by Mykal McCulloch
Like many of us affected by the loss of Ripley in Alien 3, I’ve wandered through sad and distraught years as an Alien fan. Looking for silver linings and finding few of them. I've tried novels, comics, and media of all kinds, but nothing’s helped. I've sat through not one but TWO horrific AVP films, hoping to numb the emotional pain.
But nothing could bring Ripley back. She was gone. She’d sacrificed herself to save humanity, leaving me—a young fan—without his badass, bug-stomping mother to guide him.
Then I saw a way to slowly bring myself back to earth without drifting for 57 years. A plan to nuke my trouble and sorrow from orbit (just to be sure). I found a plan that consisted of nine stages, designed to slowly ease endless pain.
And here is what I found:
1. SHOCK: The first stage is the one I’ll truly never forget. As a teen sitting in the movie theater, I can remember not being able to breathe as I saw the horrified look on Newt’s face or the pile of Hicks’ interwoven body parts in his smashed cryotube. But I had no idea what waited for me before that trip to the theater would be over. I remember sitting next to my dad and crying as I saw the scan of the embryo inside Ripley. Then, without any idea it would happen, the hero that been with me all my childhood sacrificed herself to save humanity from this nightmare she’d fought for so long. I actually yelled “No!!!!” as I watched her fate unfold in the theater!
2. DENIAL: As I slowly walked out of the theater with my heart in my throat and head in my hands (all while my father tried his best to console me), I kept thinking “no way.” They cannot possibly let this fearless woman go out like this. Look what she’s been through. She will definitely come back. She has to! Her story can’t be done. Little did I know she would—and would be in a way that would hurt even worse.
3. ANGER: The third stage that I had entered was that of anger. I was mad as hell, to the point that I went home and threw everything Alien I could see into a box and stuffed the box in my closet. I took down all my posters and threw all my movies and comics under my bed. I was mad at everyone: the director, Fox, the guy that held the mics, and the guy that poured the coffee. For months afterwards, I cursed at the people who came up with the story. When the comic adaptation came out, I refused to even look at it!
4. PHYSICAL DISTRESS: Physical distress came as open emotions. I had tears in my eyes. My heart felt like I had been in a race. It just ached; and for several days afterwards, I couldn’t even sleep. I just kinda lounged around. When I say I had it bad, I had it bad!
5. GUILT: Now, the fifth stage was a weird one. My only real feeling of guilt was the fact that I felt like I had contributed to this by buying a ticket. I had paid for a movie that had contributed to the untimely death of Ripley, and I was sick!
6. BARGAINING: Eventually I got around to the sixth stage. This is where I started to mentally formulate a plan. Something I could do to change the way things went down. First I took the holy road: I looked to a higher power to change time and space and make this all go away. I tried it all: promising good behavior; giving things up; I even had thoughts on joining the clergy—but then again, I knew that was never a possibility. At this point, I had thought my prayers were answered. Later on in life, when Alien Resurrection was released, I would see the devil’s handiwork firsthand. Damn you, Satan!!
7. DEPRESSION: Well, when I reached the seventh stage I really fell apart. My sci-fi interests were gone. I literally couldn’t bring myself to read a comic, let alone watch a movie. While I was at home, I moped around in a lost fog, not knowing where to go what to do. I had no real purpose.
8. TESTING: Slowly but surely I moved on to the next stage: testing. At this point in my young life, I had decided that I needed to move forward (at least in some small wall). I needed to get back on the saddle. So I started slowly bringing in new Dark Horse Alien comics (which I’d fallen way behind on). I then came upon some great novels by Stephen Perry, which would get the old mind back in gear. Slowly, I was getting over the mountain and on to the other side. Back towards the blue skies.
9. ACCEPTANCE: Finally, I reached the point where I was going to try—as an adult—to accept Alien 3. It was time for some closure. At this point, I had bought the DVD but hadn’t watched it. I won’t lie: I may have binged. I watched the movie for several days over and over again. I was bound and determined to see it in a better light. Then, one night, it happened: the lightbulb came on. I thought to myself, “Wow, she needed to do this. Her story needed closure.” This was her curtain call. Ripley had been fighting this battle for so long that she no longer remembered life before the xenomorphs. She was done. She followed through and sacrificed herself to end them once and for all.
The hero that I had grown up with was doing exactly what a hero had to do. Now I love Alien 3. It may be my favorite, after Aliens. All it took was to see it as an adult viewing it with my mind rather than a kid using only my heart.