‘Aliens’ Cast at Fan Expo: Without ‘Terminator’ There Would Be No 'Aliens’ and Why ‘Aliens’ Endures and the Newer Films Don’t Work
- Antal Bokor
- Aug 21
- 3 min read
I’ve been to many, many convention panels. There's few of them I attend as a fan, and there has never been a panel that was met with such reverence by the panel moderator as the Aliens cast panel this year at Fan Expo. No shade to the moderator: she was amazing, and Aliens is a pretty big deal.
I write about video games, and without Aliens, early video game history would look much different. Games like Contra, Halo, Half-Life and many more wouldn’t exist or would look a whole lot different without Aliens. And it's not just video games.
I’m not trying to discount Ridley Scott’s contribution with Alien, which introduces us to the seemingly unstoppable and terrifying xenomorph. But James Cameron saw this creature, and had a vision that has yet to find a worthy successor.
I got the chance to sit in on the Aliens panel featuring Jeannete Goldstein, Paul Reiser, Mark Rolston, William Hope and Rico Ross. It’s a legendary cast from a legendary film made by a genius of a director, and the cast is absolutely aware of James Cameron’s genius. According to PFC Drake, who we know as actor Mark Rolston, James Cameron wanted to make an Aliens sequel earlier but was turned away by Fox. According to Rolston:
“(Fox) literally told him, you know, go away and do a sci-fi action film, and then we'll, we'll reconsider. So, what does the genius do? He goes away and makes Terminator. And on the strength of that, and Jim being the perfectionist he is, I imagine, he was continually revisiting the (Aliens) script because the characters are so well drawn, his dialogue was so well drawn…” and then Lt. Gorman actor, William Hope, chimed in with a “his drawings are so well drawn” in reference in Cameron’s impressively drawn storyboards.
The panel moderator brought up to Vasquez actor Jeanette Goldstein that “I loved seeing you on screen as a young girl because you’re so bloody cool” with Goldstein replying: “I know, I never got to see a girl like that, so I had to go make it.” Goldstein went on to say, “It’s amazing that i got the opportunity to do it. When I was a young girl, I was a tomboy. I mean, I was just me, you know?” And it turned out that Goldstein also had the physique for Vasquez.
“It was just a coincidence, but I had (been going to the gym) for two years before walking in the room (for my audition.) I had been going to a gym, like every day, and working out. Before that I had been a gymnast and I’d done boxing. I was always sporty.”
This turned out to be advantageous for a young Goldstein, as she was chosen for the part of Vasquez, even over a female bodybuilder they had in mind for the role that they were giving acting lessons. Famously, Jeanette Goldstein went into her Aliens audition not at all prepared to look like a badass marine, despite her impressive physique, which is a story that has been retold thousands of times at this point–but interestingly, one Paul Reiser had never heard it before.
Paul Reiser plays Weyland Yutani company man Burke in Aliens, and even though he was used to having roles with extensive speaking parts, Reiser had to convey his character’s evil intentions silently in the background.
“You know, his is not really a basis of a, a result of the film, but just the half of the shooting schedule. My first, I think, two weeks I was in scenes, but I didn't have any lines. And so I'm used to talking, you know,so I was like, 'well, when do I get to say something funny?'
"It's, like, 'oh, I don't say anything,' so it really made me think more deeply and intensely. Like, 'well, where are you? What are you doing? ' Um. That's why, a lot of times, if you look carefully, you see me twirling my mustache in the background. That way you know I'm evil.”
That’s definitely insight into the filming of Aliens I never had before.
I can honestly say Fan Expo's Aliens cast panels may well have been one of my favorites in all my years of convention panel attendance and I will always have a special place in my heart for those wily xenomorphs.
There's even more to explore from Fan Expo including interviews with Jeanette Goldstein, Mark Rolston, and Ricco Ross as well as more panel fun from the likes of Orlando Bloom, Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen so keep it parked here to enjoy the best from the con floor.