Ellen Ripley

Ellen Ripley is the primary protagonist of the Alien franchise. She is played by Sigourney Weaver. She is the first officer of the cargo ship Nostromo, when she first met the Alien and has a daughter on Earth.

"Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo, third officer reporting. The other members of the crew — Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash and Captain Dallas — are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off." - Ripley in Alien

Alien
In this movie she is the first officer of the cargo ship Nostromo on the way to Earth. The crew consists of seven members and they are transporting 20 million tons of mineral ore towards Earth and they are alll in hibernation, until they are woken up by Mother, who has detected a signal of unknown origin.

She goes with the rest of the crew to the planet that has the signal, because they are forced to according to their contracts. While half of them explore the origin of the signal, which leads them to discover the ship and the aliens, she stays inside the ship with the other half, analises the signal and detects, the signal is not an emergency, but a warning, but it is too late. When one of them has the alien from the crashed alien ship there, she intends not to let them go inside, because the quarantine laws rightfully demand it for the protection of the ship. Ash, the science officer refuses to follow that order and lets them in, which forces her to become suspicious about him since he should have known better as a science officer. When the alien begins to kill the crew one by one, she finally sees her suspicions confirmed by exposing through her own investigation about his activities, that Ash has been protecting the creature under the orders of the company, who wants to study it and that they knew all along about the signal and its real meaning and had used the ship as a basis for the study of the creature and intended to sacrifice the crew in their quest to bring it to Earth for further study. Ash tries to kill her for her discovery, but fails, because the others stop him. She activates him again to find out from him, if there is a way to stop it and when he says no, she deactivates him and tries to flee to the escape ship and prepare to self destruct the ship with the rest of the crew, but they are all killed by the alien except her. She still manages to self destruct the ship anyway and flee in the escape ship, where she has to battle the alien, that realised in time, what was going on and also went inside and barely manages to defeat it by throwing it out of space and stops his attempt of returning by activating the engines of the ship.

She then hibernates with her cat after recording what has happened in the hopes of being found later by other ships.

Aliens
Ellen has been sleeping for 57 years, while the ship has been drifting towards the core systems, until she is casually found and woken up. She is then in a space station on orbit of Earth recovering in an infirmary and has to deal with her actions regarding the events on the Nostromo. No one believes her story, while her daughter, that lived on Earth, died of old age. She loses her position as first officer as a result of the investigation and has to work as a cargo worker. In the meantime, the planet with the aliens now has a colony, whose job is to make it habitable, until the company loses contact with it. The company then recruits Ripley and a unit of Colonial Marines to deal with the Species should it have been destroyed by the Species. She agrees in order to have her former status back and to deal with the traumatic experience 57 years back and on the promise the aliens will be eradicated. On the planet they realize, they have taken over the colony there Only one girl has survived. Her name is Newt. Ripley develops maternal feelings for Newt. She comes to the realization she has to face with the marines dozens of aliens lead by their leader, the Alien Queen, who decimate the Marines and maintain them on the planet. She also has to face the company and it's representative Burke, who want to have some of those creatures like before and who are responsible for the disaster by sending the colonists to the ship without warning them in order to have these creatures without interference. Under Ripley's unofficial leadership they manage to defeat the creatures by destroying the place with a thermonuclear detonation after having managed to leave the planet with a reserve spaceship in time. Burke´s plan to get some of the creatures and sacrifice the others to cover up the events is thwarted by Ripley. The Alien Queen, however, survives by hiding under the spaceship and faces Ripley in a showdown on the marine main ship with no one being able to help her at that moment. She manages to defeat it by using a cargo robot and throw it out in space, save Newt, the android Bishop and the last of the marines, corporal Hicks. Then she makes sure everyone hibernates on the way home, her own demons about the first encounter with the species eradicated.

Alien³
The Alien Queen has been defeated, but she left an egg behind the ship of the Marines. It impregnates Ripley and causes the marine ship to crash on a deserted planet with a near abandoned prison, who only has a handful convicts that have been converted into a religion of one of their own. Before the parasite dies, he impregnates a dog. It hatches immediately and begins to kill everyone there. They have to stop it without guns or anything. An attempt fails and Ripley realizes in time, she has an alien embryo. A company ship in the meantime approaches, that knows about Ripley´s condition.Ripley and the leader of the prisoners hatch a last plan to stop the creature. They carry it out using the prisoners and themselves as bait. Nearly all of them sacrifice their lives to lure the alien into the factory there and to the corresponding pit, where they throw molten lead on it. It survives, but Ripley manages to throw cold water on it later. It explodes because of it. At this moment the company comes to convince Ripley to turn herself in in order to get the alien queen out of her body, so that she can continue to live and have a long life. She refuses and throws herself into the molten lead taking the alien queen with her.

As the place is closed and the only survivor is taken away, you hear the signal of the escape ship of the Nostromo coming in there, that Ripley sent 57 years before.

Alien: Resurrection
A clone of Ripley has been created with blood samples from the place, where she committed suicide. She is the eighth one. The others were imperfect and therefore disposed and placed in a storage room. She has the memories of Ripley a byproduct of still having a little alien blood in her body, which also gives her extra strength, speed, precision and aggressiveness. This was done to get the alien queen from her body and harness it for military and scientific purposes in a ship near Earth. Thirteen persons have been abducted to breed thirteen aliens in them, who then get out by sacrificing one of their own. They cause havoc across the ship and decimate the crew and its inhabitants. The clone must ally herself with the group of pirates, that brought the abducted to the ship and an android, who came to stop the experiment to leave the ship alive and stop the ship and the aliens before they arrive Earth. In the meantime it turns out, the Alien Queen also has human genes and creates a new alien with human genes from Ripley´s genes representing an even greater threat than the aliens, because he is far more intelligent. They also have to deal with it, too. It is also a race with the leader of the experiment becoming insane regarding his obsession with the aliens. He is stopped by the pirates, who didn´t know about this experiment. The alien-human hybrid alien is stopped by Ripley and the ship crashes on Earth obliterating the surviving aliens on the way.

It is hinted, that the clone of Ripley wants to stay on Earth and longs for a peaceful life after everything that happened. It is also hinted she has developed a friendship with the android.