This article contains discussion of sexual assault.
Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien spawned a massive movie franchise, and its ending battle between Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the xenomorph still captures imaginations over forty years later. From its brilliantly dark take on the science fiction genre to its timeless practical effects, Alien has easily cemented itself as one of the best movies of all time. The franchise it spawned is also one of the greatest in film history, and the ending of the original Alien is so important to all that came after it that it's still worth examining today.
In the final moments of Alien, the xenomorph begins killing the entire crew of the Nostromo except for Ripley. After they discovered Ash (Ian Holm) was a synthetic, the crew decided to enable the ship's self-destruct feature and escape via the shuttle. After Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) were killed by the xenomorph, Ripley tried to disengage the self-destruct, but she eventually ended up fleeing on the shuttle while the Nostromo exploded. When she discovered the xenomorph was on board with her, she jettisoned it out the airlock and went into cryogenic sleep, waiting to be rescued.
What Happens To Ripley After Launching The Escape Shuttle?
Ripley Is Eventually Recovered & Sent On A Dangerous Mission In Aliens
At the end of Alien, after Ripley defeated the xenomorph, she continued on into the vastness of space in the Nostromo's shuttle. She created a short voice log explaining that the ship and its crew had all been destroyed, and she entered cryogenic sleep, hoping to be found by a passing ship after she reached "the frontier." The sequel Aliens revealed that Ripley was eventually found by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, but not until 57 years after the destruction of the Nostromo. At that point in the Alien timeline, Weyland-Yutani had set up a colony on LV-426.
Movie
Setting
AVP: Alien Vs. Predator
2004
Alien vs. Predator: Requiem
2004
Prometheus
2089-2093
Alien: Covenant
2104
Alien
2122
Alien: Romulus
Unknown (between 2122 and 2179)
Aliens
2179
Alien 3
2179
Alien: Resurrection
2381
LV-426, however, had been overrun by xenomorphs while Ripley was in cryo-stasis, and Weyland-Yutani was planning to send a team of space marines to investigate the colony. After their disastrous mission in Aliens, Ripley and some of her crew were jettisoned onto a maximum security prison in Alien 3. In that film, Ripley sacrificed her life to destroy a xenomorph queen, but her genetic material was harvested so she could be cloned for Alien: Resurrection, 200 years later. Essentially, after she escaped the Nostromo, Ellen Ripley's life was consumed with fighting xenomorphs.
Why Did Ash Attack Ripley & The Nostromo Crew?
Ash Had Orders To Deliver The Xenomorph To Earth & He Wouldn't Let Ripley Jeopardize That Mission
After the xenomorph killed Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) and Ripley accessed Mother, Ash began attacking her. As chief science officer, he was given a command by the Weyland-Yutani corporation to bring the xenomorph back to Earth under any circumstances. All of his other priorities were rescinded, including the one that made sure he would protect the crew of the Nostromo. Since Ripley was trying to tell Parker and Lambert about Ash's orders, and because he no longer had to keep the crew alive, Ash decided the best way to ensure the xenomorph reached Earth was to kill Ripley before she could reveal the truth.
Ash had also been acting directly against the interests of the Nostromo since the very beginning of Alien. It was because of his interference that Dallas, Lambert, and Kane (John Hurt) were able to reenter the ship against Ripley's quarantine. Ash also protected the xenomorph several times throughout the film, such as when he convinced Dallas not to try cutting the facehugger off Kane until he had been impregnated. Essentially, Ash attacked Ripley because she was trying to destroy the xenomorph, and Weyland-Yutani had specifically tasked him with protecting it.
What Weyland-Yutani Really Wanted The Xenomorph For Explained
Weyland-Yutani Wanted To Use The Xenomorphs As Biological Weapons
One of the many questions Alien didn't directly answer was why the Weyland-Yutani corporation wanted the xenomorph in the first place. While it was a form of extraterrestrial life that was a major scientific discovery, the xenomorph was also a killing machine that threatened to destroy everything and everyone it came in contact with. Having such a destructive organism on Earth could only have led to disaster, but it turns out Ripley herself correctly deduced why Weyland-Yutani decided that was a worthy risk to take. Weyland-Yutani wanted the xenomorph so that it could use them as a biological weapon.
From Dallas getting mauled to Parker getting impaled, the deaths in 1979's Alien — especially those at the hands of the xenomorph — are horribly gory.
In Aliens, Ripley discovered that the marines she was working with were sent to LV-426 not to protect the colonists there, but to secure the xenomorph eggs so Weyland-Yutani could reverse-engineer it. Later entries to the Alien franchise, particularly Romulus, revealed that Weyland-Yutani actually did succeed in reverse-engineering the xenomorphs. However, they were never able to control the aliens enough to use them as effective weapons.
