(scenes in
red are only in the Special Edition)
After the opening credits, we see a spacecraft drifting slowly through space. Inside is Ripley (
Sigourney Weaver), the only survior from the previous film, having escaped in the shuttle of the cargo ship Nostromo, which she blew up after a aggressive and hostile Alien was responsible for killing her colleagues. Ripley is still in cryogenic sleep with Jones, the crew's pet cat, lying on top of her. A proximity alert goes off: the lifeboat is intercepted by a salvage vessel. The crew welds the door open and enters, to find that Ripley is still alive.
Gateway Station, a space facility orbiting Earth. Ripley regains consciousness in a hospital. A nurse tells her she is in a medical bay aboard Gateway Station. She is visited by Carter Burke (
Paul Reiser), a representative of Weyland-Yutani (the "Company" from the previous film, and Ripley's employer) who brings Jones the cat along. When Ripley states that she does not recognize the medical bay, Burke gives her some terrible news: she has been in hypersleep for 57 years, her ship having drifted aimlessly through space until the salvage vessel discovered it by very fortunate coincidence. Ripley shows clear distress and discomfort, when Jones starts hissing at her as she starts to convulse in the bed. Burke calls for medical attention, and the staff try to restrain Ripley. She pleads with them to kill her, before pulling her shirt up to reveal something pushing out of her stomach. All of a sudden, Ripley wakes up bolt-upright in the hospital bed, clutching her chest, revealing the scene to be a dream. A nurse on the monitor next to her bed asks her if she needs something to help her sleep, but Ripley declines. The nurse was the one featuring in her dream; the dream was a recollection from a real encounter with Burke, apart from the Alien bursting out.
Some time later, Ripley is sitting in an simulated environment waiting for Burke, who wants to prepare her for a board hearing. The Company has started a formal investigation into what happened with the Nostromo, and wants to question Ripley about her role in its destruction. But Ripley is only interested in news about her daughter. Burke hesitantly tells a devastated Ripley that her daughter (only a child when Ripley left with the Nostromo) has passed away from old age while she was drifting through space.During the inquiry, Ripley desperately tries to convince the board about the danger of the Alien and the potential threat of the Derelict Ship, which still contains hundreds of them. However, the board refuses to believe Ripley's testimony. Because she admits to having destroyed the Nostromo and evidence of the Alien creature is lacking, they treat her as if she is mentally unstable.
The board revokes her flight license and submits her to psychometric supervision. Ripley is shocked to learn that the
planetoid which her crew discovered, now known as LV-426,
has been colonized by terraformers, who are creating an atmosphere to make the air breathable.
Shortly thereafter, at the colony on LV-426, the colonists receive company orders to investigate an certain unsurveyed part of the surface. One of the surveyors, together with his wife, son and daughter (Carrie Henn), discovers the Derelict Ship (as seen in Alien). He and his wife go in to investigate, but after a very long while, the wife comes back and calls for help on the radio: her husband is lying on the ground with a creature attached to his face (a facehugger like the one that attacked Kane in Alien.)
Released on her own recognizance, Ripley takes a job on Gateway Station, running loaders and forklifts, work that is clearly beneath her. Some time passes and she
is visited by Burke, who is accompanied by Lt. Gorman
(
William Hope) of the colonial Marines. Burke tells Ripley that contact with the colony on LV-426 has suddenly been lost, and that the Company, fearing that Aliens are responsible for this, intends to send a squadron of Marines; they would like her to act as an advisor, as she has personal experience with this species.
Burke will come along, as the Company co-financed the colony. As incentive, Weyland-Yutani has agreed to
reinstate Ripley as a warrant officer if she goes. Ripley refuses, as she dreads going back to the place where she first encountered the Alien, and because she is still frustrated that nobody at the Company believed her earlier story. But as her nightmares continue, she feels that if she does not go on the mission, she will never regain her confidence. She calls Burke, and when he assures her that the mission to LV-426 is to eradicate the Aliens, not to study or capture them, she gives in. Jones will stay on the station.
A Marine ship, the
Sulaco, travels through deep space. Inside are colonial Marines led by Gorman, accompanied by Ripley and Burke. After awakening from hypersleep, seasoned veteran sergeant Apone (
Al Matthews) quickly takes command. Ripley discovers that she and the Alien threat are not taken seriously by the marines on the mission. One tough female marine named Vasquez (
Jeanette Goldstein) refers to Ripley as "Snow White", and the soldiers seem to regard her the same as their inexperienced ranking officer, Gorman. Ripley is also dismayed to learn that an android named Bishop (
Lance Henriksen) has accompanied them on the mission; she mistrusts androids ever since her encounter with Ash (from the previous movie), and she has an angry confrontation with Bishop when he tries to befriend her.
