In modern day, in a world open to any kind of unfiltered and unchecked facts, its easy to spread misinformation and they do spread fast. A lot of fans may be dedicated fans of the mythology, but may not be readers or researchers - they didn't read all the books on the subject and didn't check all the extras on home video releases. Nor they are required to of course. But back in the days you either tried to get your hands on magazines with articles or interviews on the matter, or you simply assumed things (Some of those assumptions stayed with some to this day despite the now available facts - like the original intentions for the Alien. See HERE). But nowadays, the majority of newer or passive fans get their information from the most unreliable source - clickbaits, shorts or “Did you know” videos.
Lately, the idea that the Alien Warriors from Aliens didn't have the dome because James Cameron was afraid they may crack has gotten incredible traction and is taken as a gospel by many who don't read on the subject extensively. Amazingly, not only it's NOT true, but the actual reason had been given out there for decades - in magazines, official books, Laserdisc and DVD releases. And amazingly, the “Breaking Dome” myth doesn't even originate from anyone working on the actual creatures!
Before actual quotes and official facts, lets take a look at the logical problems with this statement. For those who may not know much about James Cameron, he's an inventor. Always was. He likes to push the envelope, and develop new techniques to bring his characters to life. Few examples. One, in the very same movie. Nobody had any idea how to bring the Alien Queen to life at the time. It was impossible to do an animatronic of this size yet, not until Jurassic Park. But it was James Cameron who developed an idea of using a crane that would hold a torso which would house 2 people that would control the 4 arms of the Queen . Legs and tail would be puppeteered and the head would be the animatronic. They tested this concept on the parking lot of the Stan Winston Studios and it worked.
Stan Winston: This was something that hasn't been done in a movie and it was a major challenge to us. It was only the bizarre insane thinking and imagination of Jim that would even attempt to try something like that on film. And when he came to me about it, first inclination is, well this is crazy. Split second later in my own head Im going ‘this is also Jim Cameron’ and I worked with Jim before, and I worked with him since. If Jim is imagining it, somewhere in his head he's got a feeling and he's got an idea of how it can happen, how he can make it happen (Alien Anthology Bluray Extras: Superior Firepower Documentary)
Cameron conceived a radical approach to puppeteering her, which would involve hanging the creature from an overhead crane and stationing two stunt men inside the mid-section to operate the puppet’s four arms. Other key functions would be controlled through external rods, wires, and hydraulics. “When Jim first came to me with this idea of putting two guys inside a giant alien queen suit,” Winston admitted, “I thought, ‘This man is out of his mind.’ Nothing like that had been done before. But in the next moment, I realized that if he had imagined it, we could probably do it.”(Building the Alien Queen article on StanWinstonSchool)
Cameron was also well aware of the massive issues they had with the suit in the original Alien. It was so restrictive that Ridley Scott had to scrap the entire vocabulary of his movement and hide it more, and many scenes were simplified. So Cameron and Winston developed an idea to, while almost exactly recreating the suit from the original molds (See HERE), use completely different materials. They replaced foam rubber with spandex and plastic.
Cameron was also the one who wrote the character of the T-1000 from the Terminator 2: Judgment Day first and then started working woth ILM to push the technology further. New softwares and new techniques were developed to bring the T-1000 to life, and new approaches were taken after Cameron kept rejecting the shots and unrealistic and adding suggestions and tricks to make them look real.
Likewise, the Avatar Na'vi were written first then extensive development was made in order to bring them onscreen. So the point is, since Cameron was always the one who developed a character that was impossible to do and then developed or helped develop technologies and techniques to bring it to life, do you really think he wouldn't be able to recreate a piece of head that was made using outdated techniques 7 years prior? Do you think he would sacrifice the look of the titular character because his head may crack between the takes? The guy who just came up with the idea of how to create a 14 foot, 6 limbed creature with a giant head? The guy who just came up with materials to use on the suits so they'll have the mobility Ridley Scott wanted?
Another thing is, the dome was NEVER a problem. Not before, not after Aliens. The suit was. Out of multitude of problems with the suit, from ripping, stiffness, color washes, tail, all that are very well documented with interviews from everyone involved and journals of HR Giger, there was NEVER a problem with the dome. So you wanna say the inventor and pioneer James Cameron and multiple Oscar winning Stan Winston would be the only director/effects team of the series who wouldn't know how to make a dome?
