5. Alien (1979) (Dir. Ridley Scott)
Once the entire crew of the space cruiser Nostromo have been dispatched by a terrifying alien foe, only Ellen Ripley (arguably cinema’s greatest ever heroine) remains. Extremely eager to get off the ship where all her companions were horribly mutilated, Ripley finds herself trapped in a room with the Xenomorph. Cleverly, she climbs into a space suit and – after luring the creature out of its hiding place – opens the blast doors and ejects the damned thing into space. When it attempts to cling to the ship, she blasts it to pieces using the ship’s ignition thrusters. Phew.
Lost and alone, Ripley makes a final recording to the ship’s computer: “Final report of the commerical starship Nostromo. Third officer reporting. The other members of the crew… Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash and Captain Dallas are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo… signing off.” With that, Ripley puts herself into cryofreeze and the drifts off into the endless void of space.
Ridley Scott plays his ending with mystery and melancholy, though it’s important to remember that this is a happy ending – a genuinely satisfying one, in which our heroine beats a horrific monster against the odds. Of course, Ridley Scott could’ve easily gone for an ending where it’s revealed that there are more eggs on board (ala Aliens), but he did the right thing in allowing Ripley to take a breather. Here’s the proof that filmmakers today shouldn’t be so afraid in letting their characters catch a break. We watched this courageous woman suffer and survive, after all, and our reward as an audience is merely the opportunity to hope that – whatever happens next – she might just make it out okay.
