And for the purposes of this thread, I’m just gonna stick with Ripley as we see her in Alien & Aliens.

What I found interesting about Ripley as an action hero is that, and I may be incorrect on this, she may be the first female action hero that wasn’t in some way connected to a man. Her position was not as the girlfriend/wife, the side-kick who steps up, or “chosen one”. Instead, she was a woman who did what she had to in order to survive.

If you remember the scene from Alien, her masculine/feminine hero-ness is actually (very subtly) enacted. It was in the scene when they are deciding on how to trap/kill the alien which is using the air ducts to move around the ship. There are only 5 characters left. The captain Dallas (male), Ripley who is the 3rd officer, the science officer Cain (male), the navigator Lambert (female), and the engineer/facilities crew member Parker (male) have put together the plan to trap the alien in the air ducts. Then someone goes in and pushes into the air lock to be blown out into space.

They come to the question of who goes in. Ripley is the first to say “I do”. However, her Captain over-rides her. Is this chauvinistic? Logically speaking, the Captain of the vessel would be the last person to send in. If Ripley was a man, would he have stepped up the way he did? Once Dallas dies, she’s in command and makes the unilateral decision to blow up the ship…a decision she initially rejected, but came to agree with after finding out that the entire company considered the alien more valuable then their lives.

So then jump forward a movie, and you have Ripley again in command after the initial attack removes the first two command officers from the decision making role. Interestingly enough, Hicks is supposed to be in command as the ranking officer of Corporal (although he’s a grunt…no offense). She takes command and pretty much starts calling the shots. She does this without any type of violence…and nothing that I really see as “special” or “miraculous” for any character.

~Jeordam