Over the decades, there are some movie posters that have become iconic for a number of reasons. Whether it is the busy artwork of a Marvel Cinematic Universe offering like Avengers: Endgame, or something that hints at the content without giving too much away like the simple logo poster of Jurassic Park, there are many reasons why a poster can become fixed in the memory and drive people into cinemas. When it comes to James Cameron’s Alien sequel, Aliens, the poster is remembered for distinctly being nothing other than the film’s title and a tagline on a black background. In a new interview, the Oscar-winning director has revealed the funny behind the scenes story about why the poster ended up the way it did.
While there are many iconic scenes in Cameron’s action-packed sequel to Ridley Scott’s atmospheric original, the 1986 poster for Aliens didn’t feature lead heroine Ellen Ripley, or the magnificent and terrifying Alien Queen, or the sight of even a power-loader, but instead opted to keep the official poster so simple it almost defies being classed as promotional material. Yet for all that, the lack of visual makes the impact of the movie so much better for those who have not seen it, as you go in completely blind to the biggest images and action sequences rather than having them put out in front of you in poster form. It is a statement that the film doesn’t rely on the flashy posters than many others use.
While speaking to journalists at io9 about his book Tech Noir, James Cameron elaborated on how being shown a bad poster and a misunderstanding of his reaction to it led to the unique one-sheet that has remained on all releases of the film over the last three decades. He said:
While the misinterpretation of Cameron’s stance on the poster probably led to one of the best known posters in the history of sci-fi film history, knowing the story of how it came about just seems to make the accidental final product seem even more of an iconic piece than before. As it turned out, it is hard to imagine anything that they could have come up with to fill that black space would have had the same impact on the film’s release.
“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 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 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 sh*t 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.”
