In numerous movies about monsters, zombies, aliens, or just some psychopaths, there is always someone more powerful and more authoritative resulting most of these catastrophes. Apparently, the whole Aliens series is not only about some monstrous creatures randomly killing human beings. Although aliens keep slaughtering and eating people in front of the screen, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, which is often referred as the Company, appears to be the biggest monster throughout the whole series.
In Alien 2, the story began with the Company questioning the main character Ripley for the reason about crashing a spacecraft in Alien 1. The whole group except Ripley was killed by the alien but the only thing the executives mentioned was the cost of that spacecraft. It is really expensive, so the investigation is necessary, but not for the unreasonable death of their staff. What’s more, they even sent 70 families to the planet in order to expand the land and colonize a new world where aliens were discovered. According to the Company, it’s just a “’shake and bake’ colony.” Although Ripley had presented quite a lot of evidence of the existence of the alien creature, the Company still refused to believe that because they had already spent quite a lot of money for colonization.
Carter Burke, an executive of the Company, shows up in the movie as the representative of the capitalism and corporate profiteer. Apparently, he does not care any human life except himself. After several people died of the attack from the aliens, he insists that they cannot blow the planet off to keep themselves and human population safe because he wants the aliens alive. He tries to bring alive aliens back to the earth by any mean regardless of the danger he is putting the crew and the whole human population in. He even tries to plant aliens into Ripley and a little girl in order to carry the creatures back to the earth without being noticed. All of these behaviors are for one reason: the potential benefits behind the aliens. In other words, Burke believes that the Company can make money by developing bioweapons based on aliens.
It is still and always about money. Not about life, not about human species, not about the safety of Earth, but it is the benefits and profits in every opportunity.
In my opinion, the Company in Alien 2 is kind of similar to the Virginia Company. They are both in the expansion of colonization. Their goals are always making money, and making much more money. They don’t care much about people’s life. They have conflicts with the natives on that land (aliens and American natives), see the profits behind these monstrous groups, but still describe the natives/aliens as monsters. In the Alien case, it is true that the aliens are monsters, from a human’s perspective. However, the Company is even eviler and crueler without any humanity.
Once in the movie, the little girl asked Ripley why her mother told her that there was no real monster in the world, while there actually were. And Ripley said that because most of the time they were telling the truth.
Such setting is somewhat tricky to me. It makes sense to assume that Ripley and the little girl were just talking about the aliens. However, what if the meaning behind Ripley’s words was a bit deeper? What if she was actually talking about the Company? There would not be any monster, in this case, the alien, in the whole series if the company just hadn’t sent the crew to retrieve the aliens in Alien 1. The aliens in Alien 2 would not obtain hundreds of human to procreate if the Company hadn’t sent the colonists to the planet. Ripley and her crew would not be in danger again if the Company valued human life more than the potential benefit of the aliens. They would not have met the monsters if the Company was not one. Most of the time people are okay to believe that there is no monster in the world, because in the reality, there is indeed no real monster. However, companies and people like Weyland-Yutani Corporation in the Alien series, remain to be a huge question mark in our society. What if some people just create monsters or just become ones for money?
I enjoyed this post and its similarities to my post about the Onceler. From our childhood books to our R rated movies, the message is always money. Carter Burke embodies the qualities Lee Raymond of ExxonMobil would have looked for in his replacement as CEO. The company creates a religion around itself, and they worship the dollar as an idol. This culture pushes anyone who would possibly question their motives out of the decision making process. These people have been bred for 40 years to think a very specific way before they have any power at all. This leads to a person who physically can’t think for themselves, and essentially we are stuck with a company that is a monstrous non-entity. Nobody is the monster, but the monster is in everybody. Carter Burke has clearly been born and bred for a single mission, to make money. The people who sent him hand-picked him for his sociopathic qualities, and those people were chosen by people just like Lee ‘Iron Ass’ Raymond. No one in Carter Burke’s position could have possibly done anything differently because then they wouldn’t be in Carter Burke’s position. The big question becomes, how does our race defeat our greatest enemy, our worst disease? Something that doesn’t even exist except to trade goods for other goods! We just made it up, and we will perish due to our own creation. So I guess we can’t blame the system since it’s our system. But we can learn to try something different.
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