When the movie was first released, were all the marketing and advertisements making it seem like Dallas was the main character? Tom Skerritt was more famous than Sigourney Weaver before the film, and if one didn’t know Ripley survives at the end and returns for sequels and Dallas dies 2/3rds into the movie, most of the earlier parts of the movie seem to focus more on Dallas than Ripley.
shareHad it been the original choice for Dallas (Harrison Ford) you can bet the marketing would've focused much more on Dallas/Ford would've been promoted as the films star and NO ONE wouldve seen the twist of him getting killed off coming so would've been a much bigger deal/shock
shareIf it was Ford then Dallas probably would have survived as well.
shareI don't remember since I was four or five at the time, but looking at the marketing that survives like old trailers, they didn't really focus on the cast that much.
Tom Skerritt played the Captain, Dallas, and would've been the most well known actor in the movie perhaps, but he wasn't the sort of star you'd build a marketing campaign around like Harrison Ford.
As said above, most of the marketing didn't really focus on the cast much. Vintage magazine articles seemed to treat the cast members quite equally, actually, focusing on the ensemble as a whole. This wouldn't have been too out of the norm in the 70s, lots of disaster flicks and expansive dramas of the time featured big ensemble casts that had one or two "leads," but not quite The One Main Character that the movie revolves around.
It's true, though, that most audiences almost certainly would've considered Dallas the "lead" going into it. Sigourney Weaver was actually the least known of the cast at the time (it was her first major screen role if I remember right), but since she was positioned as something of a love interest I reckon it wasn't TOO surprising that she was among the survivors (most folksprobably would've guessed Dallas and Ripley along with maybe one or two other random characters would be the ones to make it); though Ripley being the only one left standing and Dallas suddenly biting it 2/3 in likely did raise some eyebrows.