Weyland-Yutani
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| Weyland-Yutani | |
 |
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| Type of Company | Fictional |
|---|---|
| Founded | Earth |
| Headquarters | Earth Outer Rim |
| Key people | Charles Bishop Weyland |
| Industry | Mining Consumer goods Computer hardware Biological weapons Defense |
| Products | Global Terraformers Spacecraft Security services |
Weyland-Yutani is a fictional corporation in the motion picture Alien and its sequels, often referred to simply as "The Company". It is one of the corporations that runs the human colonies outside the solar system through the Extrasolar Colonization Administration, has a seat in the Interstellar Commerce Commission's Company Review Board, and also has a large presence on Earth.
Weyland-Yutani is consistently portrayed as having the worst aspects of corporate profiteering, and as being willing to sacrifice decency and human life in the pursuit of profit. In various portrayals of the Aliens' universe, the corporation has its hands in all aspects of space colonization and research. The corporation has consistently ordered its employees and agents to attempt to obtain living Xenomorphs so that they can be exploited as a bio-weapon.
Weyland-Yutani can be seen as a major inspiration for the trope of the evil megacorporation in science fiction.
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[edit] Alien
The specifics of Weyland-Yutani's origins as a fictional construct are unclear: We know that the compound word "Weylan-Yutani" may be viewed at the upper left of the display screen during the ship awakening sequence and at the bottom left of a badly vibrating display screen during the planetoid landing sequence in Alien. It was also printed on the prop beer cans in the film, where it is partially visible in some scenes ("Original and Genuine Weylan-Yutani Aspen Beer - Extra Strong - Aspen Colorado").
[edit] Aliens
When James Cameron was assigned to write and direct the sequel the role and significance of Weyland-Yutani hugely amplified, becoming an indispensable element in Alien lore. Major appearances include several scenes in the 1992 Special Edition cut of Aliens, most of Alien³ (sets, costumes, and other props), and a brief allusion in Alien: Resurrection.
The original Weyland-Yutani logo was an Egyptian winged-sun emblem; it was modified to its current corporo-industrial interlocked W/Y for Aliens.
[edit] Alien³
In Alien³, Weyland-Yutani's name appears on screen several times written in Japanese. It appears once on a box of supplies. The first six kana of this are part of the Japanese syllabary katakana which is used to spell foreign words, and here they spell weirando. The second part is the Japanese name Yutani written with two kanji. The corporation's name also appears in a newspaper headline where the last four kanji read kabushikigaisha which means "joint stock corporation."
[edit] Alien: Resurrection
By the time of Alien: Resurrection, the company no longer exists; an interstellar international political military force called "United Systems Military" now controls all the aspects of previous W-Y involvement, including projectile firing weapons (pulse rifles and smart guns) and all other weapon development contracts.
In a deleted scene included in the director's cut of the film, as well as the novelization, one scientist remarks that Weyland-Yutani was "bought out by Wal-Mart." And in the novel Aliens: Original Sin, there is a reference made to a vehicle once made by Weyland-Yutani that now has "Wal-Mart" in its name.
The name is incorrectly identified as "Weyland-Utonic", and the planet in which Ripley's genetic material was extracted (Fiorina 'Fury' 161) is incorrectly identified as "Fiori 16".
[edit] Aliens vs Predator
In Alien vs. Predator, the founder of this company (then known as Weyland Industries) is shown to be Charles Bishop Weyland. He is played by Lance Henriksen, the actor that played the android Bishop in Aliens and Alien³, suggesting that the android was modelled after him. However, in the novelization of Alien³ (released before Alien vs. Predator), it is made clear that the Bishop android was created by a Weyland-Yutani employee named Michael Bishop, which the Alien vs. Predator filmmakers either chose to ignore or did not consider canon. Some fans have argued that Michael Bishop was the human descendant or clone of Charles Bishop Weyland, which would fix this discrepancy.
John Yutani, who cofounded the company with Weyland, was originally intended to appear in the film (various actors, such as Gary Busey and Peter Weller, were considered for the role) but this was dropped from the final film.
[edit] Other works
As a homage to the Alien movies, the Weyland-Yutani logo was used on some weapons in the dystopian TV series Firefly. In Serenity, the Operative's claim that the Alliance was "building a better world" echoes the slogan of Weyland-Yutani, "Building Better Worlds." (The show's creator, Joss Whedon, wrote the fourth Alien sequel, Alien: Resurrection.)
In Whedon's series Angel, Weyland-Yutani is also named as a major client (along with Yoyodyne and News Corp) of the evil law firm Wolfram and Hart.
The firm's name also appears on the bow of a supertanker passing under the "Bering Strait Bridge", near the end of an Extreme Engineering installment, on the History Channel.
[edit] Origins of name
The old myth is that the name of "Weyland-Yutani" was introduced by director Ridley Scott, who named it after his former neighbors whom he hated with a passion. But in reality, it was created by Ron Cobb, one of the designers of the Nostromo and her crew's uniforms.
| One of the things I enjoyed most about Alien was its subtle satirical content. Science fiction films offer golden opportunities to throw in little scraps of information that suggest enormous changes in the world. There's a certain potency in those kinds of remarks. Weylan Yutani for instance is almost a joke, but not quite. I wanted to imply that poor old England is back on its feet and has united with the Japanese, who have taken over the building of spaceships the same way they have now with cars and supertankers. In coming up with a strange company name I thought of British Leyland and Toyota, but we couldn't use "Leyland-Toyota" in the film. Changing one letter gave me "Weyland", and "Yutani" was a Japanese neighbor of mine. | ||
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—Ron Cobb, "The Authorized Portfolio of Crew Insignias from The United States Commercial Spaceship Nostromo Designs and Realizations" by John Mollo and Ron Cobb |
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Also, in the 2005 game Predator: Concrete Jungle, a clip at the end shows what might be Charles Bishop Weyland and a Japanese man (presumably the CEO of Yutani) celebrating the formation of their joint venture.
Weyland is also the Anglo-Saxon form of the name of the Norse hero Völund.
