After a nightmarish experience involving an encounter with a 1986 sequel Aliens tells the story of Ripley and a crew of battle-hardened Colonial Marines who return to LV-426 to investigate a human colony that has since gone quiet.
Ripley's fears are soon confirmed. The alien menace was back! To combat this lethal species, both she and her crew had to rely on their varied mixture of personality types to devise an escape plan. The following is a list of Myers-Briggs® personality types for Ripley and the Colonial Marines, as seen in Aliens.
Ellen Ripley - ENFJ (The Teacher)
Ellen Ripley is a consummate professional who excelled in academia and managed to land herself a fairly lucrative career with Weyland-Yutani that was clearly going places. In fact, her official dossier says she would have risen to the highest ranks in a relatively short space of time, had her fateful encounter with the xenomorph not taken place.
Ripley is an ENFJ to the max, displaying all the qualities of someone who can identify and encourage the inherent strengths in others, not to mention her selfless ambition to help those within her circle. She might be hard-edged, but that's driven by necessity rather than choice. Far from a drill sergeant, Ripley feels responsible for the well-being of her fellow humans, and humanity at large.
Corporal Dwayne Hicks - ESTJ (The Supervisor)
Hicks has his witty moments, but he's by and large a traditional soldier who is big on organization and structure. Within the Colonial Marines, this is practically a prerequisite that never goes away. Hicks has no trouble assuming command when things go bad, but he's perfectly willing to work within the chain of command when he's out of his element.
When things went sour on LV-426, Hicks displayed all the traits of an ESTJ by cracking the whip and asg clear, precise duties to the rest of the team. He could delegate and motivate like a true leader, which makes him a highly effective supervisor type.
Carter Burke - ENTP (The Visionary)
One gets the feeling that Carter Burke might have made an excellent ENTP, had he not taken all of its traits and warped them beyond all semblance of morality. Distilled down to his purest form, Burke does display a sense of curiosity, cleverness and unconventional wisdom, especially when it comes to getting ahead.
No one truly knows the depths of depravity that Burke has sunk to in his quest to climb the corporate ladder, but he probably employed the ENTP's penchant for playful banter with others in order to disarm them, all without making it personal. In this sense, he may have viewed his own actions as justified.
Lieutenant Gorman - ISTJ (The Inspector)
Gorman represented a by-the-books officer so steeped in tradition that it ended up getting several of his team killed. His stubborn insistence on following procedures and regulations to the exact letter ended up throwing the Marines into chaos when they sought out the missing colonists at the processing plant just outside of Hadley's Hope.
Once his failure had been fully realized, Gorman decided to back off and allow Hicks to act as defacto commander, which might have been another example of him following tradition. In his world, an incapable leader was a dangerous one, and his self-awareness might have helped prolong the lives of the rest of his team.
Private Vasquez - INTJ (The Mastermind)
Vasquez wasn't exactly a model Marine, though she did take her job very seriously, nonetheless. As an INTJ personality type, Vasquez was quick to analyze and adapt to inefficient situations, and react accordingly. Sometimes she took this too far by directly flaunting orders from superior officers.
She displayed an unwillingness to get close to too many people, another INTJ trait. Her close relationship with fellow gunner Drake was a particular exception. This is perhaps due to INTJs and their reluctance to deal with unpredictably emotional people.
Private Hudson - ESTP (The Dynamo)
It's safe to say that Hudson didn't take life seriously. He never ed up an opportunity to wisecrack or play a prank on his fellow Marines. He also wasn't particularly kind to strangers, routinely poking fun at them in an effort to goad them and provide a little more laughter for everyone.
While a professional and capable soldier in his own right, Hudson's ESTP personality type meant that he loved the thrill of battle, and being part of the solution. He was a practical soldier who could work well under pressure - provided it didn't come from such a horrifying life form as the xenomorph.
Sergeant Apone - ENTJ (The Commander)
Apone knew exactly what was expected of him and his team, and he never relaxed his standards or discipline even for a moment. The ultimate drill sergeant, Apone was a born leader who rooted out inefficiencies in his unit and conceptualized better, faster and stronger ways of doing things.
This is precisely in line with the ENTJ personality type, which has no problem with assertiveness. The end goal is to organize, provide structure and eliminate weaknesses in the chain of command and procedure. With Apone at the helm, these traits were never more true.
Bishop - INTP (The Architect)
Bishop's personality type is harder to quantify, given his status as an android. With an artificial intelligence at the helm, Bishop is capable of very humanistic behavior, but he's not quite all there. He's far more analytical and data-driven than emotional.
Still, he's an INTP at heart, thanks mostly to the type's focus on logical analysis, the pursuit of facts, and a desire to understand the complexities of the universe and the life within it. This is possibly why he held such a pragmatic view about the xenomorph species, regarding them as "magnificent," while still realizing that they needed to be destroyed.
Private Drake - ISTP (The Craftsman)
Drake represents an ISTP Craftsman personality distilled down into its basic elements. He's a troubleshooter by and large, and believes that superior firepower is one of the end-all solutions to a persistent problem. ISTPs are known to go outside of their purview to apply logic in the way they see fit, and that's shown in his handling of combat during the first xenomorph encounter at the processing plant.
He might be a loose cannon in many ways, but Drake is also a highly accomplished Marine who analyzed his environment and worked within it to gain an advantage, all while applying quick response to emergency situations. Unfortunately, his first encounter with the xenomorphs proved to be too much, and he lost his life horrifically in the process.
Private Frost - ESFP (The Performer)
Frost was a fairly solid mixture of professionalism and light-hearted joker, balancing himself somewhere between Hudson and Hicks. He was quick to try new things, as evidenced by his lewd conversations with fellow Marines on board the Sulaco, and this is one of many ESFP personality traits.
He seemed to be an accessible and friendly Marine who enjoyed life (less so his job), and loved being in the middle of the action. His sense of humor is a strong ESFP indicator, even on the battlefield. When the fighting was done, he was the sort to take his teammates out for a celebratory night on the town, before getting up the next morning for duty, all over again.