As the
Sulaco approaches LV-426, Ripley tries to explain the marines about the Aliens (named 'xenomorphs' by Gorman) during a mission brief, but they are still rather undisciplined and unimpressed by the possible threat the creatures pose. During weapons detail, Ripley gradually begins to impress the soldiers, offering to help them load their drop ship and displaying her expertise with the large power loader. Cpl. Hicks (
Michael Biehn) takes a special interest in Ripley, impressed with the strong personality she reveals.
Taking the drop ship from the
Sulaco to the planet, they fly over the colony, which is a gigantic man-made
structure.
One of the soldiers, private Hudson (Bill Paxton) is loudly boasting about his courage and the supreme firepower that they have at their disposal. Burke explains that the facility is an "atmosphere processor" designed to make planets suitable for human life. The ship lands and deploys an armoured personal carrier (APC) with the marines before taking off again. The marines exit the APC and enter the man colony complex. They sweep the building with motion trackers, but find the building deserted
,save for a few laboratory mice. Inside, the soldiers discover evidence of a battle, including several barricades and acid-burns on the ground, but conclude the building is safe for now.
Gorman, Burke and Ripley enter the building, but Ripley is visibly affected by bad memories. In the medical lab, they finally happen upon evidence of Ripley's story: in a series of stasis tubes, they find several "facehugger" organisms, the life stage of the Alien creature that attaches itself to the face of a host. Two of them appear to be still alive. Bishop finds a file describing an attempt to remove a facehugger from one of its victims, which resulted in the death of the victim. Ripley and the others make an even more startling discovery: a little girl, about eleven years old, who has survived the Alien assault on the colony. She runs away at the sight of the marines, but Ripley succeeds in winning her trust. Initially, the girl is non-communicative, seemingly in shock, but Ripley gets through to her and discovers that her name is Newt
(she is the daughter of the surveyor family, as seen in a scene at the beginning of the Special Edition). Newt tells Ripley that her parents and the others are dead, victims of the Aliens.
The cocky Pvt. Hudson tracks the colonists by using homing devices embedded in their skin, and discovers that the entire population seems to be crowded underneath the primary heat exchangers of the
facility. The team take the APC to the atmosphere processor, where Apone and the marines get out and Gorman remains to coordinate the sweep from a distance. Upon investigation, they discover strange organic structures that must have been secreted by Aliens. Ripley finds out that the marines are walking next to the colony nuclear reactor, and that their weapons could do serious damage to it. So Gorman orders them to hand in their high-caliber ammunition, but several marines secretly keep a few smart gun cartridges. As the team enters the basement, they find an Alien hive containing the dead bodies of the colonists, cocooned as hosts for the alien parasites. One colonist is still alive, but she starts to convulse upon awaking, and an infant Alien (a "chestburster") bursts its way out of her chest. The marines kill it with a flame thrower, but the sudden stir awakens the dormant adult Aliens, that are concealed inside the walls. They begin to surprise-attack the marines, quickly decimating their numbers. The marines start firing back, some with the forbidden ammo, but chaos and noise make it hard for them to focus on the danger. Gorman, who is unprepared for battle, begins to panic, and Ripley takes control, driving the soldiers' APC back into the nest to try and rescue the survivors. She recovers Vasquez, Hicks, and Hudson. Gorman is knocked unconcious as Aliens attempt to infiltrate the vehicle; Ripley drives the APC out of the facility, crushing an Alien along the way and driving straight through a closed metal door. This destroys the APC's driving axle, rendering the tank immobile.
The survivors discover that several of their missing colleagues are still displaying life signs on the monitor. Ripley assures them nothing can be done, as they are being coccooned like the rest. She suggests taking off and nuking the site from orbit, but Burke protests, as he is concerned about the dollar value of the facility. "They can bill me," Ripley replies. Cpl. Hicks, who is now in command, seconds Ripleys' motion, and they summon the dropship. However, an Alien that has slipped on board, kills the pilots in mid-flight, and the ship crashes.
Ripley and the others are stranded on the planet surface, with no means of returning to the
Sulaco, and Hudson is starting to annoy the group with his incessant desperations. Newt warns them that they should take cover because the Aliens mostly come out at night. They retreat back into the facility, where they survey their limited remaining weaponry.
