Sigourney Weaver wishes a more “strange and wonderful” director’s cut of Galaxy Quest had been released.
Sigourney Weaver wishes a more “strange and wonderful” version of Galaxy Quest had been released.
The 76-year-old star portrayed has-been actress Gwen in the 1999 satirical sci-fi comedy – which centres on a group of castmates from a space TV show who are drawn into a conflict with aliens who believe their series depicts real life – and while she felt “fortunate” to have worked with an “amazing group” of people, including co-stars Tim Allen, the late Alan Rickman and Tony Shalhoub, she regrets the fact studio DreamWorks made director Dean Parisot make the film more family-friendly.
Speaking to Vanity Fair, she said in a video interview: “I wanted to play a young woman in that world of stardom, who wants so much to be a star and who, because she’s beautiful and bosomy and blonde, no one takes very seriously — not even the commander. And I felt great compassion and sisterhood with Gwen and Tawny…
“I wish they put out a director’s cut of the movie because, at the last minute, DreamWorks decided to release the movie with some of the more sophisticated scenes cut that Alan was in because it needed a kids’ movie to go up against Stuart Little.
“And why they don’t put out the movie again with more of his very, very strange and wonderful scenes?”
Sigourney confirmed a sequel had been in the pipeline but co-writer Bob Gordon was reluctant to hand it over to the studio because of their treatment of Galaxy Quest, and then all involved “lost heart” following Alan’s death from pancreatic cancer in 2016.
She said: “Bob Gordon had written a second one, and he wouldn’t give it to DreamWorks because he just felt they’d missed the boat on ours. And so we always meant to do a sequel, and then with Alan passing away, we just lost heart.
“But it was a great privilege to do this love letter to actors.”
Sigourney’s most famous role is as Ellen Ripley in the Alien movies and she recently reflected on how she thinks the franchise – which launched in 1979 – was “ahead of its time”.
Speaking at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, Sigourney explained: “I realise now that it was ahead of its time, unfortunately, as all movies were back then. But I did love the character of Ripley.
“It’s amazing to me how influential the character of Ripley has been. I think it’s because she reminds us all that we can rely on ourselves, and we don’t need a man to fly in and save us or some something like that. Because I do feel that women are the glue that holds the world together, and there it is: I’m just telling the truth.”
Sigourney also confessed to being amazed by the success of the film franchise.
She shared: “The writers had done this cool thing. It was a script with 10 men, I think, and so they decided to make it a coed group in space, like dirty truckers in space. And they thought that the audience would never suspect that the young woman was going to be the hero, essentially the survivor. So they really did it for story reasons – we weren’t doing it as a big feminist step forward, [although] it did somehow turn out to be that [way].”
Sigourney Weaver wants Galaxy Quest director’s cut
