I was rewatching a number of the Alien movies recently and noticed that everything bad that happened to Ripley in the third and fourth movies was the result of a single action on her part during the second (and please, no “what third and fourth movie?” comments ;))
To wit, after Ripley rescues Newt and they are heading back to the ship, they pass through the queen’s egg chamber. The “lieutenant” aliens (for lack of a better term) start to menace them, until Ripley threatens to torch the eggs with her flame thrower. At that point, the queen apparently orders the lieutenants to back off and let Ripley and Newt pass. Just as they leave the chamber, however, Ripley decides to torch the eggs anyway. Had Ripley left the eggs alone, she and Newt would have made it back to the ship unimpeded; the reactor would have then blown, killing all the aliens and the eggs. Instead, though, Ripley torches the eggs, which pisses off the queen, who decides to come after her. As a result, the queen makes it onto the ship, where she (somehow) manages to lay an egg, which sets up the deaths of Newt and Corporal Hicks as well as the crash landing onto the prison planet that provides the setting for Alien3. And, of coruse, her death at the end of Alien3 sets up the events that transpire in Alien: Resurrection.
I realize that the Alien movies are supposed to be horror movies (or perhaps even action/adventure movies, depending on your point of view). Upon repeated viewings, however, I’ve come to realize that the entire series is actually an extended tragedy. Ripley’s fatal flaw, whether it be seen as an overweening sense of vengeance or simply an inability to put the past behind her, is the reason she ultimately fails, in spite of her other virtues. Had she simply been able to leave well enough alone, everything would have worked out fine in the end.
Granted, I may be over analyzing this, and I’m sure that James Cameron wasn’t thinking “tragedy” when he made the second film. Still, I can no longer watch Aliens without tearing up a bit during the aforementioned egg chamber scene, knowing what will happen as a result and knowing how preventable it all could have been.
Ripley torching the nest wasn’t entirely capricious. A face-hugger egg had opened up near her and it was only then that she did the little neck-stretching bit and trashed the place.
On reflection, there are any number of things Ripley could have done better, including taking along extra rifles and/or mags and dropping them along the way, as she did with the small flares, so as she ran, she could reload. She also could have blocked open the elevator door with something. Above all, she could had told Bishop to let the drop ship orbit fifteen or twenty times before returning to the mothership while they triple-checked to make sure they didn’t have any stowaways.
Of course, the worst decision of all was to make the third movie, but I digress.
If you want to talk about bad decisions dooming the characters (and possibly the viewers) to misery, I’d point out Star Trek: Voyager as one of the most egregious. In the first episode, Capt. Janeway decides to break the Prime Directive and help the underdogs. This ends up dooming the ship to seven years of really dumb scripts.
Of course, if the other six had just killed Gilligan and put a stop to his inept interference, they’d have been off that island in a week, tops.
This is where I think you make a mistake… I believe that the egg which sets off events in Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection was placed on the shuttle deliberately, but not by the queen. The queen most likely could not have laid any eggs, as her egg sac was destroyed and she tore herself away from it before going after Ripley. My best guess is that another alien planted the egg, perhaps even before Ripley fought the queen.
In the first movie, she famously went back for the ship’s cat after having safely reached the lifeboat. As a result, the alien was able to stow away on the lifeboat. It didn’t kill her, but it almost did. Had it been me, I would have let the cat go.
Actually, going back for the cat in the first movie saved her, because while she was rounding up Jones, the alien smoked Yaphet Kotto and Veronica Cartwright.
Ah. I thought it was just an “anti-cat” comment. Regardless, going back for the cat did provide some extra tense moments in that it allowed the alien to board the lifeboat, but Ripley was able to eject the alien and continue on her way unimpeded. No harm, no foul, no “fatal flaw”.
Now, of somehow saving the cat had led to the (later) colonists discovering the crashed alien ship, thereby setting up the second movie, well, then it might be considered a fatal flaw. Instead, though, it was just a plot device to stretch the movie out a little longer.
What? You didn’t see the egg that the queen was cradling in her arms as she battled Ripley onboard the ship?
OK, maybe not. I agree that it was never adequately explained just how the egg got on the ship, but I think the writer(s) of the third movie made the assumption that it either came along with the queen or somehow got laid by the queen (maybe it was still in her ovipositer and hadn’t made it to the egg sack yet?)
Anyway, for the sake of this argument, I’m still going with the notion that the queen brought the egg onboard, and that this only happened because Ripley pissed the queen off by torching the eggs.
My theory Bishop brought in on board. When he dropped off Ripley he went and collected one due to hidden programing. He was a product of Whalen Butany and they seemed to have “collect dangerous alien species no matter what the cost of human lives so we can develope them and make a shitload of money” writen in their company mission statement so it would be logical that Bishop had that in his programing.
That’s a really good theory… better than mine, actually. The fact that the egg on the shuttle just happened to carry a queen seemed a little too coincidental. D’you think Bishop was sent specifically for a queen?
The cat moment was ridiculous. The movie set up Ripley’s character as tough, no-nonsense, a classic action hero. When she went back for the cat, it was-- I’m sorry-- entirely out of character, an insertion by some screenwriter who was probably thinking something along the lines of, “Isn’t that just like a woman?”
It’s made even more stupid by the fact that Ripley, earlier in the film, was willing to sacrifice a human life to prevent the risk of infection. I think the bit with the cat was just typical Hollywood sentimentality towards animals
Ellen could have simply wasted the single face hugger, but noooo, she had to really piss off the queen. Maybe she was in a bad mood from wearing the two sizes too small panties she had on in Alien. In the first movie, she was wrong to go back for the cat - now a dog, on the other hand, that would be different. What movie dog wouldn’t join in the fight somehow?
And there are only two Alien movies, Alien and Aliens. The others are mistakes, not movies.
The fact that the facehugger laid a queen inside Ripley can be explained by the fact that the facehugger could sense that there were no other aliens around so it made the appropriate homonal adjustments to the embryo in order to start a new colony.
There’s only one problem with this…she never got out of space. She went from ship, to space station, to ship. No time on terra.
As for Bishop collecting the eggs, it’s an interesting premise, but I don’t think he’d have the option to get them. I mean, the only place the eggs were located was at the center, and even though he’s just an android, I don’t think he’d last very long if he just waltzed right in and started picking up eggs. I mean, we saw how the queen treated him, and he was just standing around doing nothing!
About Jonesy: Way back when, there was a game for the Commodore 64 based on the first Alien movie. In the game, you could not launch the Narcissus escape shuttle until all living things had left the ship. That included the cat. The alien, having radically different physiology, wasn’t considered “living”.
So, maybe she went back for the cat because she couldn’t launch without it.