Amongst this are two sentry guns, remote operated rifles that can automatically seek out targets. A rescue team can be expected no earlier than 17 days, so the survivors decide to fortify the barricades and seal off all possible access routes for the Aliens. The plan is quickly brought into action.
The sentry guns are placed at strategic locations where the Aliens are expected to try and enter the building. A test shows they function optimally.Hicks makes a friendly move to Ripley by giving her a small locator to wear on her body, so he can find her anywhere inside the complex. Ripley puts Newt to bed. Newt wonders about what happened to her mother, but Ripley can't give her the answer.
She tells Newt about her own daughter, who has also died. Ripley puts her locator on Newt, so she can always see where she is.
The group is discussing the Aliens, and their way of reproduction: humans are used as hosts for the facehuggers, which come from an egg; but who or what produces these eggs?
Hudson proposes a large, dominant female, a Queen, such as in an insect colony. Ripley orders Bishop to destroy the two remaining facehuggers, but he tells her he got orders from Burke to keep them alive. Ripley confronts Burke about it; Burke wants the specimens taken back to Earth because the weapon's industry will pay large amounts of money for them. He even tries to enlist her help in smuggling them past quarantine. Ripley refuses; moreover, she has checked the colony log and learned that Burke was responsible for sending the colonists to the Derelict Ship, after he learned about its existence from Ripley during her trial. Ripley blames Burke for not warning the colonists about the danger, but Burke calls it a simple error in judgement from his side. This enrages Ripley, and she angrily vows to expose Burke's treachery.
As Ripley exits the room, the alarm sounds: the Aliens have arrived at the first set of sentry guns inside the access tunnel. The guns kill many Aliens, but they quickly run out of ammo; the Aliens' numbers are vastly superior. Bishop calls in that there is another problem: The colony nuclear reactor has started venting air. They learn that damage to the structure has caused it to malfunction; the cooling units have failed and the
facility will explode in a huge nuclear explosion within hours. Damage from the crash has made it impossible to shut down the reactor. After another one of Hudson's cries of despair, Bishop offers to crawl through a small conduit which will lead to the uplink tower, which he can use to remote-pilot the
Sulaco's second dropship to the surface.
The second set of sentry guns empties its ammo into the hoard of Aliens, and it seems to repel them; but the creatures may have started looking for other ways in. Hicks promises Ripley he will not let her die by the Aliens. He then gives Ripley a brief course in how to use a pulse rifle, and their attraction to one another is obvious by now. On her way back to Newt, Ripley passes by Gorman, who has regained conciousness, and is clearly embarrassed by his earlier behavior. She proceeds to Newt and finds her curled up asleep, hiding underneath the bed. Instead of waking her, Ripley joins her underneath for a nap, laying her pulse rifle on the bed for safe keeping.
Meanwhile, Bishop has reached the uplink tower, and is preparing the other dropship for departure. Ripley wakes up to find two stasis tubes on the ground: the two facehuggers have escaped. They are locked inside the lab and the pulse rifle has been removed.
Ripley and Newt are attacked by the scurrying facehuggers, but Ripley manages to signal the others by triggering the fire alarm with her cigarette lighter. Hicks, Hudson, and Vasquez rescue them just as a facehugger attempts to attach itself to Ripley's face. Ripley knows it must be Burke who was acting in retaliation. Ripley suggests that Burke intended to 'impregnate' herself and Newt with the facehuggers, then murder the other Marines in their cryotubes as to remove the witnesses. He would emerge back at Earth as the only survivor, and smuggle the Aliens in the bodies of Ripley and Newt.
