Welcome back, goblins and ghouls, to the fourth annual installment of SpookyJawn! Each October, our love of horror fully rises from its slumber and takes over the MovieJawn website for all things spooky! This year, we are looking at ghosts, goblins, ghouls, goths, and grotesqueries, week by week they will march over the falling leaves to leave you with chills, frights, and spooky delights! Read all of the articles here!

by Heidi Krull, Staff Writer

When the idea of Alien (1979) initially hatched, Scott was the fifth choice for the director. This is typical within the film industry, but, considering how influential the franchise became, it is an anomaly. Alien also had an entirely different vibe than the typical monster horror film during this time. This type of film usually has an extreme shock factor element to drive its point clearly, featuring gore and violence within minutes. Film critic Justin Chang, who interviewed Scott back in 2020, states that, “Unlike so many blockbusters, Alien has no desire to bludgeon you into submission; it takes its time because it means to infiltrate your nervous system. Like our chest-bursting little friend, it wants to get inside you.”

Scott had many other methods to take this film in a fresh direction. Originally, the character Ripley was supposed to be played by a man. Most popular sci-fi and action films of the time put male characters on the forefront while female characters were pushed to the background. Sigourney Weaver, who ended up playing Ellen Ripley, was the key to push this franchise to the next level. Having a woman-presenting protagonist not only played into the ever popular “final girl” trope but also opened up opportunities for Scott to explore themes of mothership, non-consensual pregnancy and its effects, and the expectations of women in a futuristic, dying society. 

Although Alien was the first film in the franchise, it is not the first chronologically in the Alien universe. I will touch on the themes mentioned above in chronological order, starting with a story that began before the iconic xenomorphs even existed.

Prometheus (dir. Ridley Scott, 2012)

Taking place in 2089, Prometheus hones in on the time before the xenomorphs of the original film were in the picture. The film focuses on couple Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green), two archeologists that are searching for what they believe to be the creators of humans. They have a skeptical crew with them, including Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) whose main mission is to protect the Weyland company name, and David (Michael Fassbender), an android with unknown intentions.

This film follows the typical Alien formula: crew lands on a mysterious planet, they discover eldritch horrors, and they get picked off one by one. However, there is a slight twist because this is the first crew that is entirely unaware of the dangers they are encountering. The action truly begins when the crew finds a cave with mysterious black liquid, and David secretly takes a sample back onto the ship. 

One of the primary plot points of all the Alien films is how humanity is rapidly dying out, and the crew in Prometheus specifically is trying to find a suitable planet for humans to reside on. The state of humanity, which is dire in this timeline, relies heavily on human procreation and motherhood, and this quickly becomes a factor in this film. Shaw, who is supposed to be infertile, ends up pregnant on the ship because of David meddling with the black liquid but realizes immediately that something is seriously wrong. In a rush of adrenaline to save her own life, Shaw gives herself a c-section, revealing the creature growing inside of her is anything but human. 

This specific scene always haunts me, and it paints an important picture about the necessity of consent when it comes to pregnancy, even in a futuristic, dying world. David experimenting with the black liquid, now understood to be a bioweapon, took Shaw’s agency completely away and showed how pregnancy and motherhood, when unwanted, can be grotesque, isolating, and deadly. David’s character and his calculated behavior is an amalgamation of the manner that women are treated in the real world. Whether we want to or not, we are expected to be baby machines in a world that does nothing to help us succeed as mothers. Shaw’s raw will to survive this ordeal represents the strength women must have to survive in both the world Scott created and the real world. In both worlds, capitalism, colonialism, and expanding the population will always take precedence in women's health.

In the end, David’s disturbing experiment yielded terrible results for the state of humanity. The alien that came out of Shaw ended up being a main ingredient in creating what we know as the classic xenomorph, which, as we know, continually wreaks havoc on the people in the coming films. David’s intentions aside, forcing someone to be pregnant, fictional or not, will never save humanity and will eventually cause more death than life.

Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979)

As the original film in this franchise and taking place in 2122, Alien initially introduced all of the themes present in each of the subsequent films, including motherhood and women’s survival. The crew in this film, under the direction of Dallas (Tom Skerrit) and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), awake from cryo-sleep early because of an unknown distress call on an alien planet. When they land and begin exploring, they find a gigantic alien ship (the same design as in Prometheus), but then one of the crew members (John Hurt)  is assaulted by a small creature clinging to his face (now affectionately referred to by fans as “face huggers”). They think the terror is over, but when a new creature literally bursts out of the crew member’s chest, rapidly grows, and brutalizes them, Ripley is the sole survivor and must find a way out of the horrible situation on her own. Later on, it is revealed that the android on board, Ash, has been purposely trying to take the alien creature back to their home planet on orders from the Weyland company.

The theme of motherhood appears in this film pretty much off the bat. The imagery on the ship, such as the cryo pods that appear to be giving birth to the crew when they emerge, hint at society’s unfamiliarity with motherhood, depicting it as quite literally alien and unnatural. Motherhood is the baseline for everything in this film, so much so that the AI tool on the ship in Alien (and each of the following films) is called Mother. I always found this aspect intriguing, mainly because the android characters such as Ash and David are the only characters with a full understanding of how the Mother program works. This decision made by Scott was incredibly smart; it shows how the human aspect of motherhood is being taken away in this world and is being replaced by forced, unnatural parentage.

While Ripley herself does not experience forced pregnancy in the first Alien installment, her crew member being effectively pregnant with and then killed by the xenomorph directly relates to the theme of unnatural mothering and its eventual effects on humanity. Additionally, Ripley is consistently the only voice of reason as well as being one of two women on board. Before he is revealed as an android, Ash defies Ripley’s orders to not let the afflicted crew member back on board to save everyone else and lets him on in the name of the company. This was a seemingly minor point, but it ends up being vital to understanding the world in which this takes place. As in Prometheus, motherhood and procreation are crucial to Weyland’s goals and the survival of humanity, but women are treated as a means to an end to satisfy Weyland’s greed.

Alien: Romulus (dir. Fede Alvarez, 2024)

This film is the latest installment in the franchise and has striking similarities to the original Alien. Romulus opens with a spaceship taking onboard an odd cocoon-like meteorite. Inside, the same xenomorph that Ripley thought she killed was laying stagnant but presumed dead. Farther away, there is a dingy colony on a planet with no natural sunlight where Rain (Caliee Spaeney) and malfunctioning android Andy (David Jonsson) are trying to get permits to leave. Rain hears about the ship from her friends, brother and sister Tyler (Archie Renaux) and Kay Isabela Merced, and they plan to use Andy’s android abilities to go in and steal it. After a face hugger gets a hold of Navarro (Aileen Wu), Rain and crew have to fight for their survival with odds stacked against them.

Rain differs slightly from her protagonist counterparts in the other films. While Ripley and Shaw are frankly tormented by the androids in their respective films, Rain sees Andy as her brother and as a human with feelings. I thought Rain brought a refreshing sense of naivety in this case. She is actively being exploited by Weyland but has not become jaded enough yet to think differently of Andy. Andy is also the first android that we see that appears to have some semblance of human-esque compassion. Though Rain is quite young, she takes on a motherly, protective role over Andy, tying her character in with the other Alien protagonists. This theme continues later on when the crew finds the torso of another android, Rook (Daniel Betts and Ian Holm) and is forced to use his chip on Andy in order to gain more access to the Romulus and Remus station. Even when Andy’s behavior fundamentally changes, Rain struggles to see him as another android and continues to protect him despite disagreeing with his decisions.

The station being called Romulus and Remus brings back some of the unnatural motherhood imagery present in the original film. The story of Romulus and Remus is about two human boys who survive only because they fed off a mother wolf as children. This is very reminiscent of how the xenomorphs are created and born and represents the parasitic relationship the aliens have with humans. 

This film took the theme of non-consensual pregnancy even further, too. Kay is pregnant for the duration of the film. After Rook reveals to the crew that his mission is to use a mixture of “Prometheus fire” (the black liquid from Prometheus) and human DNA to make “the perfect specimen,” an injured Kay injects herself with it, and, as soon as she and Rain think they are safe, the injection causes her to have an early birth. However, what comes out of her is an uncanny, human-xenomorph hybrid that then kills her. Kay’s story here is a sort of cautionary tale. The “perfect specimen” Rook claims can exist will likely cost the lives of many people, but especially pregnant women. Human DNA and the Prometheus fire are clearly not compatible and will probably end humanity more quickly than it would without it.

Alien: Resurrection (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1997)

Alien: Resurrection comes 200 years after the events of Aliens (1986) and Alien 3 (1992), all of which Ellen Ripley is a major part of. After sacrificing herself to save humanity when she found out she was pregnant with the Alien Queen, the scientists at Weyland managed to both salvage the alien and somewhat save Ripley’s life, though she is now technically a clone. Weyland at this point in the timeline is actively breeding the xenomorphs using clones similar to Ripley’s, claiming the experiments will save humanity. Things go awry when a crew of bandits, starring Winona Ryder as Annalee Call, breaks onto Weyland’s ship to attempt to take out all of the monsters, including Ripley herself. 

This film, rather than slowly building and dropping conceptual hints, throws the theme of unnatural birth and motherhood in the audience’s face like a fast ball. Ripley, who technically survived her chestburster ordeal, grapples with how she feels like a mother but knows her offspring is dangerous. However, she and the viewer both grow to understand how her case was extremely lucky. Ripley comes across more clones on the Weyland ship, all of which are morbidly deformed to the point of not looking human anymore. She realizes that the company is creating these clones purely to produce more aliens, deepening her own trauma wound and proving that Weyland has never cared about the wellbeing of humans. This film put forced motherhood at the forefront, rather than hinting at it through thematic clues.

Resurrection also delves deeper into the lore of the aliens and how they reproduce, even further emphasizeing the coldness of Weyland’s greed. The Alien Queen that came out of Ripley was able to give birth to a child herself (instead of using the face huggers to procreate) due to Weyland’s meddling, but the alien that she produces immediately murders her and begins terrorizing the ship. I thought it was a clever decision to humanize the xenomorphs this way. While they are undoubtedly the greatest threat to humanity, they are still treated as fertility science experiments by Weyland, showing that profits not only come before people but also aliens at this point.

Alien and Motherhood

One aspect that all of the Alien films include is strong women characters, and themes of motherhood to go along with them. All of these characters have their own experiences, yet all of them are forced to either be a mother, or witness the horrors that come with forced pregnancy and birth. Alien is so wonderfully different from so many sci-fi films in that way, and its themes reflect heavily on real women who are denied rights to their bodies by their own governments. The Alien franchise subverts the typical hyper-masculine energy that sci-fi films typically have, and gives its audience a stunning commentary on motherhood, consent, and humanity all in one.