see the alien in almost a morphing form. When they were editing the movie, they were editing all the stuff in, out, in, out, in, out. When I got to the part of the story where the sequence had to appear, I called up Charlie (Lippincott) and said ' I need to know, is that scene in or out? Because if it's out, that gives me one page extra for the remaining eight or nine pages of the book" Since there were no ads, I was designing the book left page right page, left page right page, so stuff would fall where I wanted it to. If that page was in, then that meant a different series of layouts for the rest of the book than if it's out. So he said "Well, right now it's in" So I drew it, the movie came out, it wasn't in. But it was fun to do , and like I said, I thought it looked really cool (Alien: The Illustrated Story, The Original Art Edition)
- Walter Simonson: At the end, when the coolants are shut down and the reactor's overheating. Ripley goes running along the corridor. She goes running around a corner and comes to a dead stop. And you look down and there, about ten feet down, is this box sitting in the middle of the floor. And you don't recognise the shape: the silhouette means nothing, but the coloring and the metallic lustre are real recognisable... and you know it's the creature. And there's this moment's pause, and then this box starts to move, and it begins to unfold. She leaps back and drops the cat, and she goes back around the corner. There's a moment's pause and then about seven feet off the ground, the alien's head slides around the corner (Ancient Astronaut Special Edition: Star Wars vs Alien, Interview with Walt Simonson, p55.)
- Walter Simonson:Well we were told they had edited this thing down from longer footage, and now they thought they had edited it down too far and were going to add more back in. Well the final version is much different, it’s much quicker, so obviously a lot of the decisions were still being made. I got to the part of the comic where I reached the scene where Ripley runs around the corner and sees this box, and I called Charlie up and said ‘Ok, I’m at the point where I have to draw that scene or not draw that scene, so what do I do?’ And he said, ‘Well, right now, it’s in.’ And I said "ok", and that’s probably important in doing a comic because, especially at the end of a book because every page you put in affects every page you put in down the road. So in order to have the pages come out the way I wanted for the last 6 or 7 or 8 or whatever it was, that was an extra page I would have to adjust my storytelling to match whatever it was, put it in or leave it out. So I put it in, went to watch the movie when it came out, and of course, the scene wasn’t there. So, that’s why that’s there. (www.bigshinyrobot.com/,November 9, 2012 )
- Walter Simonson: But again, there’s a scene towards the end of the book when Ripley is the last survivor, and she has the cat and is running towards the life boats, she runs around the corner of a corridor, and there’s a box sitting in the center of the corridor, and it’s clearly out of place, and she freezes and comes to a dead halt, looking at it, and after a moment, the box begins to shrug and move, and that great, spectacular alien head comes up and it’s the alien all folded up into this kind of organic box, and it’s between her and the lifeboat. That was a scene I remember being in the movie for two reasons. One, I thought it was fantastic. At least one of the guys I was with who was watching this movie with us, thought it looked really cheesy, I thought it looked really cool, but what it meant was when I was drawing right at the end of the book, I was working on it at March at that point, and I’d seen the movie movie about 3 months earlier. (www.bigshinyrobot.com/,November 9, 2012 )
- Walter Simonson: There's a scene in the graphic novel that's not in the movie, where at the end, when Ripley is running around the spaceship, she bumps into a box and the box unfolds itself and it turns out to be the alien waiting there for her in the hallway. That scene isn't in the film, but it was in the rough cut that I saw. I thought it was really cool. Another guy I was with thought it looked really cheesy, but I liked the way it looked. They were still editing the film at that point, so when I got to the point in the graphic novel where I had to put that page in or not put it in, because it would affect the placement of the left and right pages of the story, I asked and they said, 'Right now, it's in.' I added it back in, pasted everything around it and then, lo and behold, the movie comes out and the scene isn't there. Go figure." (www.comicbookresources.com, Tue, October 30th, 2012 (thanks to Mr Clemens at AVPGaaxu.net for coming up with the information about that interview on 25th January 2014))
- Walter Simonson: What that does, speaking as a storyteller, is it foreshadows what the alien does later when Ripley gets in to a lifeboat and she isn't at all aware that the alien was there. I thought it was very cool that they would do something in the story where you begin to understand that the alien can fold up in ways that doesn't look like itself. I think that's really neat. It moves the alien a few feet further away from just being a guy in a rubber suit. (www.comicbookresources.com, Tue, October 30th, 2012 (thanks to Mr Clemens at AVPGaaxu.net for coming up with the information about that interview on 25th January 2014))
- Note from Walter Simonson to alt.cult-movies.alien
Walter Simonson: "I'm always interested in Alien references to the old comic. A couple of quick notes... Archie and I had three different script revisions done over about five months to work from. At the time we were working on the comic book, the principal photography with the actors was essentially complete and the movie company was filming the model work. 20th Century left us alone (Charlie Lippencott, our liason with 20th Century and a great help, knew comic books and trusted us to do our own job well) and we essentially tried to produce the best comic we could using all the information we had, rather than try to produce an exact copy of a movie that was still in a major state of flux while we were working.I (but not Archie) had a chance to see the rough cut of the film that was in the process of being edited in December,'78. However, a lot of major editing of the film was still going on and stuff was being put in and taken out like crazy. For example, the scene with Dallas in the cocoon was already out by the time we were working so although it had been in the earliest script we had, we never considered putting it in the comic book. The scene where Bret gets killed was much much longer in the rough cut than in the release version, and the 2 page sequence in the comic was my boiling down of the scene I saw in the rough cut. I think the alien tail snaking between Lambert's legs late in the film is actually snaking through Bret's legs; check the shoes. And the scene with the Alien in the corridor as a organic box-like thing between Ripley and the lifeboat was in the rough cut. I was told when I got to that page of the comic book that the decision had been made to leave that sequence in. So I drew it. Of course, when the movie came out, it was nowhere to be found.But essentially as I said above, Archie and I had a lot of information about the film from scripts to stills to a 'preview' and were able to use most of it to try to create a good comic book. Still didn't have quite enough stills of the models so I got the vents wrong on the Nostromo in a shot or two but that's the way the cookie crumbles.Best/Walter"
(original post found through Google Groups) - Wmmvrrvrrmm:
Walter Simonson: Just to be clear, I have no idea how the scene was actually done. All I can say is that I thought the scene looked pretty neat, whereas a couple of media savvy folks I saw the rough cut with thought it was kind of cheesy.Or at least, that's how I remember our reactions. I don't remember thinking I was looking at some sort of inflatable. And given how some folks can fold themselves up in remarkable ways, I would lean towards the idea that either somebody was unfolding himself from within the box, or possibly, it was a mix of person and animatronic operation.
Wmmvrrvrrmm:Okay. Yes, it's all a bit strange. It's sounds like a wonderfully confusing scene. I am having thoughts now about the idea of how it might be part one thing and another. I thought about the idea of some sort of a wire skeleton being used by a puppeteer if not a normal human inside the costume, or perhaps there was something going on with a person's body half below the floor. The normal outfit may well have been slightly too constricting for a human being to bend himself into too many interesting positions so it seemed. I'll continue to wonder. Many thanks!(https://www.facebook.com/AlienTIS Saturday 1st February 2014) - Brian Johnson: The first costume was so cumbersome that the actor couldn't do a great deal of movement in it, and though Ridley never tended to be so specific with the alien that you could stare at it for minutes at a time and see everything, he did want it to be fairly flexible. He wanted the creature to be able to roll up in a ball and that sort of thing. Well they couldn't do that at the beginning - the costume was just too rigid - so there had to be considerable modifications ( Cinefex's Alien: The Special Effects, p31)
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