Of course the entire genre of cosmic horror is reactionary by its very nature, except when there is enough self-awareness to subvert or satirize the genre's reactionary logic, as in Verhoeven's Starship Troopers. But James Cameron's Aliens has no interest in self-critique, sharing a lot more in common with Heinlein's original novel.
Xenomorphs have only ever defended themselves from human colonizers invading their home, but we're expected to see them as evil, the scary other. The aliens must be bad because they pose a threat to us. Oh, and because they're ugly.
At least in the first Alien, the human crew members are sympathetic because they are merely surviving a situation they didn't want to be in, put in peril by a corporation sacrificing them for profit. Humans, not aliens, are the true villains of the film.
But in Aliens, our hero Ripley goes back to the moon with a special team of Colonial Space Marines to kick some alien ass. While this is ostensibly a mission to save a group of endangered colonists, Ripley has no interest in a search-and-rescue mission. She only agrees on the condition that they go there to kill every last Xenomorph.
Ripley is more than willing to exterminate an entire species to save one little white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. In fact she still wants to genocide them even after safely escaping.
Ripley: I say we nuke the entire site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure
Burke: This is clearly an important species we're dealing with, and I don't think that we have the right to arbitrarily exterminate them.
Ripley: Wrong!
be sure of what, Ripley? you can just fucking leave. don't go back to the moon with all the Xenomorphs on it. seems pretty easy to me
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? because of course no good person would be against murdering an entire species for no reason, only a villain would propose such a thing.
Now I'm not saying you can't enjoy Aliens, it deserves its status as one of the best action / sci-fi films of all time, and I'd argue these problematic reactionary themes actually make it more interesting and morally complex, giving us much to analyze and critique, elevating it above an average popcorn movie. Just please don't take it at face value.
Ripley is no longer the hero, even if she's portrayed as one. In Alien she is the scratched liberal, and in Aliens she is the fascist who bleeds. In a tragic turn, she has become the villain of the story. She reacts to her own trauma and loss of motherhood with mass murder, by killing another mother's babies right in front of her, and we're all supposed to clap and cheer, instead of asking why these humans are there in the first place.
Seems like the only "its reactionary" justification is that the actor that played Newt was a white kid. That's... not very compelling.
The "cosmic horror" of it all...
The only person to come into contact with the Xenomorphs and survive is telling the universe that these are an existential threat and everybody else thinks 1) she's insane/traumatized and not thinking clearly 2) the military can easily handle any physical threat 3) the scientists/researchers can easily/safely study these creatures and 4) corporations can easily/safely exploit the Xenomorphs.
Then Ripley's proven correct.
There's no reasoning with the Xenomorphs, there's no attempt by the Xeno's to communicate in a peaceful way, the Xeno's make no attempt to avoid humans, the Xenomorphs view humans in the same way that humans view the rest of the universe as something to be used without consideration to the point of destruction. After the Xeno's face r#pe and chest burst out of every available creature possible... they don't go extinct, they don't develop into something with anything remotely close thoughts, they leave no words of wisdom about the error of over consumption... they go dormant and wait and wait and wait until the next unfortunate creature large enough to be face r#ped and chest bursted out of stumbles across it.
One of the key points in cosmic horror is often, human curiosity will always win out over humanity's sense of self preservation. Ripley knows that the correct answer is to "nuke them from orbit" because it will only be a matter of time before some unlucky human explorer, or colonist, or scientist, or miner or business exec will fuck around on a planet full of dormant Xeno eggs to kick off the who cycle again because they're thinking, "Nah... this time will be different. The leopards won't eat MY face! They've got to be pretty full from eating all those other people's faces, right?"
Sure, we can look at the Ripley/Newt vs Queen/Eggs as "two mothers defending their children/defenseless. We could also look at the Ripley/Queen dynamic as a dark reflection. Ripley wants to defend a human being who we can relate to and we assume is capable of intelligent thought, art, learning, whatever who is mirrored by the Xenomorph Queen who's children (as far as the Alien and Aliens movies show us, the audience) exist to aid the Queen for the sole purpose of consuming all life that can be bent to the purpose of mindlessly making more Xenomorphs.
Its terrifying because we can't understand any potential thoughts of the Xenomorphs. We don't know where they came from, if its possible for them to want more than mindless reproduction/consumption. They lack advanced technology but are completely able to turbo fuck any humans they come into contact with. The Xeno's were able to fuck up a ship full of space truckers in the Alien movie... but those weren't soldiers and the only crewmember expected to be capable of fighting back is a cyborg who's programmed to let the Xenos kill the crew "for science!" The Xeno's were able to turbo fuck a colony full of people so having more folks didn't help humans survive. Then the troops that were sent in knowing that there was a threat and prepared for fighting got fucked up even with all their fancy techno weaponry.
The Xeno's are less a "species" and more an inscrutable force of nature... at least until the later movies explain that they exist as bio-terminators (or the Predator comics/movies explain that the eggs are located and spread around for them to have something scary to hunt).
the little white girl comment was more of a humorous remark and not really the essence of my point
I just don't think the fact that something being scary and beyond our understanding is reason enough to eradicate an entire species without giving it careful thought. Wanting to kill what you don't understand is the heart of reactionary thinking.
Ultimately as a work of fiction the writer can come up with whatever justifications they want for why the aliens are bad and need to be mass murdered. Or why it's wrong to study and learn from them because only bad actors are doing it.
My view of cosmic horror as a reactionary genre stems from what aliens in a story represent - something foreign, something we don't understand and don't want to understand, the unknowable other. This tendency for fiction writers to portray aliens as inherently unworthy of life is a frightening reflection of how they view the world around them.
Okay, that's fair... bit of friendly fire on my part.
Counterpoint, enough was understood by the characters in the story to identify a threat. I can agree that its ... knee jerk reactionary like somebody punching a person who jumped out from around a corner... but I'm less inclined to shove it into the political reactionary box.
This feels like a good place to slap the "political reactionary" label for me. "Good guys need bad monsters to fight and overcome" makes for a pretty shallow story.
I think you're wrong there in the bolded part. Cosmic horror isn't about people not wanting to understand something that is understandable because its inconvenient, its about seeing something that cannot be understood because its so different from human thoughts/wants/needs/desires that there is no way to even try to start comprehending it without destroying a human's psyche.
I guess what bothers me the most is how completely uninterested the film is in exploring the moral complexity of eradicating an entire species, especially one who did not invade us and whose only known existence is 39 light years from Earth.
Burke's retort exists in the film solely to dismiss the anti-extermination viewpoint as ridiculous. In a vacuum his argument is compelling, but it's simply hand-waved away by having a bad guy be the one to say it. As such the film is utterly incurious about the implications of deciding what lifeforms deserve to live or die. Instead we get a message that's all-too morally simple and convenient: "of course something capable of killing a human deserves to die, how dare you suggest otherwise"
I don't know if cosmic horror as a whole is about not wanting to understand that which is foreign and scary, but Aliens sure is. I don't see how Xenomorphs are completely beyond our understanding, when the characters are unwilling to give the question a single thought. It sounds like a convenient excuse to justify your base instincts, to kill.