now of course it turns out that Burke doesn't actually care about the Xenomorphs, he only wants to exploit them for profit. while this is keeping with the corporations=bad theme from the first movie, now we're supposed to think corporations are bad for... not wanting to do genocide?
The corporation is bad because they want to use the aliens as biological weapons and sent Ripley's crew and the colonists to the planet as guinea pigs. That's why the middle manager wants to keep them alive.
I would argue that Aliens does have a more complicated morality than you're suggesting.
the audience is expected to view that position as inherently wrong.
In my view, Ripley wanting to wipe all the aliens out may not be the most moral reaction to experiencing all her co-workers being killed by a sexual assault monster and then witnessing the aftermath of hundreds of people being slaughtered by that species of sexual assault monsters, but I think it is understandable that she'd feel that way. The thing is that the movie actually does call into question whether this is the right thing to do when it draws an explicit parallel between the alien queen and Ripley- the queen is protecting its offspring in the same way that Ripley is protecting her surrogate daughter, which complicates the morality of this conflict and its result. In the end, the entire conflict is the result of a corporation seeking profit, creating a situation that spiralled out of control.
It's why I compare it to Avatar- James Cameron understands that people's moral decisions aren't usually the result of taking a view from a divine perch of perfect politics, but from an accumulation of their experiences and the material reality they face. Jake Sully is not the hero of Avatar because he's a great person- if he still had his legs and was just hired as a grunt on Pandora then he would have been just another genocidal colonial soldier. He had a very specific set of experiences that made him sympathize with the Na'Vi, and Ripley had a set of experiences that led to all her actions in all the movies. Like, sympathizing with the Xenomorphs or valuing their existence would be really hard for anyone who had to actually deal with them.
Okay, I shouldn't be commenting more but:
The corporation is bad because they want to use the aliens as biological weapons and sent Ripley's crew and the colonists to the planet as guinea pigs. That's why the middle manager wants to keep them alive.
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I would argue that Aliens does have a more complicated morality than you're suggesting.
In my view, Ripley wanting to wipe all the aliens out may not be the most moral reaction to experiencing all her co-workers being killed by a sexual assault monster and then witnessing the aftermath of hundreds of people being slaughtered by that species of sexual assault monsters, but I think it is understandable that she'd feel that way. The thing is that the movie actually does call into question whether this is the right thing to do when it draws an explicit parallel between the alien queen and Ripley- the queen is protecting its offspring in the same way that Ripley is protecting her surrogate daughter, which complicates the morality of this conflict and its result. In the end, the entire conflict is the result of a corporation seeking profit, creating a situation that spiralled out of control.
It's why I compare it to Avatar- James Cameron understands that people's moral decisions aren't usually the result of taking a view from a divine perch of perfect politics, but from an accumulation of their experiences and the material reality they face. Jake Sully is not the hero of Avatar because he's a great person- if he still had his legs and was just hired as a grunt on Pandora then he would have been just another genocidal colonial soldier. He had a very specific set of experiences that made him sympathize with the Na'Vi, and Ripley had a set of experiences that led to all her actions in all the movies. Like, sympathizing with the Xenomorphs or valuing their existence would be really hard for anyone who had to actually deal with them.