Unfortunately, she’d been in stasis for 57 years prior to rescue. Ripley and Jonesy the cat were the only survivors of the ill-fated Nostromo, and they were eventually rescued by her employer, Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Whereas Alien presented a metaphorical approach to the horrors of childbirth, Aliens took on motherhood in a much more traditional way. From a literary standpoint, “Mother” provided the film’s protagonist with necessary information that nudged them forward in their journey to becoming a hero – Ellen Ripley ( Sigourney Weaver) learned of the company’s true motives through “Mother.” “Mother” behaved like a mother, in a certain sense. Then there’s the Nostromo’s mainframe, MU-TH-UR 6000, known simply as “Mother.” It’s a fitting name as the computer operated many of the ship’s background systems, autopiloted the ship while the crew was in hypersleep, and woke the crew from hypersleep. That the host, Kane ( John Hurt), had this twisted pregnancy forced upon him when he got a little too curious about a strange egg while exploring a derelict space ship on moon LV-426, adds even more layers of fear regarding childbirth. The act of childbirth is a messy, excruciating process, and Alien took it to a whole new harrowing level by gender-swapping the birth and having the alien baby enter the world by bursting forth from its host’s chest cavity. For this Mother’s Day, we’re paying respects to Ellen Ripley, the Queen Mother, and mothers everywhere by looking back at the maternal core of this series.įorty years ago, Alien shook audiences with the iconic scene that saw the blue-collar crew of the Nostromo settled in for a comfortable meal together after one of their own recovered from a daunting brush with a facehugging alien lifeform, only to have their lives irrevocably changed by the arrival of a newborn. From the philosophical to the traditional, from conception to the stresses of raising a child (or monster), to the very definition of what motherhood is, the entire catalog of Alien films has captured the complexities of motherhood in way that’s wholly unique. But no franchise has managed to explore every corner of motherhood quite like the Alien franchise. The most obvious selections focus on evil mothers, protective mothers, or benign moms struggling with their evil kid. Which means that when it comes to celebrating Mother’s Day, there’s no shortage of horror movies to honor the blood, sweat, and tears it takes to be a mom. There are countless genre movies that explore the horrors of giving birth, of child-rearing, of maternal sacrifice, and simply how being a mother can affect one’s sanity. The nature of motherhood presents fertile ground of fears for horror to explore.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |