Ellen Ripley
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| Ellen Ripley | |
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| Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. | |
| First appearance | Alien |
| Last appearance | Alien Resurrection |
| Created by | Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusset |
| Portrayed by | Sigourney Weaver |
| Information | |
| Aliases | Ripley |
| Species | Human (Alien 1, 2 & 3), Alien-Human hybrid/clone (Alien Resurrection) |
| Gender | Female |
| Age | 30 |
| Date of birth | 2092 |
| Date of death | 2179 |
| Title | Lieutenant |
| Children | Amanda Ripley McClaren |
Ellen Ripley is a science fiction heroine, played by Sigourney Weaver. She is the protagonist of the Alien film series. The character was heralded as a seminal role for challenging gender stereotypes, particularly in the science fiction genre, and remains Weaver's most famous role to date.
In 2003, Ripley was selected by the American Film Institute as the 8th greatest hero in American cinema history (See AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains). Entertainment Weekly has stated that Ripley was "one of the first female movie characters who isn't defined by the men around her, or by her relationship to them."[1]
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[edit] Appearances
[edit] Alien
Ripley is introduced in Alien. The character was born in 2092 in Olympia, Luna.[citation needed] She had a daughter, Amanda Ripley McClaren, and no other descendants (not counting her clone in Alien Resurrection). She is employed by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, working on the Nostromo as a warrant officer, which was towing massive quantities of raw ore to Earth from Thedus.
The movie begins with the character being awakened along with the rest of the crew, 10 months prematurely from hypersleep by Mother, the ship's computer, to answer a curious transmission received from moon LV-426.[2] Upon landing, Executive Officer Kane, Captain Dallas, and Navigator Lambert disembarked and investigated the source of the transmission, a derelict alien space craft. While investigating the derelict craft, an alien parasite attached itself to Kane.
Ripley initially refused to allow the landing party back onto the ship after they were injured, citing quarantine regulations. Her order was ignored by Science Officer Ash, whom she began to distrust greatly as time went on. The bypassing of quarantine had serious consequences when an embryo of some kind deposited by the facehugger that attacked Kane matured and erupted from his chest. Kane was killed by this alien "birth", and the creature quickly grew to immense proportions and began killing the crew one by one.
Following the death of Dallas, Ripley became the Nostromo's commanding officer, and learned from Mother the final piece of the puzzle: Special Order 937, a secret company policy to study the very creature that was stalking them at the expense of their lives. With the crew around her dwindling just as quickly as the creature seemed to be growing, Ripley began the vessel's self-destruct sequence. The Nostromo's reactor melted down and exploded violently, moments after Ripley (in the escape ship Narcissus) reached safety. However, the Alien managed to stowaway aboard the Narcissus as well. Ripley managed to blow the creature out of the vessel's airlock and incinerate it by activating the ship's engines.
[edit] Aliens
Aliens begins where Alien left off, with Ripley expecting to be rescued within a few weeks. Instead, Ripley spent the next 57 years in hypersleep. Once awakened, Ripley discovers that her daughter, Amanda, died at the age of 66, just two years before Ripley would be found and awoken from hypersleep.
After her subsequent rescue by a salvage crew, Ripley is held responsible for the destruction of the Nostromo by the Weyland-Yutani corporation, with her flight license revoked as a consequence. However, she is made a lieutenant and reluctantly returns to LV-426 with a team of Colonial Marines from the troop ship USS Sulaco to rescue the colonists of Hadley's Hope. Ripley becomes the unit's de facto leader after most of the Colonial Marines are killed during their first encounter with the Aliens. Ripley ultimately escapes with the last surviving colonist Newt, Corporal Hicks, and the android Bishop.
[edit] Alien 3
Unbeknownst to her, a facehugger, which had somehow been taken on board the Sulaco, implanted a queen embryo within her. After another facehugger bled acid and caused an electrical fire onboard the Sulaco, she subsequently found herself marooned on the planet Fiorina 161 (nicknamed "Fury"), an outer-veil mineral ore refinery and male-only correctional facility with thugs, zealots, and the horror of an alien xenomorph that developed within a canine (it is an ox in the Assembly Cut). There, she sacrificed her own life (by willingly falling into one of the furnaces used for the lead works portion of the correctional facility) to prevent Weyland-Yutani from getting the queen alien that was inside of her. (See Alien³).
