Science Fiction Film and Television

These female characters were, in contrast to their predecessors, the main protagonists and heroes at the centre of their respective narratives, they were desexualised, and they were not subservient to their male contemporaries. Most importantly, and as I show in this paper, they are complex, hybrid characters that do not perpetuate the masculine/ feminine dichotomy as their predecessors did. I further argue that it is these characters’ hybridity that makes them heroines instead of simply being male heroes in female bodies, which they are often accused of. I term the heroine archetype presented by these characters the “original action heroine”, and I argue that these women are likely candidates to be regarded as the first heroine archetype on screen.

Feminine symbolism in the American frontier myth is an evolving cultural/rhetorical manifestation of a developing archetypal process. The land-based frontier myth represents a middle stage in which a once-whole image of the feminine was split by the emergence of patriarchy. An analysis of the films Alien and Aliens reveals that the frontier myth is evolving, at least in this case, into a land/space hybrid, in which the lost feminine is encountered, found to be vengeful at the exploitation of her domain, and then killed by a patriarchalized heroine.

With his creation of Sigourney Weaver’s
nearly eponymous Ripley, commander and
kitten-handler of the original Alien, Ridley
Scott suggested a new model of humanity: a
female, fragile, thoroughly human scientist.

his essay is meant both as an analysis of a specific popular horror film, Alien 3, and as an attempt to counteract the excessive emphasis on the psychic workings of spectatorial identification in psychoanalytical film theory with a reading of the ideological power of the film to appropriate the spectator's psychic structure. In this as in many other cases of recent films coming from Hollywood, an appearance of progressivenes and token feminism hides an enduring tendency to construct women as monsters and massively disavow their power to create life.

The late Cold War saw the advent of a new paradigm of woman as hero in apocalyptic English-language science fiction film at its intersection with the horror and action sub-genres. In contrast to the helpless, villainous, and overly sexualized female characters before them, the Alien films’ Ellen Ripley and the Terminator franchise’s Sarah Connor represented practical, courageous women who saved humanity through their actions. These ostensibly secular narratives were rich with religious themes such as incarnation, kenosis, resurrection, faith seeking understanding, messianic expectation, virgin birth, free will, fate, evil, prophetic forewarning, and salvation. They were foundational in establishing, in effect, a humanistic mythos.

This article compares Ridley Scott’s film Alien (1979) with Creative Assembly’s video game Alien: Isolation (2014), which is based on Scott’s film. Guidance for academics who teach creative writing—as well as for working screenwriters and video game narrative designers—emerges in the comparison, particularly with regard to the importance of developing strong yet vulnerable main characters who put themselves in danger in order to protect other characters with whom they have meaningful relationships. Examples from other media, including Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby (1967), James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), Telltale Games’ The Walking Dead (2012), and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us (2013), are also discussed as they relate to larger principles involved in crafting sympathetic characters, realistic settings, and compelling gameplay for media within the horror and sci-fi genres.