OT: This is a throwaway comment in a caption near the end:
> Samus’ underwear are a reference to what Ellen Ripley wears at the end of Alien, but Alien had a reason for it.
A little OT, but I believe Alien and Aliens may be the only popular movies we'll ever get in which the heroine whose gender isn't treated as anything more than a matter of fact. In both movies, she has nearly zero amount of dialogue relating to romantic interest, and acts and is treated as just someone, not specifically a woman, on the crew...which makes sense given that the character was originally written for a man. Even her climactic victories arise organically from her character background, not in a cartoonish let's-see-women-kick-some-ass, as with the Bride in the Kill Bill series...Early on in Aliens, she is shown proficiently operating a Power Loader because of her past work experience, which foreshadows the final confrontation...in fact, it's funny that Ripley is sometimes referred to as a kickass gunslinger, when it is her inept use of flamethrowers and grenades that inadvertently lead to the final fight.
Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that Alien and Aliens are still not only two of the best action/sci-fi movies out there, but perhaps the only times in a major movie in which the woman is so asexual (the closest comparison I can think of is Marge Gunderson in Fargo)...So when that she does appear in her underwear at the end of both movies...it feels logical (she's getting into the cyrochamber), and not as a contrived way to capitalize off the sexiness of the actress. I guess it was "cool" that Samus was revealed to be a woman at the end, but the race to beat the game to see more of her underwear was an unnecessary bit of game design, IMO.
My understanding was that Ripley was originally written as male. From IMDB's trivia page:
"All of the names of the main characters were changed multiple times by Walter Hill and David Giler during revisions of the original script by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. The script by O'Bannon and Shusett also had a clause indicating that all of the characters are "unisex", meaning they could be cast with male or female actors; consequently, all of the characters are only referred to by their last name (Dallas, Kane, Ripley, Ash, Lambert, Parker, and Brett), and the few gender-specific pronouns (he/she) were corrected after casting. However, Shusett and O'Bannon never thought of casting Ripley as a female character."
The comment you're replying to already mentioned this.
>In both movies, she has nearly zero amount of dialogue relating to romantic interest, and acts and is treated as just someone, not specifically a woman, on the crew...which makes sense given that the character was originally written for a man.
I'll add 'commenting to HN' to the list of things I'm not allowed to do until the first coffee has managed to saturate my brain... goes to stare at wall.
I think it is unfair to say that Aliens ignores the gender of the main protagonist. Rather, it makes great use of it. Ripley assumes a maternal role with Newt, the little girl survivor, which is something foreshadowed by the scene at the beginning when she learns that her daughter died while she was in stasis. Unfortunately, this scene was cut from the original theatrical release of the film but it is preserved in the special edition. They say Sigourney Weaver was furious that the scene was cut, and rightfully so, as it frames her character's relationship with Newt.
Yeah you can actually take it further and see Aliens as a struggle between two mothers, Ripley and the queen alien, fighting over the child Newt.
It's also interesting that the strongest characters in the movie are women. Ripley is the strongest civilian, Newt the strongest colonist (the only survivor actually), Vazquez the strongest marine (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYkxCzBszOQ), and the queen alien is the strongest xenomorph.
Sure, if you ignore the mother/daughter relationship between Ripley and Newt in Aliens, and the clearly-hinted-at-but-never-really-acted-upon romantic connection with Colonel Hicks.
> Samus’ underwear are a reference to what Ellen Ripley wears at the end of Alien, but Alien had a reason for it.
A little OT, but I believe Alien and Aliens may be the only popular movies we'll ever get in which the heroine whose gender isn't treated as anything more than a matter of fact. In both movies, she has nearly zero amount of dialogue relating to romantic interest, and acts and is treated as just someone, not specifically a woman, on the crew...which makes sense given that the character was originally written for a man. Even her climactic victories arise organically from her character background, not in a cartoonish let's-see-women-kick-some-ass, as with the Bride in the Kill Bill series...Early on in Aliens, she is shown proficiently operating a Power Loader because of her past work experience, which foreshadows the final confrontation...in fact, it's funny that Ripley is sometimes referred to as a kickass gunslinger, when it is her inept use of flamethrowers and grenades that inadvertently lead to the final fight.
Anyway, this is just a long way of saying that Alien and Aliens are still not only two of the best action/sci-fi movies out there, but perhaps the only times in a major movie in which the woman is so asexual (the closest comparison I can think of is Marge Gunderson in Fargo)...So when that she does appear in her underwear at the end of both movies...it feels logical (she's getting into the cyrochamber), and not as a contrived way to capitalize off the sexiness of the actress. I guess it was "cool" that Samus was revealed to be a woman at the end, but the race to beat the game to see more of her underwear was an unnecessary bit of game design, IMO.