Ruling over the box office roost in its first weekend of release, the 2024 movie Alien: Romulus has reignited 20th Century Studios’ long running sci-fi franchise. A huge part of that tradition has come from the fact that the 1979 original started something that would carry on throughout the rest of the Alien movies timeline , as well as the various spin offs and tie-in media that came after. Throughout the entirety of this IP, there has been a strong current of female leads that have built this saga into what it currently is.
Whether serving the forces of good, or in some cases working for The Company itself, the entire Alien series has been anchored by this collection of women who have saved humanity countless times in the depths of space. How Alien’s History Of Female Leads Almost Didn’t Happen The history of Alien starts with the script from writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, which was actually written without genders set in stone for the characters. According to a 1976 draft house on The Daily Script , the project then known as “Starbeast” carried this insightful stage direction: The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women.
Of course, history played out in its own fun way, as the suggestion to make Ellen Ripley Alien’s witty survivor was apparently made on the studio level. In a 2020 L.A.
Times interview with Ridley Scott (via CBR ) then president of 20th Century Fox Alan Ladd Jr. was the person who pitched Ripley to be a fema.