In many ways, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley is what makes the Alien franchise so powerful, iconic, and captivating. In addition to that, the Ripley character is among the first female heroes in an obvious man’s world.
To that end, The Hero Complex Film Festival honored Weaver and the Ripley character with a double feature of Ridley Scott’s Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens. After the screening, Weaver fielded some questions from those in attendance. Check out what she had to say about the future of Ripley and the Alien franchise:
I feel after going to a couple of these Comic Cons and meeting so many fans who are so passionate about the series, passionate about Ripley — that there’s more story to tell; but I don’t know how to do that. I don’t think Alien belongs on Earth popping out of a haystack, which is where I was afraid it was going to go. I feel it should take place in the far reaches of the universe where no one in their right mind would go.
There are very few filmmakers that I can think of that I would want to entrust this to. But I can think of a couple… I feel there’s a longing in certain groups of fans when I meet them for the story to be finished because we really left it up in the air and I feel a bit badly about that because I was part of that decision making process.
I didn’t want to make four and five in a bundle. I think it’s hard to make these films all in a big lump. You need time to sort of let things resonate so I can imagine a situation where we could at least finish telling her story. I think that would be very satisfying at least to me — although I haven’t done anything about it; but I can understand why that could happen and I certainly know young filmmakers who are interested in doing that. So we’ll just have to see what happens.
While I would love to see an Alien 5, I don’t think there needs to be any formal conclusion for Ripley. It’s fine as is, and the era in which these films were made, things were often “left up in the air”… because audiences were smarter and didn’t need everything spelled out for them.
Nonetheless, it would be great to see Weaver as Ripley again. What do you think?
Rock Hard \m/
