Screenplay by James Cameron
Produced by Gale Anne Hurt
Directed by James Cameron
Cast
List:
Sigourney
Weaver Ripley
Carrie
Henn Newt
Michael
Biehn Cpl.
Hicks
Paul
Reiser Burke
Lance
Henriksen Bishop
Bill
Paxton Pvt.
Hudson
William
Hope Lt.
Gorman
SOMETIME IN THE FUTURE – SPACE
Silent and endless. The stars shine like the love of God... cold and
remote. Against them drifts a tiny chip of technology.
CLOSER SHOT
It is the NARCISSUS, lifeboat of the ill-fated star-freighter Nostromo. Without interior or
running lights it seems devoid of life. The PING of a RANGING RADAR grows louder, closer. A shadow engulfs the Narcissus. Searchlights
flash on, playing over the tiny ship, as a MASSIVE DARK HULL descends toward it.
INT. NARCISSUS
Dark and dormant as a crypt.
The searchlights stream in the dusty windows. Outside, massive metal forms can BE SEEN descending around the shuttle. Like the tolling of a bell, a BASSO
PROFUNDO CLANG reverberates through the
hull.
CLOSE ON THE AIRLOCK DOOR
Light
glares as a cutting torch bursts through the metal. Sparks shower into the
room.
A second
torch cuts through. They move with machine precision, cutting a rectangular
path, converging. The torches meet. Cut off. The door falls inward REVEALING a bizarre multi-armed figure. A ROBOT WELDER.
FIGURES ENTER, backlit
and ominous. THREE MEN in
bio-isolation suits, carrying lights and equipment. They approach a
sarcophagus-like HYPERSLEEP CAPSULE,
f.g.
LEADER
(filtered)
Internal
pressure positive. Assume nominal hull integrity. Hypersleep capsules, style
circa late twenties...
His gloved hand wipes at on
opaque layer of dust on the canopy.
ANGLE INSIDE CAPSULE
as light stabs in where the dust is wiped away, illuminating a WOMAN, her face in peaceful repose.
WARRANT OFFICER RIPLEY,
sole survivor of the Nostromo. Nestled next to her is JONES, the ship's wayward cat.
LEADER
(voice over; filtered)
Lights are
green. She's alive. Well, there goes out salvage, guys.
DISSOLVE TO:
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM – TIGHT ON
RIPLEY – GATEWAY STATION
She's lying in a bed, looking wan, as a female MED-TECH raises the backrest. She is
surrounded by arcane white MEDICAL EQUIPMENT. The Med-Tech exudes practiced cheeriness.
MED-TECH
Why don't I open
the viewport? Watch your eyes.
Harsh light floods in as a motorized shield slides into the ceiling, REVEALING a breathtaking vista. Beyond the
sprawling complex of modular habitats, collectively called GATEWAY STATION, is the curve of EARTH as seen from high orbit. Blue and
serene.
MED-TECH
And how are we
today?
RIPLEY
(weakly)
Terrible.
MED-TECH
Just terrible?
That's better than yesterday at least.
RIPLEY
How long have I
been on Gateway station?
MED-TECH
Just a couple of
days. Do you feel up to a visitor?
Ripley shrugs, not caring. The
door opens and a MAN enters, although Ripley sees only what he
is carrying. A familiar large, orange TOMCAT.
RIPLEY
Jones!
She grabs the cat like a life preserver.
RIPLEY
(cooing baby-cat talk)
Come here Jonesy
you ugly old moose... you ugly thing.
MAN
Nice room. I'm
Burke. Carter Burke. I work for the company, but other than that I'm an okay
guy. Glad to see you're feeling better. I'm told the weakness and
disorientation should pass soon. Side effects of the unusually long hypersleep,
or something like that.
RIPLEY
How long was I
out there? They won't tell me anything.
BURKE
(soothing)
Well, maybe you
shouldn't worry about that just yet.
Ripley grabs his arm, surprising him.
RIPLEY
How long?
Burke gazes at her, thoughtful.
BURKE
All right. My
instinct says you're strong enough to handle this... Fifty-seven years.
Ripley is stunned. She seems to deflate, her expression passing through
amazement and shock to realization of all she has lost. Friends. Family. Her
world.
RIPLEY
Fifty-seven...
oh, Christ...
BURKE
You'd drifted
right through the core systems. It's blind luck that deep-salvage team caught
you when they... are you all right?
Ripley coughs suddenly as if
choking and her expression becomes one of dawning horror. Burke hands her a
glass of water from the nightstand. She slaps it away. It shatters with a SMASH. Jones dives, yowling. Ripley grabs her chest, struggling as if she is
strangling. The Med-Tech hits a console button.
MED-TECH
(shouting)
Code Blue! 415.
Code Blue! 4-1-5!
Burke and the Med-Tech are holding Ripley's shoulders as she goes into
convulsions. A DOCTOR
and TWO
TECHS run in. Ripley's
back arches in agony.
RIPLEY
No... noooo!
Hold her... Get
me an airway, stat! And fifteen cc's of... Jesus!
AN EXPLOSION OF BLOOD
beneath the sheet covering her chest! Ripley stares at the SHAPE RISING
UNDER THE SHEET. Tearing itself out of
her.
HER POV
As the sheet rises. A GLIMPSE OF the CHITTERING HORROR... IT
SCREECHES.
TIGHT ON RIPLEY
Screaming, snapping up INTO FRAME. Alone in the darkened hospital room. She gasps for breath, clutching
pathetically at her chest. There is no demented horror rigging itself out of
her. Her eyes snap about wildly, slowly focusing on the reality of her safety.
Shuddering, bathed in sweat, she kneads her breastbone with the heel of her
hand and sobs.
A VIDEO MONITOR beside the bed snaps on. A MED-TECH's face.
Bad dreams
again? Do you want something to help you sleep?
RIPLEY
(faint)
No.. I've slept
enough.
The Med-Tech shrugs and
switches off. Touching a button on the nightstand she opens the viewport, REVEALING Gateway and the turquoise Earth. She hugs Jones to her and rocks with
him like a child, still shattered by the nightmare. Shivering. Sleep is far
off.
RIPLEY
We made it,
Jones. We made it.
CUT TO:
EXT. PARK
Sunlight streams in shafts
through a stand of poplars, beyond which a verdant meadow is VISIBLE.
EXTREME F.G. Jones
stalks toward a bird hopping among fallen leaves. He leaps. And smack into A
WALL.
RIPLEY
(voice over)
Dumbshit.
WIDER ANGLE
As Jones steps back confused
from the HIGH-RESOLUTION
ENVIRONMENTAL WALL SCREEN, a sort of
cinerama video-loop. Ripley sits on a bench in what we now SEE is an ATRIUM off the medical center, still somewhere in the bowels of Gateway
Station. Benches. Some unenthusiastic potted trees. The sterile corridors VISIBLE beyond glass doors b.g.
Burke ENTERS in his usual mode, casual haste.
BURKE
Sorry... I've
been running behind all morning.
Ripley seems healthier now, but still a bit brittle.
Have they
located my daughter yet?
BURKE
Well, I was
going to wait until after the inquest...
He opens his briefcase, removing a sheet of printer hard copy, including
a telestat photo.
RIPLEY
Is she... ?
BURKE
(scanning)
Amanda
Ripley-McClaren. Married name, I guess. Age: sixty-six... at time of death. Two years ago.
(looks at her)
I'm sorry.
Ripley studies the PHOTOGRAPH, stunned.
The face of a woman in her
mid-sixties. It could be anybody. She tries to reconcile the face with the
little girl she once knew.
RIPLEY
Amy.
BURKE
(reading)
Cancer. Hmmmm.
They still haven't licked that one. Cremated. Interred Parkside Repository,
Little Chute, Wisconsin. No children.
Ripley gazes off, into the pseudo-landscape, into the past.
RIPLEY
I promised her
I'd be home for her birthday. Her eleventh birthday. I sure missed that one.
(pause)
Well... she has
already learned to take my promises with a grain of salt. When it came to
flight schedules, anyway.
Burke nods, a simpatico presence.
RIPLEY
You always think
you can make it up to somebody... later, you know. But now I never can. I never
can.
Burke puts a reassuring hand
on her arm.
BURKE
(gently)
The hearing
convenes at 0930. You don't want to be late.
INT. CORRIDOR – GATEWAY
Elevator doors part and Ripley emerges, in mid-conversation with Burke. DOLLYING AHEAD OF
THEM as they move
rapidly down the corridor.
RIPLEY
You read my
deposition... it's complete and accurate.
BURKE
Look, I believe
you, but there are going to be some heavyweights in there. You got Feds, you
got interstellar commerce commission, you got colonial administration,
insurance company guys...
