Last Survivors of the Sulaco: ALIEN$, Reproduction, Settler Colonialism, and the Military Turducken

We're back with Bill, tracing the adventures of new mom Ellen Ripley through the vast reaches of space as she returns to LV-426, now a colony (in every sense of the word) being terraformed by the Weyland-Yutani company. Jones has been left behind to... guard the grain. OK.

James Cameron's 1986 entry in the Alien franchise takes the form of a war film, but Matt argues it's more like a western. The series from this point begins to focus on reproduction, and we begin to try to make sense of how that fits in with the settler colonial discourse, with a plot that's initiated by an attack on a nuclear family from an indigenous population. A question we end with is, if survival and survivability are so important to the corporation, or to the xenomorph, why would reproduction be necessary at all? This seems to be a contradiction, and we try to resolve it.

Along the way we note the film's move into 80s-style militarism, a la Schwarzenegger and Stallone (Ripley goes full Rambo on the Queen), compare Linda Hamilton and Sigourney Weaver along the badassery vs. everygirlness spectra, explore the Biehn line, complain about kids in films, definitively assert that Aliens is better than T2, and explore the supposed universality of motherhood. And more!

GAME OVER, MAN!

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Music by Spirit of Space

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