[edit] Alien Resurrection
The Ripley character from the previous films does not appear in the fourth installment. The character was created when it was decided that a third sequel to Alien would be produced and Sigourney Weaver expressed interest in the project. Because her character had died in Alien³ and the facility was closed down after Ripley committed suicide, an alternate method had to be employed to enable her to return to the film franchise. It was then decided that she would portray a clone copy of the original Ellen Ripley.
The clones of Ellen Ripley were created by the military for the purpose of experimentation with the Alien. The protagonist clone, Ellen Ripley 8, has traces of Alien genes inside of her that give her superior strength, endurance, caustic blood and the ability to sense and communicate with the creatures. Due to some form of "genetic memory" derived from the Aliens, the Ripley clone can learn at an extremely rapid rate and recall some of the original Ripley's memories and personality. The clone is not an exact mental duplicate as she is more violent, fatalistic and sadistic than the original. She also has a mild empathy for the Aliens and antipathy for humans.
After the Alien was recovered successfully from the clone host, Dr. Jonathan Gediman, one of the scientists on the project, asked permission to keep her alive so she could be studied. The project leader Dr. Mason Wren agreed, though he asserted the main focus of the project would remain on the Alien. The Ellen Ripley clone, otherwise referred to as "8", was allowed to live and became involved in the further events in Alien Resurrection when the Aliens escaped from their prisons and brought havoc on the USM Auriga.
Ripley 8 discovered the seven previous experimental, hideously deformed clone Ripleys in a military lab. At the pleading of the last surviving one (Ripley 7) she incinerated the lab and all the clones with a flamethrower.
The Ellen Ripley clone survives the events of Alien Resurrection and presumably lands on Earth after the finale, to an unknown future.
[edit] Awards and accolades
The character was listed as #8 on the American Film Institute's 50 greatest heroes list. The role garnered Sigourney Weaver an Academy Award nomination for the film Aliens. It also garnered her a Golden Globe award nomination for best actress-drama, a BAFTA award win for best actress, and a Saturn Award for best leading actress. For the role in Alien, Weaver received a BAFTA award nomination for best newcomer and also received a Saturn Award nomination for best actress.
[edit] Disputed character history
According to the digital file scrolling behind Ripley as seen in a deleted scene added to the Aliens special edition, during the inquiry of the destruction of the Nostromo freighter ship, her birthday is listed as 6/10/03, but possibly she was born on 6/10/2103 contradicting the listed 2092 here.
Furthermore, it lists that from November 2122 to June 2126 she attended Aeronautics University in New York City, with a focus on Engineering and an additional study (out of frame due to her character standing in the way). Previously, she attended Brea-Olinda Private School in Los Angeles, CA between June 2111 and June 2119.
[edit] Spin-off media
Ripley's life and career has been extensively expanded on in various spin-off comics and novels, many of which discount her death on Fiorina 161, instead providing a chronology continuing on from the end of Aliens.
The Ripley Clone plays a central role in the three-way Dark Horse Comics crossover, Aliens versus Predator versus The Terminator, when she is blackmailed to help investigate rumors that a scientist named Doctor Trollenberg is creating a hybrid alien super soldier. Arriving on the ship, she soon learns that not only have the Predators come to the ship to hunt the super-soldiers, but also that the super soldier experiments were also part of the "Skynet Resurrection Program." According to a program left by John Connor, following Skynet's defeat by the human resistance, multiple Crypto Terminators (of which Trollenberg was one) were created, each one capable of existing in civilization indefinitely until such time that technological advancements would allow for the creation of a new, unstoppable generation of Terminators. Forming a certain alliance with the Predators, the Ripley clone released the Aliens against the super-soldiers, their acidic blood destroying this latest generation of Terminators, before sacrificing herself to destroy the prototype super-soldier in an explosion that destroys the station they are located on, thus preventing their work from beginning again.
Although Sigourney Weaver initially expressed interest in reprising this character in further installments of the Alien franchise,[3] the releases of Alien vs. Predator and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem have led the franchise on to a different path away from the central story of Ellen Ripley.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ "20 All-Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture". Entertainment Weekly. March 2009. http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20268279_15,00.html. Retrieved on 2009-03-27.
- ^ Alien: The Novel by Alan Dean Foster, ISBN 0446829773
- ^ Latino Review
[edit] References
- Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ellen Ripley by Ximena Gallardo C., C. Jason Smith (272 pages, Continuum International Publishing Group, ISBN 0826415709)
[edit] External links
- Ellen Ripley at the Internet Movie Database
- American Amazon
- Weaver stands alone as female action hero
- In search of a serious protagonist
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