And then theres the timing. The decision about the suits was made well before the production of course, in the movie's pre-production phase. They decided to cast the original suit with small alterations to hands and feet, and to change the materials. Don't you think the subject of the dome and the R&D on it would have been at the same time when they developed the suits? Not when the domes were already done? Because by all accounts Cameron ordered to ditch the cowl when they were already finished with them, but before the movie started shooting (See Superior Firepower Documentary). Cameron saw the original suit, it was sent by Fox to Winston studios, and he even tried it on to test its mobility. Don't you think he would mention the dome THEN, not months later when they're recreated?
So before we do get to the actual reason, where did the “Breaking Dome” Bull***t came from? It was briefly mentioned by Alec Gillis in a 2003 DVD Documentary “Superior Firepower”. Who is Alec Gillis? Years later he would start his own creature company and work on every Alien movie from Alien 3 to AVP:R. But at the time, he was a new kid in Winston studios, being a helping hand to the team that worked on Facehuggers. Entirely separate team from the Alien creatures of course. He was in Steve Norrington's Facehugger team and helped out with Alien Queen miniature leg (one leg, yes), and with the prep of Bishop's torso.
So the breaking dome was his assumption, and that snippet of him saying it was turned into a short and spread online. Mr Gillis made many false assumptions throughout the years as well. For example, he said that Giger added the back pipes to the Alien to break the human form. Of course, just like in the other situation, Gillis couldn't know that because he wasn't there but passed his assumption as a statement as well. And its not true simply because the painting that inspired the Alien look, Necronom IV, already had those pipes
So whats the actual reason and where was it stated? When Cameron came by the Winston's workshop and saw Winston guys working on the inside of the Alien head, which was a copy of what Giger did under the dome in the original, he loved what he saw and decided that its both better looking than the smooth dome and it would work better in the shadows. Lets hear it from James Cameron and the sculptors who sculpted Alien Warrior heads:
John Rosengrant and Tom Woodruff working on the Alien Warrior headsJames Cameron: "The Alien head in the first film was very smooth. The top of the head was very smooth. Underneath it had a skull shape and a ribbed design and originally it was designed to see that through that kind of transparent surface in the Giger design. I thought that what was underneath the surface was more interesting than the final look" - (Aliens Collector's Edition Commentary 2003)
James Cameron: "“We planned to [have a domed head] with ours and to that end Stan Winston had Tom Woodruff sculpt up a ribbed, bone-like understructure that would fit underneath and be slightly visible through the cowl. When it was finished, they gave it a real nice paint job, and then I took a look at it and I said, ‘Hey, this looks much more interesting the way it is.’ So we ditched the cowl and decided that this was just another generation of Aliens – slightly mutated.'”(Cinefex Magazine 1986)
Shane Mahan (one of the original Winston Studios artists, also sculptor of the Terminator endoskull and the Alien Queen head): We tried to recreate the original Giger look and we were so proud of it, we were like 'yeah that looks so clear and cool', he's (Cameron) like 'Take that off' (Superior Firepower Documentary)
Tom Woodruff (Former Winston employee, sculpted the actual Warrior heads with John Rosengrant): "The reason I remember being was he didn't want a nice big smooth surface that wouldn't really work with the harsh lighting he was choosing and he wanted to be able to see the shapes of the head underneath as it moved between light and shadow" (Alien The Archive Book)
Screenshot from Laserdisc extras (also available in a separate disc on the Alien Anthology Bluray Set)
Here below a photo of H.R. Giger working on the original Alien head with the dome off. This design wowed James Cameron who decided it lookes even better than the smooth surface
List of sources citing Cameron's affinity for the designs under the dome as the reason for their removal
1. Cinefex Magazine #27 1986 (James Cameron)
2. Aliens Laserdisc Extras 1992
3. Director's/Cast and Crew Audio Commentary 2003 on Alien Quadrilogy DVD and Alien Anthology Bluray extras (James Cameron)
4. Winston Effect Book 2006 (James Cameron)
5. Alien The Archive book 2014 (Tom Woodruff Alien Warrior sculptor)
6. The Making of Aliens book 2020 (James Cameron/Tom Woodruff)
List of sources claiming a possibility of a breaking dome as the reason behind removing it
1. Superior Firepower Documentary 2003 (Alec Gillis of Facehugger Crew)