Memories

What most people remember about James Cameron’s “Aliens” from 1986, is likely Ellen Ripley and the United States Colonial Marines hunting aliens and in the end, being hunted themselves.

Ellen Ripley and the United States Colonial Marines (still from “Aliens” (1986))

And of course; Ripley battling it out in the end with the alien queen mother while commandeering a Power Loader. Now that’s a scene hard to forget.

Ellen Ripley commandeering a Power Loader (still from “Aliens” (1986))

When people refer to sci-fi movies, they are often using Aliens as a benchmark. The movie is “pure sci-fi” — monsters in space, spaceships, and travel to other planets. Aliens is also often mentioned as being a badass sci-fi action movie, which it is, no question. But beneath all the sci-fi and the action is a story about a mother trying to come to terms with her grief of losing her only child.

I was even surprised myself when I recently rewatched the movie for the first time in 10 years. I had completely forgotten how the story starts. The entire first act of the movie centers around Ripley waking from hypersleep on a way station. We are then taken through her struggles with the bureaucracy surrounding her role in the killing of the alien from the first movie. It’s not until 25+ minutes into the movie that the action parts start.

Not many comics or video games are based on this first act of the Aliens’ story arc. But I will dare to claim that fundamentals laid in the first act of the story, is one of the reasons why the movie had stood the test of time as well as it has.

It is in the first act the key pillars of the Aliens storyline is built. Without them, the story would most likely have felt flat and for most viewers, disinteresting.

To dwell further into the masterful storytelling of Aliens, we have to look a bit closer at what story structure is. We’ll look further into the storytelling elements that “The Hero’s Journey” consists of.

What is “The Hero’s Journey”?

“The Hero’s Journey”, or Monomyth as it’s sometimes referred to, is a term coined by mythological historian professor Joseph Campbell. In his seminal book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” from 1949, Campbell examined the many myths found in tribes and religious groups around the world that they used as their cultural and narrative backbone.

Campbell’s work emphasizes that all these stories and myths are, at their fundamental core, simple variations on the same story. It’s the story of a hero that goes on a journey to a “special world” to solve some peril that has fallen upon himself or his tribe. The hero then returns to his “ordinary world” with the elixir to heal the tribe or having slain the monster treating the tribe.

George Lucas was one of the first filmmakers to publicly claim that he based much of his storytelling on the works of Campbell. Lucas’ use of the Monomyth catapulted the theory into the public sphere. Now, many filmmakers, writers and storytellers alike count The Hero’s Journey as one of the core elements in their storytelling tool belt.

Why is structure so important to a story?

Like music, movies almost always follow some kind of rhythm or harmony. I’m no musician but I can — as almost everyone can — clearly hear if a piece of music is out of tune.

Creativity — music, storytelling, paintings — has to follow some form of structure. There has to be a plan to the madness. If not, it’s everything reverts to the basic form, noise. It’s exactly the same with movies. Movies that don’t follow a structure often feels rushed in places or flat and boring or hard to follow.

And Campbell’s support exactly this; that The Hero’s Journey is the structure of all mass cultural modern stories. It’s the structure that we as the audience know and understand. Even though we might still be surprised by the story itself, the structure is known. We understand the rhythm and harmony of the structure. This gives us a calm feeling deep down when we presented with stories that follow this structure.

George Lucas and James Cameron are both masters of the Monomyth structure. They have proved that time and again. They know how to use the structure to provide scaffolding and pacing for their stories. That is the reason why their movies resonate so well with so many people. It’s new and exciting, and at the same time told in a way we instantly recognize and understand.

Metaphorically speaking, we are tapping our feet to the rhythm of the movie even though we have never seen it before. It’s a guttural feeling. Deeply ingrained in our storytelling culture, through thousands of years of storytelling tradition.

The 12 steps of “The Hero’s Journey” (Source: “Memo from the Story Dept. — Secrets of Structure and Character” by Christopher Vogler & David McKenna — p. 35)

From the above diagram, we can see that there are 12 distinct story beats or sequences to a story that follows The Hero’s Journey. You don’t have to have all structure beats in your story. Just like you don’t have to have all instruments in your music piece. What you do have to have, is a baseline for your story. Just like the drums or bass creates, well, the baseline of a piece of music. Without the baseline, the story becomes messy and confusing. We understand the scenes individually but we struggle to see where the story is heading or why different plots are presented to us.