Burke denies his involvement in this, but the other marines are quickly convinced by Ripley's story. As they debate what they should do with Burke, the power to the facility is suddenly cut. Hicks has Vasquez and Hudson walk perimeter. They use the motion tracker to see that there is movement coming towards them. All pull back in the central operation room, but the signal keeps approaching, even beyond the barricades. They suddenly realize that they have blocked the direct access routes, but forgotten the less obvious ways in; Hicks opens a ceiling panel, and sees that the Aliens have simply circumvented the barricades by climbing through the crawlspace over the ceiling. As the remaining marines take on the Aliens, Burke slips away and prevents their escape by sealing the med lab door; however, he is killed by an Alien that has found a way inside the med lab. Newt finds an alternate escape through the air ducts. Hudson puts up a brave fight, but he is suprised by several Aliens coming up from the floor grid, who grab and haul him away. Once inside the vent, Vasquez is attacked by an Alien coming out of a vertical duct. She manages to shoot it with a handgun, but the spilling blood of the creature seriously wounds her leg. Gorman comes to help her, but they suddenly find themselves surrounded by Aliens. Gorman and Vasquez sacrifice themselves by triggering a grenade together, which decimates the pursuing Aliens, but the explosion causes Newt to fall through a ventilation shaft that leads to the bottom of the facility. Ripley and Hicks take the stairs to the basement. They find Newt below a grid, which they try to weld open but Newt is snatched by an Alien before they can rescue her. Ripley screams in desperation, but remains determined to rescue Newt; she knows the Aliens will not kill Newt, but will cocoon her to await a facehugger. She and Hicks take the elevator up, but an Alien jumps in before the doors close. Hicks kills the creature, but is severely wounded by the Alien's acidic blood. Ripley drags Hicks out through the complex main doors and they meet up on the surface with the rescue ship that Bishop has piloted on remote. Ripley, however, refuses to leave and demands that Bishop take her back to the atmosphere processor to rescue Newt.
Bishop flies the dropship into the atmosphere processor, which is now beginning to overload, and lands on a high platform. Ripley arms herself with a pulse rifle and a flame thrower, ignoring Bishop's warnings that the explosion is imminent.
She says goodbye to the wounded Hicks, who, as a sign of trust, tells her his name is Dwayne; Ripley tells him she is called Ellen. Ripley takes an elevator down, enters the basement and leaves signal flares on the ground as she infiltrates the Alien hive. She uses the locator signal to find Newt, but only finds the detached locator. She collapses to the floor, struck with grief, but hears Newt scream: the girl has been coccooned and is threatened by a facehugger hatching from an egg. Ripley kills the creature and several Aliens coming in, and frees the girl. While escaping with Newt, Ripley stumbles into an egg chamber that houses a monstrous alien, the Queen of the hive. Several warrior Aliens close in on them, but when Ripley threatens to destroy the eggs, the Queen orders them back non-verbally. As the facility begins to overheat and disintegrate, Ripley destroys the eggs and Aliens, severing the Queen from her huge egg-sac that is attached to its lower body.The Queen furiously pursues Ripley and Newt, who just make it back to the elevator. As they arrive on the platform, they find that the dropship has left already. While the surrounding complex is quickly exploding and collapsing, another elevator door opens, and the Queen comes out. Ripley intends to leap to their deaths rather than let the Queen kill them, but then the dropship comes hovering over the platform, and Ripley and Newt are narrowly able to get on safely and on time. The dropship carrying Ripley, Newt, Bishop and Hicks barely escapes as the processing facility explodes in a massive mushroom cloud.
Back on the
Sulaco, Bishop says he had to sedate Hicks for the pain. He explains that he had to take off from the platform, which became unstable, and had to circle in order to pick them up. Ripley makes peace with Bishop, thanking him for saving their lives. Suddenly, Bishop is speared from behind by a huge tail, and ripped in half at the waist by the Queen: she has stowed away by hiding inside a landing pod bay. She advances menacingly towards Ripley and Newt, and they scatter. Newt dives under the flooring, but the Queen starts ripping it up until she has the child cornered. Suddenly, Ripley appears, inside the large forklift powerloader. The exoskeleton-like machine makes her an even match for the giant Queen, and they clash. Ripley punches the Queen several times, grabs her and attempts to dump her into the ship's airlock, but the Queen quickly grabs hold of the powerloader, and Ripley gets dragged down into the air lock with her. Ripley manages to get out and climb up the ladder, as the Queen grabs her leg. She activates the controls, opening the outer lock door, causing air to get sucked out of the ship quickly, and the Queen as well. The Queen desperately tries to hold on to Ripley's leg, but she suddenly loses her grip and is screamingly shot out in deep space. Ripley somehow manages to pull herself up out of the air lock against the enormous air pressure, and closes the airlock. Newt comes up to her and hugs her, calling her "mommy". Bishop, now only an upper torso, congratulates her: "Not bad for a human" as Ripley and Newt hug.
The film ends as Ripley prepares Newt, Hicks, and what's left of Bishop for hypersleep for the journey back to Earth. She assures Newt she can sleep all the way, and that they both can dream. They are both in deep sleep as the credits start rolling.