What Happened To The Xenomorph After Alien's Ending
Weyland-Yutani Recovered The Xenomorph & Cloned It In Alien: Romulus
The reason Weyland-Yutani wanted the xenomorphs also helps explain what happened to the xenomorph that attacked the Nostromo. At the end of Alien, Ripley ejected the xenomorph into the vacuum of space by despressurizing the escape shuttle. After a bit of struggling and getting blown away by the shuttle's propulsion engines, the xenomorph was rocketed away into the void of space. It wouldn't stay there, however, as Alien: Romulus revealed that Weyland-Yutani recovered the xenomorph's carcass even before they found Ripley.
Ridley Scott's Alien marked a shift in the sci-fi genre and kicked off a space horror franchise, but there's definitely a worst and best Alien movie.
After Weyland-Yutani found the xenomorph's carcass, it was brought onto the Renaissance, a station that could split into two sections: Romulus and Remus. While on the Renaissance, Weyland-Yutani scientists used the xenomorph's body to reverse-engineer the facehuggers, which then wiped out almost all the ship's crew. Rain (Cailee Spaeny) and her friends later encountered the Renaissance and released the facehuggers that plagued them throughout Alien: Romulus.
How The Ending Of Alien Connects To The Rest Of The Franchise & Romulus
Every Movie In The Alien Franchise Uses Alien As Its Foundation
The ending of the original Alien was very far from the ending of the franchise as a whole, and every Alien movie that has followed has tied back to the 1979 original in some way. Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection are the most direct sequels to Alien, as they continue Ripley's (and her clone's) fight against the xenomorphs. Alien: Romulus acts as a less direct continuation of Alien's story, as it doesn't feature Ripley at all but is based on the direct aftermath of her time on the Nostromo.
Every Alien movie that has followed has tied back to the 1979 original in some way.
The Alien prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, have the most precarious connection to the original film. The ending of Prometheus and Covenant was supposed to explain the origins of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, the xenomorphs, and their creators, the Engineers. However, Ridley Scott's prequel trilogy was cut short, and it's not entirely clear how David's (Michael Fassbender) experimentation with xenomorphs ties into LV-426 or the original Alien. Ridley Scott's upcoming Alien movie, however, could provide a more concrete connection to Alien's ending.
The True Meaning Of Alien's Ending Explained
Alien Is About The Fear Surrounding The Unknown, Corporations, AI, & Pregnancy
Every horror movie taps into some deep-seated fear, and Alien is no different. At the surface level, Alien is a movie about humanity's inherent fear of the unknown. All of its scares and blood-pumping moments are built around the idea that humanity doesn't know what could be out there in the darkest corners of space, and that those hidden creatures could be designed specifically to kill us. The fact that the xenomorph is an unknown, that the crew of the Nostromo had never encountered anything like it before, is the basis of Alien's ability to frighten audiences.
45 years after the movie's original release, Alien's iconic (and infamous) chestburster scene remains a uniquely disturbing piece of body horror.
Aside from the unknown, Alien also presents a strong case for humans to fear both artificial intelligence and the apathetic profiteering of corporations. Ash and Weyland-Yutani are the secondary antagonists of Alien for a reason. They both very directly support and enable the xenomorph's rampage, and if it hadn't been for their shared lack of humanity, the crew of the Nostromo never would have died. It was only after Ash died and Ripley abandoned Weyland-Yutani's directives that she was able to escape from the xenomorph.
There's also quite a bit of evidence to support the interpretation that Alien is a film about rape, unplanned pregnancies, and abortion (John L. Cobbs via Labouseur). The facehugger quite literally impregnates Kane against his will, which can very easily be viewed as a form of rape. He then "births" a child he never wanted, costing him his life. There's also symbolism related to infancy and birth sprinkled throughout the movie, from the diapers the crew wears in the opening moments to the scene of Ripley stripping down to her underwear before killing the xenomorph.
In direct contrast to its title, Alien is mostly about humanity.
In direct contrast to its title, Alien is mostly about humanity. Ash and Weyland-Yutani represent the evil that is possible from machines and entities that have lost track of their humanity. Ripley, on the other hand, illustrates how important human emotions like compassion and empathy are. Throughout the movie, Ripley was the most caring member of the Nostromo, from her insistence on following quarantine procedures to going back for Jonesy, the cat. It's likely because of her empathy that Ripley survived the ending of Alien.
Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, is a science fiction horror film that follows the crew of the commercial spacecraft Nostromo. Upon investigating a distress signal on a distant moon, they discover a deadly extraterrestrial lifeform. The film stars Sigourney Weaver as Ripley and became a seminal work in both the sci-fi and horror genres, known for its atmospheric tension and groundbreaking visual effects.
Custom image by Yeider Chacon
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