RIPLEY
I get the
picture.
BURKE
Just tell them
what happened. The important thing is to stay cool and unemotional.
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – ON
RIPLEY – GATEWAY
She's not cool. Not unemotional.
RIPLEY
Do you people
have earwax, of what? We have been here three hours. How many different ways do
you want me to tell the same story?
She faces the EIGHT MEMBERS of the board of inquiry at a long conference table. Gray suits and grim
faces. They aren't buying. Behind Ripley on a large VIDEO SCREEN, PARKER grins like a goon from his
personnel mugshot. His file prints out next to it. BRETT's face and dossier replace it, and then the
others as the SCENE continues...
KANE, LAMBERT, ASH the android traitor, DALLAS. VAN LEUWEN, the ICC representative, steeples
his fingers and frowns.
VAN LEUWEN
Look at it from
our perspective. You freely admit to detonating the engines of, and thereby
destroying, an M-Class star-freighter. A rather expensive piece of hardware...
INSURANCE
INVESTIGATOR
(dryly)
Forty-two
million in adjusted dollars. That's minus payload, of course.
VAN LEUWEN
The shuttle's
flight recorder corroborates some elements of your account. That the Nostromo
set down on LV-426, an unsurveyed planet, at that time. That repairs were made.
That it resumed its course and was subsequently set for self-destruct. By you.
For reasons unknown.
RIPLEY
Look, I told
you...
VAN LEUWEN
It did not,
however, contain any entries concerning the hostile life form you allegedly
picked up.
Ripley sense the noose tightening.
RIPLEY
Then somebody's
gotten to it... doctored the
recorder. Who had access to it?
The ECA (Extrasolar Colonization Administration) Representative (ECA
REP) just shakes his head.
ECA REP
Would you just
listen to yourself for one minute.
Ripley glares at the ECA Rep, a woman on the ungenerous side of fifty.
Van Leuwen sighs with exasperation.
VAN LEUWEN
The analysis
team which went over your shuttle centimeter by centimeter found no physical
evidence of the creature you describe...
RIPLEY
(losing it)
That's because I
blew it out the Goddamn airlock!
(pause)
Like I said.
INSURANCE MAN
(to ECA Rep)
Are there any
species like this 'hostile organism' on LV-426?
ECA REP
No. It's a rock.
No indigenous life larger than a simple virus.
Ripley grits her teeth in frustration.
RIPLEY
I told you, it
wasn't indigenous. There was an alien spacecraft there. A derelict ship. We
homed on its beacon...
ECA REP
To be perfectly
frank, we've surveyed over three hundred worlds and no one's ever reported a
creature which, using your words...
(read from Ripley's statement)
... 'gestates in
a living human host' and has 'concentrated molecular acid for blood.'
Look, I can see
where this is going. But I'm telling you those things exist. Back on that
planetoid is an alien ship and on that ship are thousands of eggs. Thousands.
Do you understand? I suggest you find it, using the flight recorder's data.
Find it and deal with it – before one of your survey teams comes back with a
little surprise...
VAN LEUWEN
Thank you,
Officer Ripley. That will be...
RIPLEY
(louder, stepping on him)
... because just
one of those things managed to kill my entire crew, within twelve hours of
hatching...
Van Leuwen stands, out of patience.
VAN LEUWEN
Thank you, that
will be all.
Ripley stares him down, glowering at the board.
RIPLEY
That's not all,
Goddamnit! If those things get back here, that will be all. Then you can just
kiss it good-bye, Jack! Just kiss it goodbye.
CUT TO:
INT. CORRIDOR
Ripley kicks the wall next to Burke who is getting coffee and donuts at
a vending machine.
BURKE
You had them
eating out of your hand, kiddo.
RIPLEY
They had their
minds made up before I even went in there. They think I'm a head case.
BURKE
(cheerfully)
You are a head
case. Have a donut.
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM – TIGHT
ON RIPLEY – LATER
Van Leuwen clears his throat.
VAN LEUWEN
It is the
finding of this board of inquiry that Warrent Officer Ellen Ripley, NOC-14672.
has acted with questionable judgment and is unfit to hold an ICC license as a
commercial flight officer.
Burke watches Ripley taking it on the chin, white-lipped but subdued.
VAN LEUWEN
Said license is hereby suspended indefinitely. No criminal charges will be filed at this time and you are released on own recognizance for a six month pe