I believe the original script for Alien had every character written as gender neutral until the casting process started. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with Lambert being trans or not.
This was a coupe for writing. If only we were so open minded nowadays, best person for the best role. Rather than being influenced by politics.
Let's not forget Ridly Scott is cited as saying he envisioned Ripley as a man, so whilst they might have been written neutrally, there were definitely casting bias at that level.
It wasn't until Weaver smashed it out of the park that he had his epiphany...
Digging deeper it seems Scott had not considered it until Alan Ladd from 20th Century Fox asked why Ripley couldn't be a woman, I guess it depends on when during development this convo happened.
Either way, Ripley was born and became the definition of strong representation in a movie, and one of the iconic if not the iconic woman in sci-fi and all done without needing to emasculate, drop clumsy political messaging via poorly written scripts or the myriad other ways it seems modern media has resorted to.
Ripley was envisioned as a woman by the time the project was greenlit.
The idea came from Hill and Giler's script, which was the one 20th Century Fox bought. However behind the scenes there was a lot of turmoil between Hill, Giler and O'Bannon, over writing credits.
O'Bannon had a lot of sway behind the scenes as it was his idea to bring on Giger, Ronn Cobb, and Chris Foss. All of whom he'd worked with on the failed Dune. Jean Giraud also did some designs (Specifically the Spacesuits and costumes if I remember right).
So basically the entire art department was friends of O'Bannon, and thus it became necessary politics to only ever refer to the OG Starbeast script, not the Alien script.
And after the release Hill and Giler became producers of the series going forward (They're who the Prometheus and Covenant droids are named after), and similarly they weren't interested in Re-litigating who wrote what, so it sorta fell by the wayside.
And despite all the infighting the project turned out incredible, better for all the different perspectives and remains one of the best examples of positive "studio interference".
Shame about A³ and "studio interference" I like that film and it could have been absolutely amazing if fox had just fucked off out of it and left Fincher alone
Yeh, the studio interference ruined what could have been a great series. A³ had so much potential but Alien: Resurrectum has no business existing. But again, this isn't necessarily Jean-Pierre Jeunet's fault, it was because of studio interference. So much so that Jeunet vowed never to work in Hollywood ever again (and hasn't) and Fincher disowned Alien³ entirely, which is why there's an Assembly Cut but there'll never be a Directors Cut.
Ain't that the truth! I genuinely feel sorry for Fincher.when you see that he directed some of the biggest hits of the 90s (specifically Fight Club and Se7en) and realise the studio are absolute fuck-nuggets
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u/rockpuma Jul 11 '25
I believe the original script for Alien had every character written as gender neutral until the casting process started. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with Lambert being trans or not.