5. Bishop returns again

5 a)  The film featured a character named Charles Bishop Weyland who is the founder of Weyland Industries that soon becomes part of Weyland-Yutani, the conglomerate featured in the Alien series that owns the Nostromo and the terraforming station on LV 426.  He is played by the actor Lance Henriksen who played the android Bishop .

1. "It was Paul's idea for me to play a billionaire who made money in robotics,

   

   Charles "Bishop" Weyland the

   founder of  Weyland Industries

   "Henriksen tells Starburst" and that Weyland would make Bishop as a tribute to himself. "(Starburst, Issue 314, p41)
2. Lance Henriksen:"This character is dying, and there's something similar between an android and someone who is dying. Rather than leave a pile of money behind Weyland wants to do something memorable and he finds the best people he can and takes an expedition." (Starburst, Issue 314, p41)
3. Lance Henriksen: If you are dying you see life with a blinding light, you are saying goodbye to it. If you are playing an android, one of the elements that is poignant to me is that anything alive is of great beauty and interest. I see that as the core of it." (Starburst, Issue 314, p41)
4. Lance Henriksen:
5. "Charles Bishop Weyland is a decent man who wants to do good, and he's terminally ill and he wants to leave his mark upon the world" says Henriksen of his latest Alien incarnation. "He's a billionaire like Bill Gates and he's the father of modern robotics, which explains why the Bishop robot in Aliens would be built in his image. He wants to achieve immortality before he died." (Dreamwatch, issue 122, p36)



Bishop the android

6. "He's a billionaire - like Bill Gates in the film - but he's dying and he wants to leave a mark on the world, " says Henriksen, considering the implications of how many packets of cigarettes he sucks back a day, rumored by cast and crew to be in its hundreds. "This Bishop is the father of modern robotics, which means that the Bishop we saw in Aliens - over a 100 years in the future - was built in Weyland's image. In the film, Weyland's dying, and, facing the end, he wants to leave some kind of legacy behind, like most billionaires. He's a good guy in the film, and the role forced me to try and imagine what it's like to be a billionaire. Weyland wants immortality, which explains why a robot - centuries from now - would feature his image and would be named Bishop. He lives forever." (Sci Fi, August 2004, p27)
7. A Weiland Industries, is advertised as "Northern California & The Bay Area's Source for Custom Woodwork and Custom Wooden Architectural Elements" but is known to have been founded in 1973
   

Paul Anderson fans the flames of confusion 

surrounding the identity of Bishop 2

5 b) Paul Anderson decided to believe that Bishop 2 also played by Lance Henriksen in Alien 3 was an android rather than a human because the character appears in the credits as Bishop 2 which meant he was a mark 2 Bishop android to Anderson and he decided that the android Bishop was built with the face of the founder of Weyland Industries. This would have meant that Ripley didn't know what the founder of Weyland Industries looked like. Anderson would have settled for Ian Holm who played Ash in Alien, but Henriksen was the one who was available.  The confusion about who or what Bishop 2 was left some feeling even more lost than ever.

1. "As the Alien films take place more than 200 years in the future, the only person I could cast would be an android, "he (Paul Anderson)  explains, "so it had to be either Lance Henriksen or Ian Holm. And I was a huge fan of Lance's so that it was a big thrill to persuade him to be in the movie"(Starburst, Issue 316. p25)
2. "Of course Henriksen's bug eyed presence in Alien Vs Predator is no coincidence. Anderson had always wanted some kind of casting link between his entry to the franchise and the previous Alien films and Henriksen's participation is the result. His character, Weyland is the Bill Gates of robotics, and is meant to be the physical template for Bishop, the android he played in Aliens.
   "That was one of the only ways we could do it" he (Paul Anderson) growls, shooting out a flare so fierce it would drop an Alien Queen on the spot. "In the far future he's an android - just look at the credits of Alien 3 where he's credited as Bishop II. So there's clearly gonna be a Bishop III, Bishop IV, Bishop V...." "(Total Film, November 2004, p102)
3. "When I worked with Fincher on Alien 3, it was up in the air to what Bishop was" he (Lance Henriksen) says. " Was he an android or a human? Nobody knew. It was the same with Jim Cameron, when he was talking about doing another Alien movie. He often pondered about what he might do with Bishop, saying that maybe somebody messed with his brain to make him dangerous. Or not." (Total Film, November 2004, p102)

5 c) "Bishop's knife trick"

Charles Weyland imitating the knife trick

Another connecting scene in the film, between the two characters, Charles Bishop Weyland and Bishop the android is the scene where Charles Weyland plays with a pen sticking it at points between his spread out fingers in the way that the android Bishop is seen to do it in the movie Aliens.

Paul Anderson: "That was, that was one of my favourite things that we did and when you watch the movie with an audience with like fans..."

Lance Henriksen: "They'll go "oaah!'"

Paul Anderson:"....who know Alien, who know Aliens. They just go crazy over it. "

Lanaa: "I don't even know the pen thing, what is that?"

Paul Anderson:"It's, it's a, it's like a visual quote from Aliens where Lance puts his hand over Bill Pax's own hand"

Lance Henriksen: "On Bill Paxton he uses the knife and did the knife trick.

Lanaa "Aah yess yes yes "

Bishop doing the knife trick

Lance Henriksen:  I just did it right before you come in, I just did it with a pen idly while I was looking at the computer"

Paul Anderson: Because the idea for, for ... storywise, I wanted to get some casting continuity with the Alien movies, and Lance was the perfect because Bishop in Aliens and Alien 3 was an android and I thought if Weyland invented all of this technology and eventually he's the, you know it's kind of like Microsoft building a, an android with the face of Bill Gates in a hundred and fifty years time uh...uh...but then Lance came up with the idea that if they're going to use his face for the Bishop android they were going to use his mannerisms, so he was kind of like doing some of the ticks and the mannerisms of Bishop that's kind of retrofitting to Weyland"(from the commentrary of the Alien vs Predator DVD  )