Every time I watch the 1986 action-horror classic “Aliens,” a film I’ve seen so many times I’ve lost count, it takes on new meaning. I’ve long argued its merits as a metaphor for a woman enduring sexism in the workplace, due to the many trials Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley faces over the three films.
In 1979’s “Alien,” Ripley’s an officer on the Nostromo who survives the infiltration of an alien that turns out to be quite the killing machine — it wipes out her entire crew — only by getting into an escape pod, setting the cargo ship she’s co-commanded to self-destruct and eventually blowing the intruder out of an airlock.
