It's hard to believe that even in the age of easy and accessible information, the design of such a scifi icon as the Alien Queen isn't as well documented as some other creatures'. Ridley Scott called the Queen a "very good idea", and the master artist himself, the great late H.R.Giger, was very impressed with and spoke very highly of the Queen. "It's all beautifully done, everything, the designs and the way they're executed. The Alien Queen is also nice. She's a bit smaller in the face than my alien but my basic design was very well studied. She was frighteningly well animated.". He later said "The Alien Queen is very complicated, like the way I would have done. I like how she moves" and finally, he stated in Cinefantastique magazine, "When I heard James Cameron himself designed the Alien Queen I was even more impressed by the talents of this versatile director.'
So let's take a look at how well Cameron indeed studied Giger's style and paintings, and also give some spotlight to the biomechanical features of the Queen, rarely visible, since she was always in shadows in the movie, although to be fair, you can't see most of the biomechanical details on the original Alien either, but there's no shortage of photos of the original suits. Queen Alien isn't as well documented, since most of her behind the scene photos are a work in progress or photos that are also shot in lower light conditions.
Before we proceed, let's clear some misconceptions out of the way. I believe fairly recently, this notion that Cameron designed the Queen on equal part with Stan Winston started circulating, but it's taken out of context. James Cameron himself designed every single detail and piece of the Alien Queen. He first started with paintings which he presented with the script, in which the Queen looks more like the Alien but with extra, insectoid hands and some crest.
Then once it came to actual designs, the great Stan Winston tried to come up with a design himself, and here are the ones he came up with
He was always clear that the Queen (and The Terminator) had been fully designed by Jim Cameron, while Cameron was also humble enough to give Stan some credit and said he took some ideas from him. But below, this is James Cameron's final design (and one of many sketches) for the Alien Queen, done for the sculpting team as a reference. All the sketches can be found in James Cameron's Art Book "Tech Noir: The Art of James Cameron"
Now, let's take a look at some of the inspirations for the design of the Queen in Giger's work. Inspiration might be a wrong word, as Cameron was basically using Giger's artistic "vocabulary" to have a stylistic continuity with his work. One of the more specific works of Giger that was used for the design of the Queen was Monster IV.
The painting was officially cited as an influence in Stan Winston's book "Winston Effect", and the similarity in the neck is clearly visible
The Queen's hand is also almost a copy of the hand presented in Giger's 1980 painting titled "Monster IV". See below, notice the cut-in by the pinky, the extra joints on the fingers and the marbles on the knuckles
Even the ribbing perfectly represents Giger's style, as seen here next to the 1979's "Biomechanical Landscape" (Credit goes to Alien Explorations blog)
The underside of the Queen's "crown" is also decorated with bony ribcage design which Giger also fancied so much
Below, ceiling in H.R. Giger’s Museum in Switzerland
H.R. Giger's original Alien is a work of horrific beauty - it's terrifying, but beautiful artistically. It isn't a movie monster with warts and claws, or hideous digitigrade monster legs that were given to the creature in latter designs. It was graceful, and sort of of a shape of a woman, and its slender shape and female feet underlined that idea. Why do I mention this? Because Cameron actually used the design of the original Alien's feet on the Queen. Foot of the original Alien on the left, foot of the Alien Queen on the right.
Now on to the obscure biomechanical details. But first, what is biomechanical? H.R. Giger's artwork was pretty much dark and grey depictions of rotting corpses fused with industrial machinery parts and both male and female private parts. The original Alien had all of those signature elements. It was a charred skeleton permeated by electrical and plumbing parts like cables, tubes, screws and predominantly flexible ribbed tubes. Many parts still had serial number on them when the suit was studied years later for the sequel. It also had male and female parts sculpted in its crotch and abdomen. So Giger's Biomechanicality was a fusion of a skeleton or decaying body with mechanical parts.
Well, let's start with legs then. The legs are graceful and shaped like a female leg in a stiletto heal, yet somewhat terrifying, kind of like SiL from Species was. But small details like the cable/hose going through it get lost with time. Also notice the signature Alien ribbed tubing on the thigh and on the backside of the knee
The ribbed tubing is also present in the Queen's larger, outer arms. At some point it merges into something that looks like an exhaust of some sort, which can be seen in the second photo. Great detail
Also, under the arms there are those cables that stick out from the arms and dip into the body. That detail was not lost on comic book artists even back in the 80's
Now, for the silly ones who thought these were puppeteering cables, sorry to disappoint. First of all, puppeteering cables are always hidden inside an animatronic body, they aren't so thick and huge, and don't look like that. These type of hoses are used for plumbing. Secondly, there were no animatronics involved with the body and hands. The body was just a rubber suit hiding two guys who used their own hands for the outer (holding extensions) and inner arms, positioned side to side like this
and a still from a footage showing them suit up. All the cables, which were actually electronic cables, were run to the head which was the only animatronic part of the body, and they run straight to the head through center of the body to the backside and you can see them between the stunt performers as well.
Staying on the arms, there were two cables on their upper side decorating each upper arm. This detail is actually visible in the film, and is also clear on Jim Cameron's detailed sketch of the Queen
Lastly, there's a large metal piece right at the base of the Queen's neck. Due to the lighting in the film, it may not be clear that it's metal, but you can see it clearly in the behind the scenes footage
That signature ribbed tubing is also present in the Queen's spine
Those are some of the highlights of the Queen's fantastic design which impressed H.R.Giger and used his style so well. If I missed something major, write to JamesCameronOnline and I'll be sure to ad it to the post.
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