Aliens

Ripley has been drifting in hypersleep for fifty-seven years when a salvage team recovers her escape pod. Back on Earth, the Company strips her flight license and dismisses her account of the xenomorph as fantasy. A representative named Burke eventually brings news: LV-426, the moon where the Nostromo crew encountered the alien, has since been colonized. The colony has gone silent. Burke asks Ripley to accompany a squad of Colonial Marines as a consultant. She agrees on the condition that they destroy whatever they find.

The marines arrive to find the colony abandoned except for one survivor: a child named Newt, who has kept herself alive by hiding in the air ducts for weeks. The colonists have been cocooned and used as hosts throughout the processing station, which the xenomorphs have turned into a hive. The marines move in and walk into an ambush — in an environment where weapons discharge could trigger a reactor meltdown, they are nearly helpless. Most of the squad is killed within minutes.

Ripley drives an APC through the wall to pull out the survivors. Hicks is left in command. The android Bishop calculates that the reactor will detonate within hours, making the colony uninhabitable. The only option is an emergency drop ship. Burke is revealed to have locked Ripley and Newt in a room with facehuggers, hoping to smuggle specimens back to Earth through them as hosts. The others rescue them. Burke flees into the corridors and is killed by the aliens.

Hicks is badly wounded. The drop ship is destroyed by an alien that stowed away aboard. They make their way to the hive to reach the queen. Ripley burns the eggs. The queen tears free of her ovipositor and pursues them to the landing pad. Bishop retrieves them in the emergency ship. They reach the Sulaco — but the queen has stowed away in the landing gear. She tears Bishop in half.

Ripley climbs into an industrial power loader and meets the queen on the cargo deck. One of horror's most elemental confrontations — a mother protecting a child, against a mother whose children were just incinerated. Ripley opens the airlock and the queen is gone. They seal themselves in hypersleep. The stars are quiet.