Ellen Ripley
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Ellen Ripley is a fictional character, the protagonist in the Alien movie series. She is played by Sigourney Weaver. Warrant Officer Ripley was heralded as a seminal role for challenging gender stereotypes, particularly in the science fiction genre, and remains Weaver's most famous role to date.
In 2003, Ripley was selected by the American Film Institute as the #8 greatest hero in American cinema history. (See AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains)
Fictional biography
Ellen Ripley was born January 7, 2092 on Earth. At the age of 19, she had a daughter, Amanda Ripley MacLaren (b. June 24, 2111).In 2122, Ripley was employed as a Warrant Officer for the Weyland-Yutani corporation, working on the USCSS Nostromo, which was towing massive quantities of raw ore to Earth from Thedus. Along with the rest of the crew, she was awakened 10 months prematurely by Mother, the ship's computer, to answer a curious transmission received from moon LV-426.
Ripley initially refused to allow Executive Officer Kane, Captain Dallas, and Navigator Lambert back onto the ship after they were injured, citing quarantine regulations. Her order was ignored by Science Officer Ash, whom she began to mistrust more and more as time went on. This had serious consequences when Kane was attacked by a "facehugger," an extraterrestrial larva that deposited eggs in his stomach, and was eventually killed when the egg hatched, letting the spawn loose in the ship to systematically prey on the crew.
Following the (presumed) death of Dallas, Ripley learned from Mother the final piece of the puzzle: Special Order 937, a secret Company policy to study the very creature that was stalking them at the expense of their lives. With the crew around her dwindling just as quickly as the creature seemed to be growing, Ripley began the vessel's self-destruct sequence. The Nostromo, the cooling rods removed from its reactor, melted down and exploded violently, moments after Ripley (in the escape ship Narcissus) reached safety. In finally destroying the Alien, however, she fired the Narcissus rockets, blasting the ship far off course for any hope of a timely rescue. Thus, she and her cat Jones would spend the next 57 years in hypersleep, following the incidents depicted in Alien (1979).
Officially, the whereabouts of the Nostromo and her crew remained unknown; it simply never returned from its journey to Thedus, and was listed as missing and presumed destroyed. Ripley's only daughter, Amanda, died of cancer December 23, 2177, at the age of 66, just two years before Ripley would be found and awoken from hypersleep.
After her subsequent rescue by a salvage crew in 2179, Ripley was made a Lieutenant and returned with a team of Colonial Marines to LV-426, as portrayed in Aliens (1986) and basically became the unit's de facto leader. Ripley subsequently found herself marooned on Fiorina "Fury" 161, an outer veil mineral ore refinery and correctional facility, where she died sometime in 2179 while trying to prevent Weyland-Yutani from getting its hands on the alien queen embryo that was inside of her. (See Alien³ (1992))
Various clones of Ellen Ripley were later created for the purpose of experimentation with the alien. (See (1997))
Ripley's life and career has been extensively expanded on in various spin-off comics and novels, many of which discount her death on Fury 161, instead providing a chronology continuing on from the end of Aliens. As such, they are not generally considered canon.
External links
| Alien movie series |
| Alien | Aliens | Alien³ | |
| Predator movie series |
| Predator | Predator 2 |
| Movie cross-overs |
| AVP: Alien vs. Predator | AVP: Alien vs. Predator 2 |
| Cross-overs |
| Alien vs. Predator | Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator | Batman vs. Predator | Alien Loves Predator |
| Relating to the Alien universe |
| Bishop | Ellen Ripley | LV-426 | Nostromo | Space Jockey | The Derelict | United States Colonial Marines | Weyland-Yutani | Xenomorph | Yautja | | M56 Smart Gun |
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