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Humans
Alexa "Lex" Woods
Alexa "Lex" Woods
Played By: Sanaa Lathan
The protagonist of AVP, she is an experienced survival guide hired by Weyland to lead the archaeologists and mercenaries safely to the pyramid.
- Earned Stripes: She receives a Predator blood mark by Scar as a reward for her aid and bravery.
- Final Girl: Everyone but Alexa Woods is killed, leaving her alone with the last remaining Aliens and the last Predator; ultimately she is left to fight the Alien Queen alongside the last Predator who is slowly dying from his wounds.
- Red Is Heroic: She's the main human character and during the expedition she wears a red jacket.
- Rule of Symbolism: She has long hair that she wears down during the movie, and she's the only one who does. It makes her look most similar to a Predator at a glance.
- Sole Survivor: She is not just the only human survivor, but the only individual between all three of the races involved who survives the conflict at the pyramid.
- Took a Level in Badass: She goes from reluctant survival guide to a marked warrior who defeats a Queen.
Charles Bishop Weyland
Charles Bishop Weyland
Played By: Lance Henriksen
The founder of Weyland Industries and apparently the ancestor of Bishop from Alien 3, Unlike his future successors, he is not corrupt or greedy, merely a sympathetic dying man wanting to leave his mark on the world.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Inverted. He decides he'd rather pull off a Heroic Sacrifice than succumb to his rapidly advancing lung cancer and/or the harsh Antarctic elements. After some... coaxing, the Predator obliges him on this.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Averted. Charles may want to leave his mark on the world and wanted the artifacts, but when it came down to it, he gives his life to save Lex and Sebastian.
- Defiant to the End: "Don't you turn your back on me!"
- Developing Doomed Characters: Ends up dying to buy the protagonist some time.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: As the survivors are running from a Predator, Weyland tries to have a You Shall Not Pass! moment. The Predator scans him, sees he is dying of lung cancer, and just walks right past the old man. The pissed off Weyland attacks the Predator with a makeshift flamethrower. Now, the Predator recognizes him as worthy prey and grants him a warrior's death.
- Good Wears White: Weyland is a Cool Old Guy and during the expedition he wears a white jacket.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Didn't expect that from the Weyland Industries founder, did you?
- Kill It with Fire: Attempts this on Scar, either to kill it or distract it.
- Mercy Kill: Subverted. The Predator was going to spare him when it realized he was on borrowed time due to his cancer and only killed him when he attacked it out of spite and to buy Alexa and Sebastian some time.
- Perilous Old Fool: He stands up to a Predator. When it ignores him as a potential kill after detecting his illness, he is so angry that he attacks it himself, which provokes it to kill him.
- Pet the Dog: Weyland listens to Lex's story about her father dying, and reminds her that her drinking champagne with her father was more important than him dying.
Joe Connors
Joe Connors
Played By: Joseph Rye
A mercenary mook that falls down a shaft, breaks his leg and gets captured by the Xenomorphs. He is last seen dead with a hole in his chest.
- Red Shirt: No character development, little to no depth, interacts with the rest of the cast, but dies pretty quickly.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: It was his mere footstep that awoke the Xenomorph Queen sealed within the pyramid. Can't really blame him, he had no way of knowing.
Graeme Miller
Graeme Miller
Played By: Ewen Bremner
A professor hired by Weyland Industries to study the Pyramid. He tends to be too curious for his own good.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Done off screen. Unfortunately, he sees the other facehugger victims and knows exactly what was coming for him.
- Fatal Family Photo: During an early scene in the first film, Graeme shows Alexa a picture of his kids. Things do not work out for him.
- Genre Blindness: The group is even told by Lex never to go anywhere by themselves, Miller is the first person to do so and even almost as soon as they arrive at the whaling station.
- Hope Spot: After waking up to find himself cocooned and Verheiden facehugged, Miller sees an egg opening right in front of him. He manages to get Verheiden's gun and shoot the facehugger, but wastes bullets shooting the corpse but then the pans back to show an entire room full of facehugger eggs — far more than what could be killed with a single pistol— and the eggs begin opening. There was apparently a scene where Miller escapes to find Weyland's body only to be captured again.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: It would be hard to hit a flying object even if you had held the gun properly and looked down the sights, but Miller here manages to shoot an airborne facehugger by essentially firing from the hip, despite nothing in the film suggests that he was even remotely familiar with guns. Also said gun seemed to have been a Desert Eagle, which would presumably be quite weighty, so using it with one hand would make it quite inaccurate.
- Oh, Crap!: Miller's reaction when he sees where he is and the eggs start to open, it happens again when he thinks he is after killing a facehugger and sees all the other eggs open.
