Blog Post #9-Film Structure

The most Hollywood movies follow the 3 act structure. The structure of the first act of the movie Aliens, directed by James Cameron,  revolves around the soldiers going to the terraforming colony to find what happened to the communications with the colonists and find survivors. The beginning of the movie develops with Ripley agreeing to be a consultant amongst the soldiers and their skepticism about her story. Plot point one occurs at about 45 min 45 seconds when they discover the survivor Newt.  This escalates the stakes because they now have a child to protect which leads to complication within the fabula. The question now is how the soldier are going to survive on the planet and how they are going to complete their mission.

The next act involves Burke attempting to make hosts of Ripley and Newt. After his betrayal, Corporal Hicks makes the decision along with Ripley to destroy the base to kill the aliens. After an alien boards their ship killing the pilot, the plant begins to go on meltdown. The next question is how they are going to avoid the nuclear explosion and get back to Earth. Plot point two occurs at about 1 hour 15 min.

The last act and climax occur as Ripley tries to save Newt from the Queen alien and get to the ship before the base explodes. The climax occurs at 2 hours 11 min when Ripley causes the Queen to be shot from the air duct and into space. There is the happy ending of peace when they go into hyper sleep and are now safe.