this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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Source: Alzwards Corner

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[–] VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Alien didn't swap anyone. The characters were initially written as gender neutral without first names.

[–] SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca 8 points 9 months ago

Kind of. Excerpt from this article by Ridley Scott:

“I think the idea actually came from Alan Ladd, Jr. I think it was Alan Ladd who said, ‘Why can’t Ripley be a woman?’ And there was a long pause that, at that moment, I never thought about it. I thought, why not? It’s a fresh direction, the ways I thought about that. And away we went.”

This was the late 70s. “Man” was still so powerfully default that Ridley Scott had not even thought of the possibility of casting a leading woman action hero before a meeting with an exec. That, to me, is clearly a gender swap moment, because until that moment, it was a given that Ripley would be a man. The gender-neutral script just allowed for the possibility.