Director James Cameron has revealed why the poster for Aliens features just text on a black background. The legendary director, who would go on to direct box office juggernauts like Titanic and Avatar, only had a few features under his belt at the time he made Aliens, which was released in 1986. He had partially directed the 1981 horror sequel Piranha II: The Spawning before reportedly being fired and replaced by Italian schlock director Ovidio G. Assonitis, and he followed that by the sci-fi splash The Terminator in 1984.
There is plenty of iconic imagery in Aliens, which follows Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of Alien as she joins an expedition to investigate what happened to a colony that has settled on the planet where the Xenomorphs are located. In the process, she rescues a little girl named Newt and brandishes a massive gun while holding her in her other arm. She also fights off the massive Xenomorph Queen with a mecha-suit, another image that would be perfectly suitable for the poster. Despite the wealth of material from Aliens to choose from, the poster is remarkably plain.
Per io9, James Cameron was recently speaking with a panel of journalists about his upcoming book Tech Noir. During the session, he revealed the story behind the original one-sheet poster for Aliens, which just features the taglines "There Are Some Places In The Universe You Don't Go Alone" and "This Time It's War" with a stylized title on a black background. He explains that the original poster shown to him was so bad that he balled it up, threw it in the trash, and said "Honestly, if I had a choice between that piece of s**t and just an all-black frame, I’d go with the all-black frame." The head of marketing misunderstood his outburst and immediately turned around and provided a poster with an all-black frame. Read the full quote (which contains slight NSFW language), as well as the original poster in question below:
There was a funny one-sheet story on Aliens! I did have a strong opinion on that.
So I went into the office of the the head of marketing for 20th Century Fox, I literally met him on his last day at the office and his office was all boxed up. I was his last meeting before he left the job. He was sitting at the desk and he had this little green plastic frog and he was squeezing a bulb and making it hop around the desk. And I said, “What’s with the frog?” And he said, “It’s my stress frog.” I’m like, “OK, this guy is a casualty.”
Then he said, “But I’ve got a one-sheet for you.” And he showed this one-sheet. I think you can get it online, a few of them kind of leaked out. And it was this horrible sort of mash-up photography. It looked worse than a Roger Corman one-sheet because, like me, Roger believed in good one-sheets. Not good movies, but good one-sheets. And I looked at this thing and I kind of held it in my hands and and I said, “Oh, let me tell you exactly what I think of this one-sheet,” and I just slowly sort of crumpled it up [into] a ball and threw it in the corner. And he was working the stress frog. And I said, “Honestly, if I had a choice between that piece of shit and just an all-black frame, I’d go with the all-black frame.” And apparently what happened was I walked out of the office and he called somebody up and said “He wants it all black!” He wasn’t hearing what I was saying. So if you ever wondered why there was literally nothing on the one-sheet for Aliens, that’s why.
While some might say the poster is interesting in its own right because of the fact it keeps audiences in the dark, Aliens was a massive success whether or not it was eye-catching. The film, which was both written and directed by Cameron, debuted at #1 for the weekend and held that top slot for 4 weeks, eventually hitting #5 in the domestic box office for the year. It also fared well critically, holding a Certified Fresh 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and landing at #73 on the IMDb Top 250 (as it currently stands).
Fans of Aliens have pored over every single aspect of the film for tidbits and fun facts. However, one place very few people have thought to look for cool behind-the-scenes stories is the poster itself. With this reveal, Cameron just proved that the promotion of a film can be just as interesting as the production of it.
Source: io9
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