- Too Dumb to Live: Goes off on his own despite explicitly being instructed not to do so by the survival guide. Later he wastes bullets on a dead facehugger, despite being in an entire room full of eggs (not that those extra few bullets would have done much more than buy him a little more time).
Thomas Parks
Thomas Parks
Played By: Sam Troughton
An archaeologist who works with Sebastian. His translation skills left much to be desired and his attempts at communicating with Adele are brushed off with contempt.
- Amazon Chaser: Seems to like Adele, the female mercenary. She makes it clear that it's not reciprocated.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: One of the first to be attacked by the facehuggers.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The fate of everyone in the chamber.
- Failed a Spot Check: Wrongly states a possible cause of death (heart extraction of the skeletons in the sacrificial chamber) when the body's state showed what obviously happened. Even a mercenary like Adele deduces it as something breaking out of the body. Even he sounded a bit uncertain when he guessed the cause of death, if not certain that it was wrong, but only noting the only reason he knows for a human being's chest to be opened up.
- Genre Blindness: Not as bad as another similar character in Prometheus but he does slowly approach the eggs which causes them to open.
- Sacrificial Lion: Despite getting some focus early on in the story, he is one of the first to die.
- Too Dumb to Live: Yes, it is certainly a good idea to get closer to Xenomorph eggs, what's the worst that can happen?
Rusten Quinn
Rusten Quinn
Played By: Carsten Norgaard
A drilling expert hired to get the crew to the underground pyramid; he ends up obsolete as the Predators do it for him.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Survives a fight with a predator, a drop down a tunnel of two thousand odd feet, and the onset of hypothermia, only to be killed by a predator in passing. While this can seem like a headscratcher because he was unarmed, his brave attempt against the predators probably made him worthy of killing.
Maxwell Stafford
Maxwell Stafford
Played By: Colin Salmon
Head of security for Weyland Industries and fiercely loyal to his boss.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Subverted. While he almost suffers this, he is then killed quickly by Celtic.
- Heroic BSoD: After seeing his men die, Max questions Charles Weyland why they died.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: While stuck in a net trap, Celtic impales Max with a combi-stick.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When Sebastian tells the group not to take the plasma casters, Max takes them anyway to spite him. This results in the pyramid's layout shifting, trapping several others in the sacrificial chamber.
- Scary Black Man: Comes off as this to Sebastian, but isn't bad guy at all, just gruff and impatient.
Sebastian de Rosa
Sebastian de Rosa
Played By: Raul Bova
The second main character, he joins the expedition so he can finance more digs.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Narrowly averted, he is mercy killed before the chestburster pushes any further.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Off screen.
- Good Luck Charm: Is constantly fiddling with his bottle cap and kisses it when his theory about the pyramid proves true.
- Mercy Kill: Is given one by Lex before the chestburster can finish giving him an agonizing death.
Adele Rousseau
Adele Rousseau
Played By: Agathe de La Boulaye
A Vasquez clone who is notable for being the first female to be both visibly facehugged and chestbursted within a film. Adele comes across as a bad ass and well prepared but is one of the first victims in the film and the actually first victim of the Aliens.
- Action Girl: Shows signs of this, although she's killed before she gets to do much. She does better in the novel, as she manages to destroy an egg (unfortunately this doesn't save her from the facehugger).
- Adaptational Badass: In the novel, she manages to destroy an egg. She still gets killed, but in this case it was because the facehugger was too fast, as opposed to her being too shocked to attack in time.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: A given, considering how she dies. While the incubation time is uncharacteristically short in this movie, the chestburster itself takes longer to pop out than usual, giving the viewer plenty of time to listen to the sound of her sternum being broken from the inside out. The unrated edition shows more gore as well, adding a pooling blood to her chest and showing her spit blood everywhere.
- Failed a Spot Check: Firstly the eggs that appear right next to corpses with holes in their chest, and then the obviously unfriendly looking facehuggers crawling out of the egg. If Adele fired her weapon on all seven during that time, she would saved everyone's life and probably averted the events of the movie, but of course and for plot reasons, Adele just stands still watching until it was too later. At least the novel version tries to act.
- Hidden Depths: She is smart enough to bring a gun just in case, and correctly deduces what happened to the sacrificial victims on the slabs, where as so called smart guy Thomas assumed the corpses had their hearts removed (not he seemed to really believe that, he just mentioned the only reason he knows for a human's chest to be opened up).
- Red Shirt: A literal example as after being attacked by the facehugger. Adele is killed by a chestburster emerging from her chest and ripping through her red shirt.
