Avatar: Fire And Ash Reuses A Classic Line From James Cameron's Aliens

Contains spoilers for "Avatar: Fire and Ash"

James Cameron, who shepherded the "Avatar" franchise into a multi-billion dollar success, has said how "Avatar: Fire and Ash" is the conclusion of this particular saga. Despite teasing up to seven installments, things could end with "Fire and Ash" if necessary, and there are a lot of callbacks to the previous films, like Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) reuniting with his Toruk from the first film. However, you might have also caught a sly nod to the best film Cameron ever made — 1986's "Aliens." 

Sadly, a Xenomorph doesn't pop up in "Avatar 3," but there is a reference to the film's most famous line. During the climactic battle between the Na'vi and the Sky People (read: humans), Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) takes on Varang (Oona Chaplin). Varang has proven herself a formidable adversary and seemingly has Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) dead to rights. Kiri then knocks Varang off of the vessel while delivering a prototypical action movie one-liner: "Leave my mother alone, b****!" 

It's suspiciously familiar to what Weaver's character, Ellen Ripley, says in "Aliens." She's saving her surrogate daughter Newt (Carrie Henn) from the Xenomorph Queen. She enters the battlefield with a power loader and proclaims, "Get away from her, you b****!" The "Fire and Ash" scene is a full-circle moment, as Weaver has gone from a mother protecting her daughter to a daughter protecting her mother, all while calling someone the B-word. What can you say? It's the perfect punctuation mark to a one-liner.

Nearly 40 years separate "Aliens" with "Avatar: Fire and Ash," but they make for a fascinating throughline of the ideas James Cameron clearly likes to explore in his work. First and foremost, there's the idea of motherhood. "Aliens" sees Ripley wake up 57 years after the events of "Alien," so everyone she knows is dead. But she manages to forge a new mother-like relationship with Newt, and by the end of the film, she's willing to die to protect her. That fierce motherhood is also paramount in the "Avatar" movies, as Neytiri fights to protect her kids, and she even adopts Ronal's (Kate Winslet) newborn baby at the end of "Avatar: Fire and Ash." 

It's also clear Cameron has maintained a healthy distrust of the corporate world throughout his career. In the "Alien" franchise, there's Weyland-Yutani, a company that has proven it's more than comfortable with sacrificing countless human lives to acquire Xenomorphs. Human lives don't matter if they get in the way of maintaining profit margins. "Avatar" has a similar entity: The Resources Development Administration. It wants to extract any and all natural resources from Pandora, including Amrita inside of Tulkuns. They're fine killing whales because the fluid can be used to reverse aging, and that's far more important to a corporate entity than the well-being of sentient creatures. 

The budgets and box office expectations may have changed throughout Cameron's career, but some things stay consistent. One thing remains true above all else: Cameron's still the king of the sequels.