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ripley

And now for one of my favorite subjects: badass ladies in movies.

Any discussion of badass ladies in movies needs to start with Ripley.  She’s a survivor, a fighter and ultimately the hero.

I will confess to falling asleep watching the first Alien movie.  It was late, I was tired and horror really isn’t my thing.  Plus, I actually saw it after watching Aliens, which was SO good, it was hard for me to wrap my head around how different Ripley is from one film to the next. The thing is, Aliens is now one of my all-time favorite movies. There are not enough heroines like Ripley in the lexicon. She stands head and shoulders above most of her contemporaries, and very few since her incarnation have even tried to come close. They’re either super sexed up, or so obviously anorexic and starving that watching them throw a punch is embarrassing. Just wait until I finally introduce Rosalind Rees to the world!

But enough of me ranting. For the moment.

Some Ripley Background:

Aliens starts out fifty-four years after the original story.  Ripley and her cat are the only survivors from the first human encounter with that strange bug-like alien stowaway on their space freighter.  Through the miracle of science, she and the cat have been in “hyper-sleep” (don’t you just love those convenient sci-fi excuses for explaining away potential plot holes?) and found by a salvage team.  Ripley wakes up in a space hospital to find that everyone she knew and loved – including her daughter – is dead.  There are some brilliant scenes between Ripley and a bunch of suits representing The Company that had employed her, and they’re pretty upset that she destroyed the freighter fifty-four years earlier in an attempt to kill the original alien.  She is officially blacklisted from gaining skilled labor after this.  Damn suits.

Cut to a few weeks later, and Ripley is approached by Company Man, Carter Burke, to accompany a group of colonial marines on a distress call from a colony in deep space.  Ripley, now living with the cat, has been having nightmares about her previous alien-tangle and has ZERO interest in his offer, which includes new, more gainful employment once more with The Company.  Eventually, she decides the nightmares are too much and agrees to go with the marines.  They are all pretty badass, too, most famously Lt. Sanchez, but this post isn’t about colonial marines.

The Argument for:

Since this movie is called Aliens, you already know that it isn’t about how the colonial marines triumphed over the aliens and rescued the colonists.  Oh, no, it’s about seventeen badasses getting crushed in record time.  Frankly, that’s when an already interesting movie pretty much sucks you in. And Ripley? The more other people start to fall apart around her, the stronger and more assertive she gets. It’s like she was built for crisis, but the everyday flotsam and jetsam of normal life wear her down to nothing.

Source: Alien (1979), Aliens* (1986)

*Try to watch the Director’s Cut of Aliens, but do avoid subsequent Alien features.  They’re crap.  Sorry, Fincher. But not Jeunet. That guy can suck it.