Before she wielded high-powered assault rifles and flamethrowers like Arnold, and became the most iconic heroine in outer space, Ripley was a man. Early drafts of the Alien script—when the movie was called Star Beast—featured Ripley as your typical male action hero. Ridley Scott changed all that by giving Ripley a sex change and re-writing Alien so that it would not only be one of the most frightening horror movies of all time but also a critique on structured sexism and the monstrous nature of male inhibitions.<br /><br />Scott's clever gender reversal has Ripley start off the movie as if she were a supporting character in a man's world, performing secretarial duties on the spaceship Nostromo before, to our surprise, becoming the movie's hero.<br /><br />There's phallic and reproductive imagery galore in the movie but most telling are the sexualized attack's on Ripley, first from the cyborg Ash who tries to stuff a rolled up magazine down her throat and then the alien, which sneaks up on her when undressed and tries to thrust that erect tongue in her.
