Sigourney Weaver Went to Bat for James Cameron on Aliens: Here’s Why
On the set of Aliens, Sigourney Weaver went to bat for James Cameron, pushing back against a distant crew and helping keep the sequel on track.
Alien blew up in 1979, and Fox basically hit the gas on a sequel right away. It just took seven years to actually happen. When Aliens finally rolled cameras with James Cameron taking over for Ridley Scott, there was a very real vibe on set that the new guy might be, well, the Piranha II guy. It took Ripley herself, Sigourney Weaver, to flip that narrative.
The crew wanted Ridley back, not the new guy
At New York Comic Con this past week, Weaver looked back on those early days in England, where a lot of the crew from Scott's original Alien returned for the sequel. They loved Ridley Scott and assumed he should direct part two. Cameron, at that point, was a name many of them barely knew. Weaver admitted she didn't really know him either at first, outside of the fact that his script knocked her out.
That unfamiliarity mixed with Cameron's previous credit being Piranha II did not exactly calm nerves. Even with The Terminator having just proven he knew his way around an action movie, Cameron walking onto a beloved franchise with a crew loyal to another director was a tough sell.
"Listen, I love Ridley too, but this guy wrote this and this film Terminator, and he knows what he is doing. He is a natural."
Weaver played translator, and the set thawed
Weaver says she clicked with Cameron immediately and started doing quiet diplomacy around the stages: reassuring department heads that the script was strong, reminding people he had just made The Terminator, and vouching that he actually did know what he was doing. It was not instant harmony — she says the attitude lingered for a bit — but by the end of the shoot, the same crew that side-eyed him at first was fully in his corner.
Result: one of the all-timers
Aliens did not just work; it set the bar for how to make a sequel that shifts gears without losing the DNA of the original. Cameron steered it hard into action while still honoring what made Alien eerie and tense. The payoff was huge: $183 million worldwide, one of 1986's biggest hits, and a big step in turning Cameron into the guy who makes box office steamrollers.
Weaver and Cameron would not team up again until Avatar decades later, and they are still at it with the sequels — including this year's Fire and Ash.