10 Ridiculously Good Decisions Which Saved Your Favourite Movies

10. Alien - Making Ripley The Unexpected Female Lead

The protagonists of films are classically men. Hollywood sees them as tougher for action films, more capable for thriller films, even as the world moves away from such ideas. Women, especially in the past, were portrayed as helpless and in need of saving, their doubts and criticisms only meant to harden the male characters resolve. The exception to this genre is horror; Scream, Halloween, I know what you did last summer and dozens of others all have female protagonists and it is thanks to alien.

Ridley Scott wrote the film with no genders assigned to each character (notice how they are usually called by surnames in the film) it was known that Ripley would be the sole survivor but not that she would be female. Even modern audiences from our more egalitarian society would assume that captain Dallas or more physically imposing Parker would be the ones to survive. Ripley seems to just clash with the others as the "bitchy" female character, surely only to create doubts in our male heroes minds before they save the day.

This is done so masterfully that your assumptions are turned completely on their head; Ripley's attitude is completely vindicated and her intelligence enablers her to be the sole survivor. She spends the entire film telling us the truth but we fail to see it until it is too late. It makes an already surprising film that much better and spawn its own horror genre trope in its wake.