Obviously, there wasn’t going to be any new footage at the Comic-Con Aliens panel today, what with it being a 30th anniversary celebration and all. What did happen is about what you expect, with Sigourney Weaver holding court, snarky jabs at David Fincher, and Bill Paxton yelling, “GAME OVER, MAN! GAME OVER!” to the delight of the assembled crowd. Everyone was there, even Carrie Henn, who was 10 years old when casting assistant took her picture at school—some things really were different in the ‘80s—leading to her casting as scrappy survivor Newt. Henn, who never appeared in another film, now works as a fourth-grade teacher:
It’s all the stuff nerds love about cons, even down to the couple who got engaged during the panel, prompting Cameron to remark, “May you be happy and have many spawn.” (Mazel tov, weirdos.) One of the more interesting stories came from director James Cameron, who revealed that Lance Henricksen actually performed Bishop’s knife trick as you see it in the film, without using any camera tricks. Apparently, they initially tried filming it with an undercranked camera, but the effect didn’t look realistic. So Henricksen had to learn how to do this in real time:
So while we didn’t get a first look at the upcoming Alien: Covenant, we did get tales of traumatizing children with alien goo—nothing permanent, though, Henn reassured the crowd—praise for Neill Blomkamp’s script for the next Alien movie, and, best of all, this guy:
Happy Comic-Con, one and all.