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Well imho, you can see hints of these themes.

Feminisim
Starting with feminism, Ripley, as others allready mentioned, had to struggle hard. Be it against chauvinist male characters, or of course the Xenomorphs and she stands her ground! The Movies show us in a beautiful way a strong female lead and not the sorry ones we see today in some flicks. Don't get me wrong, I don't give a rats ass about the gender/race/whatsoever of an acting person, I'm only interessted in good acting and a good story.

Marxism
Here I would disagree. You can see hints of Critique against Military in Aliens, or capaitalism with Wayland Yutani willing sacrificing lives (even of a whole Colony) for the sake of profit. But it doesn't promote an alternative form of economics/society like socialism.

According to J. W. Rinzler's recent book, Dan O'Bannon imagined the character that would become Ripley as male, but specifically wrote the script with last names only and called out the opportunity to cast anyone in any role. Hill and Giler's rewrites resolved her to be a woman and the feminist angle became an important part of Fox's vision for the film (to the point that Ridley Scott was almost removed as director when he suggested, at the last minute, a new ending in which Ripley dies). I can't remember if their enthusiasm was based on the script or Weaver's performance once she was cast, but S. M. is correct that she was a woman before pre-production.

While I would second Sathyr on there being themes but not messages, I also think it's a semantic point. The concepts of gender and greed are inextricably linked with the franchise, but whether you as a GM incorporate them more as clear morals or just background elements is your choice.

How is corporate power described in the Alien movies?

How is corporate power described in the Alien movies?

Well I would say that the movies don't go into detail here. We can say for sure that WY has hughe resources plus the the seem to have good conections to at least one of the human governments.

Aliens, Aliens and Alien 3 show corporate power as rampant and relatively unchecked.  The vast distances involved mean the Company can do what they like, then wear any consequences later.  There are laws, but they don't have any hang ups about trying to break them, especially when there's no one around to enforce them.

As Corporal Hicks mentioned above though, there's no real alternative presented.  Marxism was present in Gibson's Alien 3 script, but they pull the same crap that the Company does.  The USM seems more authoritarian.

First, a quote from the Wikipedia article about the Alien franchise: ”Throughout the series, an ensemble of characters are repeatedly manipulated by and put in harm's way by the greedy, unscrupulous, megacorporation Weyland-Yutani Corp which seeks to capture the Aliens for bio-weaponization purposes.”

And then, read the Wikipedia article about megacorporations, a term popularized by William Gibson who wrote Neuromancer, the most famous cyberpunk novel: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacorporation

The Alien franchise is a part of, or at least closely related to, the cyberpunk genre. As you probably know, Ridley Scott directed Bladerunner just a couple of years after he directed the original Alien movie. Those two movies are not the same, but they are both about megacorporations. Just the term and trope is profoundly political. It’s about economical power relations, which is the core of the Marxist understanding of the world. Gibson has also mentioned his own creative connection to the Reaganomics of the early 1980s. That is what made him write Neuromancer and it’s sequels. Scott and Gibson are usually mentioned as the two most prolific creators of the cyberpunk genre, although many others have contributed to the genre too. Philip K. Dick is one of them.

Alien isn’t just a simple minded story about spaceships and xenomorphs. It’s a political franchise, even if you don’t get any explicit political messages or subversive instructions. If you don’t get that capitalism and it’s worst aspects, in a more or less satirical way, is a part of Alien, I rest my case.

The reason why I initiated this discussion in the first place, is conceptual. By understanding the genre conventions, it’s easier to create new stuff. The framework gives you something to think and work with. The cyberpunk genre and it’s tropes and themes can be seen as creative tools, something to use, bend, and twist. If you don’t see or know the genre specific tools, you can’t use them.

That’s also why I think that the Alien RPG should conceptualize corporate power more. I’m not aiming for some kind of Marxist or leftist propaganda, I’m rather trying to be true to the films, the cyberpunk in space genre and it’s core themes. I would say that both Peter Weyland and Eldon Tyrell are corporate ”puppet masters”, caricatures of corporate tycoons or dystopian robber barons. By understanding what they are doing, you at least get glimpses of the bigger picture. That bigger picture is about corporate power (and it’s encounter with alien life). The space truckers are in trouble for a reason: they are in the lower end of the corporate food chain.

There's a book called Alien Woman by Ximenda Gallardo and Jason Smith that looks at the themes of each film, and in particular examines the gender politics. I read it years ago after finding it in a charity shop, might be worth a look.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/alien-wom ... 826419101/

I agree that there's some Marxist themes in some way. The company treats people as resources to be expended. Burke is middle class management, who throws the workers to the wolves but gets eaten in turn.

I guess it's about the fear of corporate greed and ambition, and how it like space itself makes individual people seem small and insignificant.

Weirdly though the book I linked would argue that Aliens is sort of a Pro-Reagan 80s politics movie. On one hand yeah the soldiers get treated like shit, on the other hand they're definitely the good guys versus a monstrous hive (communist) opponent, and by the end the mother has picked up a firearm to defend her nuclear family unit of surrogate child and husband, as well as the American way of life.

I can't remember it all because I think it was like a decade ago but, this post jogged my memory

Alien isn’t just a simple minded story about spaceships and xenomorphs. It’s a political franchise, even if you don’t get any explicit  political messages or subversive instructions. If you don’t get that capitalism and it’s worst aspects, in a more or less satirical way, is a part of Alien, I rest my case.

Alien does indeed feature rampant capitalism and have a company as arguably a co-antagonist. But it doesn't have any Marxist themes. Marxism is a political and economic theory that eventually lead to communism. 

You can easily view the movies as critical of out of control corporations, something I think rings more true today than it even did back in the 80s and 90s. But it doesn't show any kind of alternatives to this system. There is no thematic throughline either subtle or blatant where we're shown socialism or communism may work better. Being critical of rampant capitalism just isn't the same as having Marxism as a theme. You never see, for example, any of the characters having a better life because they collectively own something. Perhaps the closest to that is Alien 3's prisoners but they don't own the prison. They're just essentially squatters who are tolerated as long as they keep the leadworks going.

Interesting, YellowSignI agree that Aliens have another ideological touch than the other movies. It’s like a Vietnam war movie in space. A blockbuster action genre gone sci fi.

Riggswolf, I would say that the critique against capitalism has a Marxist tone. Actually, the space truckers in the first movie are a kind of working class heroes, dealing with a terrible situation at work. You are right that there are no obvious Marxist visions or characters portrayed in the movies, but I never said that. The same goes for Gibsons Neuromancer triology. Nobody fights the system. It fits the bleak dystopian cyberpunk setting, Reaganomics gone wild.

Alien does indeed feature rampant capitalism and have a company as arguably a co-antagonist. But it doesn't have any Marxist themes. 

Yep.  Having the bad guys be rampant capitalists doesn't automatically equate to 'Marxism = good'.
And I don't really think Alien comes under the cyberpunk genre.