- Vasquez Always Dies: Despite the source movie being the Trope Namer, it's somewhat averted in both films with Adele being the first one to be facehugged and subsequently killed by the emerging chestburster.
Stone
Mark Verheiden
Mark Verheiden
Played By: Tommy Flanagan
A seemingly tough mercenary named after the Aliens and AVP writer/artist of the same name.
- And I Must Scream: He is completely conscious while being impregnated by a facehugger, he even attempts to scream only for a muffled gargling sound to be heard.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Off screen. He is seen dead along with Miller, both with holes in their chests.
- Dirty Coward: Arguably — when Joe Connors falls down a shaft, Verheiden just looks on while Connors calls for his help, but given how fast things are happening in the scene and Connors not calling for help until the shaft starts closing on him, he could easily just have not had time to react in any other way. In a somewhat karmic turn of events, he himself falls down a shaft and presumably breaks his leg, even ending up in the same place that Connors does, in a triangular-looking passageway. He does the same thing as Connors and calls for help.
- Fate Worse than Death: Being impregnated by a facehugger is enough to make most people wish for death.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Watches someone fall down a shaft and doesn't lift a finger to help him, said man ends up getting facehugged and obviously killed. Later Verheiden falls down a shaft and also ends up facehugged.
- Shout-Out: He's named after the artist/writer Mark Verheiden.
Predators
Predators, also known as Yautja, are an advanced alien species with an intense focus on hunting prey for trophies. Celtic
Celtic
Played By: Ian Whyte
A large Predator with a unique looking mask, and one that gets the main fight scene with an Alien in the movie.
- Cool Mask: His mask's design looks like a more artificial version of a Predator's face.
- Decoy Protagonist: Is the leader of the Predator trio and the one who gets an awesome fight with an Alien, but is killed in the process and leaves the title to Scar.
- Dueling Scar: Gets four Alien claw marks on his mask during his fight with Grid.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: He is noticeably irritable, taking it personal when Quinn manages to get a shoot on his shoulder armor and beating him to a pulp.
- Sacrificial Lion: Celtic is killed off to show how unrelentingly dangerous the Alien are even after being apparently overpowered.
- Too Dumb to Live: He has Grid tied up and defenseless, but he takes his sweet time crossing the room and unsheathing his weapon. This gives Grid enough time for her blood to melt the net holding it, allowing it to break free and kill Celtic.
- The Worf Effect: Very much like Chopper, he is worfed by Grid, though he at least puts up one hell of a fight first.
Chopper
Chopper
Played By: Ian Whyte
A Predator that possesses longer-than-average arm blades.
- Artificial Gill: Chopper's mask features very distinctive gill-like arrays of slits, making it look like some kind of aquatic design. Fans sometimes call him "Gill".
- Blade Below the Shoulder: His schtick are his arm blades, which are quite long and officially qualify as Scimitars instead of the regular Predator Wristblades.
- One-Way Visor: His mask has single visor design, unlike Celtic's separate eye-pieces.
- Palette Swap: His armor, while overall similar to his partners's, is rusty-brown colored. It's unknown if it is meant to be rust or just a different hue choice.
- Sacrificial Lion: Is killed to show that the Xenomorphs can see a cloaked Predator.
- Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Has two human skulls mounted on top of his backpack, likely trophies from previous huntings.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Has little to no development before being killed, to the extent he puts up no fight.
- The Worf Effect: Killed right away to show how much trouble everyone is in.
Scar
Scar
Played By: Ian Whyte
The main Predator of three and the one that survives the longest.
- Combat Pragmatist: Unlike Celtic and specially Chopper, Scar fights strictly smart: he avoids to fight in close-quarters if he can, and (almost) never lets his guard down, which allows him to survive until the end of the film.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being a Predator who hunts humans and xenomorphs, he’s actually willing to work with humans and consider them worthy of recognition.
- Defiant to the End: Roars at the Queen after being mortally wounded.
- Dramatic Unmask: He is the only of the three we see without his mask.
- Earned Stripes: Marks himself with the acidic blood of a facehugger, becoming the only graduated Predator of the trio.
- Enemy Mine: Joins forces with Lex to escape the pyramid and take down the queen.
- Everyone Has Standards: He won't kill an old man dying of cancer who poses no threat to him. He only kills Weyland after he directly attacks him and shows he's not-so-harmless. Presumably, killing a feeble old man isn't something a proud hunter like himself would be caught dead doing.
- Hidden Depths: In a deleted scene
, Scar actually plays a prank on Lex by touching an open nerve in the body of a xenomorph he's dissecting, causing its internal jaw-tongue to shoot out and startle her. - Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Speared on the Queen's tail. Which miraculously misses the Predalien chestburster inside of him.
