Aliens
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Continuity mistake: During the scene where Ripley is trying to break the window with a chair, there is a scuff mark on it before she hits it. It goes away and comes back. (01:32:15)

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Suggested correction: The view from Ripley's side is looking up at the window and from the other side level where there are reflections at the same height (using Ripley as a reference) of the scuffs. There is no way to tell if the scuffs are there or not.

The Director's Cut (and maybe even on the theatrical version) on the 2010 Blu-ray removes the scratches, so I assume they were not supposed to be there initially.

Revealing mistake: When the swarm of aliens drops through the ceiling panels, you can tell that Ripley and the marines don't have magazines in their rifles. It's especially visible when Ripley looks up before Hicks raises the panel and sees the aliens.

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Suggested correction: What makes you think there is no magazine in those fake rifles? Ripley's gun has a magazine, visible as she is looking up. Her gun is the only one visible too.

lionhead

Other mistake: They should have had much more than only twenty-six minutes to save Newt. Bishop said that the reactor would blow in four hours after seeing the emergency venting. He said it would take forty minutes to crawl down that pipe, an hour to patch into and align the antenna, thirty minutes to prep the ship, and fifty minutes flight time. 40+60+30+50=180 minutes, gives them an hour spare.

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Suggested correction: And how are you so sure everything went smoothly without problems? Any of those things could have taken longer, leaving only 26 minutes.

lionhead

Revealing mistake: When Ripley first burns the egg plants inside the nest, the Queen screams and moves her head. The steel rod used to hold the Queen's head to the rest of her body is easily visible.

Jack Vaughan

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[All ammunition has been confiscated.]
Marine: What are we supposed to use? Harsh language?.

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Trivia: To make the Aliens' blood smoke and burn, the SFX department came up with an idea to put two separate chemicals side by side in bags inside the Alien puppets, on top of the explosives. When the two chemicals mixed together, it created a nasty, acidic burning affect.

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Question: I know that the studio chose James Cameron to direct due to the strength of his script, but why wasn't Ridley Scott offered the chance to direct? And was the studio considering a sequel before Cameron joined?

Dra9onBorn117

Answer: It really was all down to James Cameron having already written the script and proving himself capable of directing with 'The Terminator.' It was just a quicker, easier, and almost certainly cheaper decision to let him direct his own script rather than get someone else, even Ridley Scott. While the producers had wanted to make an 'Alien' sequel almost immediately, at the time the head of 20th Century Fox didn't want to pursue it fearing it would be seen as an obvious cash-in and flop. When a new executive at the studio came in a couple years later, the project was put back on track, and I believe Cameron was the first to be approached to write the script.

TonyPH

Chosen answer: The studio was considering a sequel before Cameron was involved, but regarding directing it, Ridley Scott told "The Hollywood" in a 2008 interview, "They didn't ask me! To this day I have no idea why. It hurt my feelings, really, because I thought we did quite a good job on the first one." The studio liked Cameron's script and at that time he had enough clout to be able to insist on directing it.

raywest

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