CREW EXPENDABLE: Ellen Ripley and the Five Stages of Grief in the Alien Trilogy with Dan Pietersen

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The first three films in the Alien series may initially appear aesthetically and narratively distinct - Alien's haunted house in space, the Vietnam allegory of Aliens and Alien3's unrelentingly bleak soul-searching - but they are undeniably linked by two figures; Lieutenant Ellen Ripley and the series' titular alien.

In this talk I will investigate not only how these two characters form the spinal column of the Alien canon but how Ripley's specific arc across the three films can be read as an interpretation of the Five Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I will look at where Ripley's grief comes from - the loss of her friends, of her job, of her daughter (and daughter surrogate) and, perhaps more fundamentally, the loss of her understanding of how reality works - and then investigate how each of the five stages is navigated by Ripley across the three films.

I will use other characters from the films as counterpoints to Ripley's overarching experience - Lambert's inability to get past Denial, Hudson's Anger, Burke's need to Bargain, the depression of Fiorina 161's prisoners and Clemens' sanguine Acceptance - but these are mere fragments of Ripley's whole and only serve to highlight why she is such an enduring character. All of us have suffered grief and all of us, at some point, have been a little bit Ripley.
"This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off"