Even though the structure is a scaffold, it is not, as many claims, the reason why stories sometimes feel formulaic or a “paint by numbers” story. That is due to boring characters or an unimaginative overall story. Applying a solid structure to your narrative does not help with that.

Refusal of the Call

When most people give a summary of Aliens it is something along these lines: It’s about mankind’s folly and inability to learn from past mistakes. While this is true — that is what Aliens is about. But beneath this main story is a very strong story about a mother seeking atonement for not keeping her promise to her daughter.

If we look at the storyline of Aliens through the lens of The Monomyth you can clearly see that Cameron used this as a backbone for his story.

One of the most powerful structure beats is the “Refusal of the call” (shown in the diagram above). And it is this structure beat that Cameron utilized so masterfully in Aliens.

This beat usually happens after we’ve spent some time on establishing the world of the story — the “ordinary world”. The main character of the story is presented with a “Call to Adventure”. Something has happened and the main character has to take action. The situation in the ordinary world as we know it is no longer sustainable and it is the hero’s job to fix it. The main character has to refuse this Call to Adventure. Why should they risk everything to fix the problem? There has to be someone else, someone more capable of solving this.

Just like Luke at first refuses the call to adventure from Obi-Wan, because he already planned on going to the Imperial Academy. Like Indiana Jones refuses the call from the government to help find the covenant. And Alan Grant from Jurassic Park refuses the call to adventure from John Hammond to help build Jurassic Park.

It’s such a powerful storytelling element because it’s something that everyone can relate to. It’s the “You know what you have, but you don’t know what you are going to get” element.

Adventure comes knocking on the door — literally

In Aliens, the Call to Adventure happens after we’ve seen that Ripley is heartbroken over the loss of her daughter. The daughter died as an elderly woman while Ripley was floating through space in hypersleep.

Page 6 of the final screenplay

The scene is shorted a great deal in the final edit of the movie. Even worse, the first theatrical release of the movie the scene was entirely cut out — which is quite baffling as it is one of the key points of the story. This was thankfully corrected in later releases, even though the somewhat on the nose remark about “take my promises with a grain of salt” never made it back into the movie.

But, on page 6, and about at the 9-minute mark in the movie, we learn about Ripley’s daughter and we clearly see that this breaks Ripley. Something that at the time in the story might just be added to give depth to the Ripley character. We later learn this is a vital part of the story.

That Ripley even had a daughter, is something Cameron added to the Alien universe. It’s was never mentioned in Alien.

Grounded

Ripley is down on her luck. She doesn’t fit into this new world she has awoken into. A lot of time has passed, and many things have changed. But Weyland-Yutani, the corporation that owned the spaceship that Ripley blew up in Alien, is investigating her role in the loss of the ship.

In the end, they decided to not hold her directly responsible for the destruction of the ship, but as a last-minute blow, they ground her as a pilot. This basically renders her unemployed.

So, when Burke comes knocking on Ripley’s door to enlist her help in a new incident with a Xenomorph, she not one to jump on the opportunity, to say the least.

This in on page 11 of the treatment. Note that Burke was not a character at the time, instead, it was Dr. O’Niel and Lt. Gorman knocking on Ripley’s door.

Cameron had this structured very early on in the writing process. Even in the very first drafts of the story, the setup is there. You can find it in the 40+ pages treatment that Cameron wrote together with David Giler and Walter Hill in 1983 (You can download the treatment here). It’s interesting to watch how Cameron worked with the story and the structure in the early versions.

The treatment is dated September 1983 and the final version of the screenplay is dated September 1985. So we can assume that Cameron worked on the story on and off for at least two whole years.

In the final screenplay, they opted to tone down the “Fuck off” remark to simply having Ripley slam the door in Burke’s face.

Ripley clearly says “No!” to Burke. She’s refusing his Call to Adventure.

The scene happens at the 21:30 mark in the movie and goes on for a couple of minutes. Ripley is very adamant about refusing the Call to Adventure. Burke, on the other hand, keeps putting her down for not being able to find any better jobs than working the cargo docks. He’s saying to her; you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. But still, she refuses.

Ripley repeats again and again that the answer is “No!”. She is not going on another mission with a Xenomorph.

Alas, Ripley cannot escape her inner demons. Haunted by vivid nightmares and a nagging feeling that she indeed has nothing to lose, she calls Burke back in the dead of night.

Ripley reluctantly accepts the Call to Adventure to go on another mission.

She’s in. She has accepted the Call to Adventure.

Watch the entire scene from the director’s cut of the movie, and observe all the little nuances and minute details laid into the scene. There so much not being said.