I'm showing my age here but here but I thought the two most common readings of the film were:
Vietnam War movie in space:
The military at the behest of the MIC get sent into a situation that they have little to no understanding of which results in many good men and women dying, all because the powers that be think that they can turn a profit. Only by banding together can the working class (human or android) survive this situation
(And when viewed it this light, Avatar can be seen as more a refinement of James Cameron's anti-war views than a 180.)
Girl Power
Ripley, the lone survivor of the Sexual Assault Monster is forced/blackmailed by the Patriarchy(Burke) into confronting said monster because the Patriarchy wants to profit off of it, and then the Patriarchy is face when they find out that they can't control the Sexual Assault Monster and gets sexually assaulted. Only by building a coalition of feminist allies and confronting her trauma head on (with a power loader) can Ripley prevent the same trauma that was inflicted on her from being inflicted on the next generation.
The reason you can't go "Xenomorphs are a 1-to-1 allegory for the Viet Cong" is the same reason you can't just say that the movie is reactionary and pro-genocide: the Alien is too big and all encompassing a metaphor for how uncaring and hostile nature is in the face of human endeavour. It's not just a simple Other, it's the face of annihilation; it's a WMD found in the wild the same way Uranium or Anthrax is.
Ripley's argument that the Xenomorphs need to all be destroyed is the same argument for the destruction of all samples of deadly diseases that can be used as biological weapons: it is too inimical to human life to be allowed to exist, especially because the MIC keeps trying to weaponize it in order to profit off of it.
I'm showing my age here but here but I thought the two most common readings of the film were:
The military at the behest of the MIC get sent into a situation that they have little to no understanding of which results in many good men and women dying, all because the powers that be think that they can turn a profit. Only by banding together can the working class (human or android) survive this situation
(And when viewed it this light, Avatar can be seen as more a refinement of James Cameron's anti-war views than a 180.)
Ripley, the lone survivor of the Sexual Assault Monster is forced/blackmailed by the Patriarchy(Burke) into confronting said monster because the Patriarchy wants to profit off of it, and then the Patriarchy is
face when they find out that they can't control the Sexual Assault Monster and gets sexually assaulted. Only by building a coalition of feminist allies and confronting her trauma head on (with a power loader) can Ripley prevent the same trauma that was inflicted on her from being inflicted on the next generation.
deleted by creator
The reason you can't go "Xenomorphs are a 1-to-1 allegory for the Viet Cong" is the same reason you can't just say that the movie is reactionary and pro-genocide: the Alien is too big and all encompassing a metaphor for how uncaring and hostile nature is in the face of human endeavour. It's not just a simple Other, it's the face of annihilation; it's a WMD found in the wild the same way Uranium or Anthrax is.
Ripley's argument that the Xenomorphs need to all be destroyed is the same argument for the destruction of all samples of deadly diseases that can be used as biological weapons: it is too inimical to human life to be allowed to exist, especially because the MIC keeps trying to weaponize it in order to profit off of it.