The moment is the film’s final battle—human vs. alien. The titular villain, the queen alien, is pursuing Rebecca “Newt” Jordan (Carrie Henn), an orphan girl whom Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has become protective of. Emerging from the shadows in a mechanical power loader, Ripley confronts the nightmare of acid and claws and snarls through gritted teeth:“Get away from her, you bitch!”The moment perhaps wasn’t written with a feminist approach in mind. Perhaps it was meant to be a moment of survival and nothing more. And yet, Weaver’s wrath and director James Cameron’s direction gave it this added layer: fierce motherhood. This was long before mothers, like Molly Weasley, Beatrix Kiddo, and Catelyn Stark, showed how far mothers could go to protect their cubs. The audience cheered, not only because she beat the alien queen, but because she stood her ground like no one else before.This was the moment that gave a woman the last word in a genre that was (and still is) ridiculously dominated by male characters. This was the moment when female characters stopped being damsels in distress and became badass rescuers.The Badass Moment The Queen vs. The SurvivorWhen Ripley faces down the alien queen, the perfect predator, she is no longer the same passive survivor from Alien (1979). She has endured fire, trauma, and loss and is forced to become a warrior. She sees Newt as her own child, the seeds of which are sown in the fact that since Ripley was cryogenically frozen for 57 years,...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Thursday, 20 November