While the last couple of Alien movies have been prequels set years before she was born, Ellen Ripley is as much the star of the franchise as the xenomorph itself. In a recent interview, Sigourney Weaver was asked which of her four appearances as Ripley in the Alien movies was her favorite. While she acknowledged that it was a “difficult” question to answer, she gave James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens the top spot.
It’s hardly surprising that Weaver chose Aliens as her favorite experience with the franchise, as it’s also the one that landed her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. During a conversation with Collider, Weaver explained that her enjoyment of working on Aliens came from Ripley’s pitch-perfect character arc in Cameron’s script: “The best-constructed story for the character to tell was in Aliens, just because Jim [Cameron] has such an amazing sense of the structure of story... The whole set-up for Ripley in Aliens and then what she ends up doing and... finding this new family by the end. The whole structure of that story, to me, was gold. I always felt that I could jump up and down on it. It was such a great, supportive arc for the character. In that sense, the second one for Ripley is probably the most satisfying.”
As the sole survivor of the Nostromo who succeeded in killing the bloodthirsty xenomorph that wiped out the rest of her crew, Ripley’s role in the original 1979 movie broke new ground for female action heroes. After Weaver reprised the role in Aliens, which switched genres from horror to action and was praised as one of the greatest sequels ever made, she went on to play Ripley again in 1992’s Alien 3. Unfortunately, the third film suffered from studio interference and when she played a clone of the dead Ripley in 1997’s Alien: Resurrection, she found herself working on a film that suffered from a weak script.
It’s unclear if Weaver will ever reprise her role as Ripley. District 9 director Neill Blomkamp was working on an Alien sequel a few years ago that would retcon every sequel after Aliens and follow on from Cameron’s movie in a fresh way. However, this project ended up being canceled and Ridley Scott is currently working on completing his prequel trilogy detailing the origins of the xenomorphs. In the meantime, Scott and Fargo’s Noah Hawley are also working on an Alien TV series for FX that will bring the story to Earth for the first time.
While Weaver may never play Ripley again, she’s open to reprising some of her other iconic roles. She’s signed on to reprise her role as Dr. Grace Augustine in all four of the upcoming Avatar sequels and she’ll be seen back in the role of Dana Barrett alongside her old co-stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson in Ghostbusters: Afterlife. She also mentioned in the Collider interview that a Galaxy Quest sequel is in the early stages of development, although it won’t be the same without the late Alan Rickman.
Aliens is now available on Disney Plus.
Source: Collider