The success ofRidley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror hitAlienwould inevitably lead to demand for a sequel. When it came time to make that movie,20th Century Fox must have seenJames Cameronas a safe bet, since years earlier, Cameron had his own share of breakout success with his sci-fi thriller,The Terminator. With Cameron in place to write and direct what would eventually becomeAliens,he took what was a relatively simple sci-fi premise and took it into new areas.
Cameron set that sequel decades afterSigourney Weaver’s Ripley first encountered axenomorph, as she accompanies a group of Marines to check in on a community of colonizers on the planet of LV-426, who have vanished without a trace. As the Marines descend upon the planet, this super-macho collection of dudes (including the sole female Marine, Chavez,who is arguably tougher than her male companions), they’re all quite rah-rah about their impending “bug-hunting” mission. Amidst that set-up,Cameron made an interesting and unconventional decision by having them find a terrified young girl named “Newt,”played by Carrie Henn, who had been surviving alone on the planet after everyone else vanished.
How Does Newt Fit Into the Story, and Why Is She Important?
Some fans may have been put off by the decision to include the young Newt in the story, but her role is pivotal as the only visibly surviving Colonist the soldiers encounter after landing on LV-426. It’s relatively common in filmmaking these days for kids to be brought into movies as protagonists to make franchises more appealing and relatable to younger audiences. (Case in point: the recentGhostbusters: Afterlife.) That was never the case withAliens,since that was always meant as a straight-up R-rated movie with the language and gore to match.Clearly, Newt was introduced for three very specific reasons, the first of which was to bring a more innocent point of view into this dangerous world, to raise the stakes by having this innocent put in danger; and, most importantly, to bring further dimension to the Ripley character than we were able to see inAlien.
In fact, in a 2001 interview with journalistRandy Loffiicer, Cameron and producer (and then-wife)Gale Ann Hurdwere asked about replacing Jonesey the Cat fromAlienwith Newt. Cameron couldn’t remember how it was decided to include Newt in the story, but Hurd gave a far more conclusive response: “I think it’s important to have an emotional center to the film, hopefully to raise it above the mere level of action, science fiction, horror types of films that don’t seem to convey that dramatics are as important as anything else.”
After ‘Aliens,’ Newt Was Effectively Erased From the Franchise
In one particularly memorable visual moment inAliens,Newt is separated from Ripley,as the girl falls into the waterway under a steel grate. As Ripley tries to reach Newt, a menacing xenomorph gradually appears out of the water behind the scared little girl. It’s an iconic moment that shows how putting Newt in danger from these creatures creates far more tension than when they face heavily armed soldiers.Newt is taken, and Ripley puts her own life in danger to save her,leading to the final conflict between Ripley and the Mother of All Xenomorphs—the Queen Xenomorph—who we first encounter as she’s laying hundreds of eggs. In that sense,Cameron doubles down on the sequel’s themes of motherhood,makingAliensthe perfect movie to watch on Mother’s Day with your own mom.
Unlike Weaver’s Ripley, who appeared in two more movies before exiting the franchise after 1997’sAlien Resurrection,Newt would never appear in another Alien movie, and Henn would retire from actingto become a schoolteacher. There have been plenty of opportunities to bring the character back, andDistrict 9creatorNeill Blomkampcertainly had intentions of doing just that. For whatever reason, Newt has become toAlienswhatRobin the Boy Wonderhas become to the Batman film franchise. Notoriously, few filmmakers have wanted to include that important character from the comics and television show in their vision after the disaster that was 1997’sBatman and Robin. If not forAliensbeing re-released many times over the past four decades, Newt would have fallen into a similar level of obscurity.
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“Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Even with that in mind, Cameron must have felt this storytelling decision worked in the way it was intended. Five years later, when he tackled the sequelTerminator 2: Judgment Day, he added a kid to that story in the form ofEdward Furlong. InAvatar: The Way of Water,the filmmaker more than doubled down by introducing almost a half a dozen kids to the cast of his previous Oscar-winning blockbuster,Avatar.AlthoughNewt may have been the original basis for Cameron to bring a younger generation into his storytelling,she still plays a key role in bringing anyone watchingAliensinto this conflict between Marines and aliens in a way that still connects with viewers almost four decades later.