- Man on Fire: When Scar elects to ignore Weyland, the latter uses his oxygen tank to make a makeshift flamethrower and sets him on fire. It doesn't do any noticeable damage, but it makes Scar turn around and kill Weyland.
- Mature Younger Sibling: Supporting material states that Scar was actually the youngest among the three Predators, and despite of that he averts the Older and Wiser trope by surviving the most through his skills unlike his older brothers who quickly become Xenomorph fodder.
- One-Hit Kill: Takes off an Alien which was thinking on ambushing him by slicing its head with his dagger in a neat, too-fast-for-eyes swing.
- One-Way Visor: His mask, which is based on the original Jungle Hunter design, but features a visor instead of separate eye-pieces.
- Pet the Dog: He spares Alexa after she gives him one of the plasmacasters and strikes an alliance with her.
- The Smart Guy: Sticks to clever tactics, as opposed to the more brutish and ceremonious Celtic.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Not that he knew about it, but the Predalien chestburster that gestated inside him was responsible for the Xenomorph's disastrous infestation that destroyed an entire U.S. town in the sequel.
Elder/Ancient Predator
Elder/Ancient Predator
- Earned Stripes: Appropriately, he has his own blood mark.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Doesn't even bother to have Scar's body checked for a chestburster, even though they were fighting a species notorious for incubating inside dead bodies. This failure ends up being a Sequel Hook for Requiem.
Xenomorphs
Xenomorphs are a parasitic, hostile life-form that uses living creatures as hosts. The reproduction process results in an individual that borrows significant physical traits from the host, ensuring it is tailor made for the environment. Possesses a hard exoskeleton, acid blood, and the trademark secondary mouth. Described by Ash as the perfect organism. General
- Better to Die than Be Killed: A lot of their victims try to commit suicide rather than give birth to a Chestburster.
- Big Bad: They are the ultimate threat in both movies.
- The Queen in Antarctica is the main villain in the first film.
- The Predalien born from Scar became this in the second film (see that character list for details).
- Cannon Fodder: What the movie Requiem reduced them to.
- Chest Burster: The trope codifiers.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Their entire reproduction cycle is this for their victims, and the adults tend to mete this out to their own victims. Ironically, they themselves are often on the receiving end — given how hard they are to kill, extreme methods are often required to take them out.
- The Dreaded: They are one of the deadliest species in the galaxy, and even the most hardened badasses quickly devolve into terrified wrecks when faced with them. The facehuggers are in some ways worse because of what they do to their victims.
- Eviler than Thou: They make the Predators/Yautja more heroic by comparison, which is saying something.
- Villain Decay: Zigzagged. They are still a formidable threat to humans, but the Predators have an easier time dealing with them depending on their rank. It's averted with the Predalien, who could take on a Predator one-on-one.
- In the first film, a single Xenomorph was shown to be able to match a Predator in close-quarter combat and even overpower them. Those who were killed were both uninitiated teenagers.
- In Requiem, Wolf managing to dispatch multiple Xenomorphs at once, even in hand-to-hand combat. Which makes sense, since Wolf was a veteran Elite who had far more experience.
- Would Hurt a Child: They're essentially animals, and will use men, women or children for hosts.
Grid
Grid
Played By: Tom Woodruff Jr.
A tough Alien described in the novel as an Alpha, Grid manages to kill two predators with little difficulty.
- Attack the Tail: Lose the tip of it's tail courtesy of being sliced off by one of the Predators. It spends the rest of it's screentime sporting a barb-less tail.
- The Dragon: It's the only xenomorph who succeeds in killing a predator (two of them, in fact) on-screen, earning it a higher rank within the hive, second only to the queen.
- Handicapped Badass: Loses its tail when Celtic cuts it off during their fight. And Grid still took Celtic out.
- Made of Iron: Takes a lot of damage (such as being slammed headfirst three times into stone pillars) in its fight with Celtic but keeps on fighting.
- Meaningful Name: Its name is derived from the distinctive scar on its head which it receives from Celtic's net during their fight.
- Scars Are Forever: Got its name for the distinct scar on its head caused by a net.
- Super-Persistent Predator: More or less, Grid is the lead alien so it will obviously get more screen time and be the main threat.
- Uniformity Exception: Grid resembles the other xenomorphs, save for its stunted tail and grid-like markings on the face, courtesy of fighting a Predator.
- Villainous Rescue: Makes its presence known when Chopper is about to kill Alexa, impaling the Predator and ripping a hole in his face.
