The story begins with a crew of seven on board the commercial ship, Nostromo, bound for earth after a harvest of ores in space. Somewhere along their route, they interrupt what they think is a distress signal from an uninhabited planet. The crew checks it out and this is where the action begins. One of the crew, Kane, discovers strange-looking objects which he describes as eggs covered in leather. When he bends in for a closer look, one of the eggs opens and out comes an organism which lands on his face and sticks to it. Back on the ship, despite objections from Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) due to quarantine regulations, the science officer, Ash, tries to remove the organism from Kane’s face. After several attempts, which included cutting off one of the organism’s ‘finger’ – bad idea, by the way, because it excreted dangerous acid-like substance when cut – Ash decides to just leave the organism alone. Eventually, the organism comes off Kane, and everything is back to normal during dinner. Well, almost, because midway, Kane convulses and out of his chest bursts an ugly-looking creature and before anyone could properly react, it dashes off. A search is organized, and amidst the numerous dark and dank passageway of the ship, the crew, one by one, is being terminated by the creature, and with each termination, it grows bigger and stronger. The only survivor is Ripley, and Jones, the cat.
When the captain of the crew, Dallas, dies, Ripley discovers that Ash is an android, and that he is being ordered by the company to bring in the creature for further study. Ripley learns that the company responsible for their exploration in space rerouted the ship to bring in whatever organism produces the signal the ship was able to interrupt. She also discovers the shocking order that the creature was a priority, and the crew, expendable. Ripley, alone, battles the creature and blows it to kingdom come.
So we are left with an image of Ripley floating through space. 57 years later (I didn’t know it was possible to float through space that long), the shuttle she’s in is accidentally discovered by a salvage ship and she’s brought back to earth, where she is accused of blowing up the space ship. It turns out that the company which commissioned her is somehow the same company which found her. Now, what are the odds? Her explanations of alien existence land on deaf ears, and she is brought up-to-date with the information that the planet, LV-426, where the Nostromo crew found the supposed alien, is now inhabited by space colonists. The problem arises when communication with the colony on the said planet is mysteriously cut-off. Carter Burke, a corporation executive, goes to Ripley with the proposal that she accompanies a group of marines, as a consultant, to LV-426, the one place Ripley does not ever want to go back to. Eventually she gives in with a promise on the part of Burke that if they find aliens on the planet, the creatures will be destroyed. Ripley teams up with a bunch of hard-nosed marine, led by a by-the-book squadron commander, Gorman, with a scant knowledge in combat. He redeems himself in the end, however, but that’s getting way ahead of the story. The group lands on LV-426, and is greeted by thousands of the specie Ripley has met before. Apparently, a mother alien is laying the thousands of eggs which spew forth organisms that immobilize the colonists to be hosts for the parasites. Amid the wreckage, a lone survivor, Newt, is found. Ripley and the little girl forms an intimate bond, so intimate that Ripley is willing to battle the mother alien to rescue Newt when the girl is captured to be a parasite-host. As in the first installment, everybody dies, except for Ripley, Newt, a heavily injured Corporal Hicks, and the android Bishop who, however, is destroyed beyond repair, but he still talks, mind you.
Again, we are left with an image of Ripley floating through space. Her ship crash-lands on a prison planet, Fiorina 161, leaving the rest of her companions dead. Again, she is the sole survivor, who teams up with a motley crew of hard-core criminals to fight off an alien who, somehow, manages to tag along Ripley’s ride from LV-426, and begins feeding on the prisoners, one by one, as in the first installment. Ripley and the gang do the impossible feat of battling the alien without any weapons, but through innovative use of whatever materials they can find in the area. The plot is somewhat muddled here, because I cannot quite understand how Ripley got a creature inside her, more so the queen alien. Anyhow, she is impregnated with this creature, and towards the end, when the company gets wind of the neuroscan, it immediately orders Ripley’s evacuation from the prison planet. Ripley, already aware of what the company really wants, throws herself into the furnace, the alien still inside her. She dies.
Somehow, two hundred years later, Ripley and the alien inside her are cloned by a determined group of government scientists who want to breed the ultimate weapon. From the Ripley clone, a queen alien is extracted and kept in isolation to lay eggs. A different Ripley emerges in this last Alien installment – a stronger, amoral, indifferent Ripley. Now The Betty, a cargo ship docks on the vessel housing Ripley, bringing with them precious cargo. These cargo turn out to be frozen people who are to serve as parasite-hosts. Eventually, these parasites were able to escape – by killing one of their kind and using its blood to melt their metal prison. Surely, you’d think that after more than a hundred years of study of these species, someone would somehow come up with a more effective material which could withstand these creatures’ blood. But hey, where’s the thrill in that eh? Anyway, the parasites escape, and once again, Ripley, this time teaming-up with the renegade crew of The Betty, fight off a faster, stronger breed of these species.
Surprisingly, Ripley survives with some of the crew, and even manages to get back to Earth.
I thought the first and second installments were brilliant depictions of the horror and action involved in space encounters of the third kind. The third installment somewhat fell short, both in horror and action, considering that it trailed such spectacular movies. I commend, though, the efforts of bringing in the concept of fighting off aliens without hi-tech weapons. Thank goodness it was just one alien. The fourth installment, while rehashing almost the whole story of the previous installments, was more visually stunning than the third, and it showed a more mature Ripley in terms of acting.
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