Ripley had two daughters and one son. One daughter that she gave birth to, one daughter that she became a surrogate to (Newt), and the hybrid alien/human thing was her son.
I also think that when she was cloned and had alien DNA, that she was a "Queen".
She was like an example of a strong, single mother figure to her actual children and various surrogates (the inmates on the prison planet, etc).
Aliens, at its core, is a movie about motherhood. Newt is the surrogate for Ripley's daughter that she lost. When Newt's in danger, it's not the badass space marines who save her. It's the mother who will move heaven and earth to protect her child.
very sweet take. Aliens is actually about corporate greed is "game over man", and we need to nuke it from orbit. Forced pregnancy and AI are still just distractions for the corporate greed.
I mean, you aren't wrong. The other main theme in my opinion is how the military industrial complex sucks and doesn't value human life as much as profit.
Just came here to drop the info:
Her reacting to the news of her daughter dying of young age while she was in the Stasis Pod was a deleted scene in the Aliens Director's Cut.
They take her victory away in the sequels. Twice. Three times if you count cloning Ripley with xeno DNA in Resurrection as a lose. Cat lady perpetually be fighting against that shit.
Ripley canonically had a daughter named Amanda who died while Ripley was in stasis between Alien and Aliens. Amanda Ripley is the player character in Alien: Isolation.
Amanda canonically gets back to earth to die of cancer as an older woman, so she does manage to return from the "floating in space" ending of Isolation, too.
Creative Assembly have confirmed Isolation 2, as well. Hype!
Carter Burke is bought and paid for by Weyland Yutani, WY lies for their own ends, and that included sending Ripley to back to LV426 for the Hadley's Hope of getting their very own pet Xenomorph. Amanda Ripley could be anywhere
While all that is technically true, I still watched each and every alien franchise movie. The best one has been the best, and it went downhill from there. Last one is meh to be polite, so I might not be bothered again. Oh who am I kidding, I’ll watch that too
The second best is also the best, except for the best one.
But the last one seems like they only had CGI budget for one alien. Venom’s last one is also disappointing, these people have run out of new ideas for a long time. Just milking the respective franchises