> Aliens was one of the first action movies I ever watched (and remembered) and I don't remember ever, at all, thinking that it was odd that a woman was in charge (in fact, all of the strong characters are female).
That's because the Ellen Ripley character was originally a man named Martin Roby.
> That's because the Ellen Ripley character was originally a man named Martin Roby.
That doesn't make sense to me. Martin Roby was the original character for "Alien" and in the first movie, for the most part Ripley wasn't the bad-ass character she would be throughout the second movie.
But the OP was anyway talking about "Aliens" and there Roby could no longer have been an influence for her character.
No. That's because whoever wrote the script(s), wrote strong women characters. Some earlier script version may have had strong male characters but that is not automatically the reason.
That's because the Ellen Ripley character was originally a man named Martin Roby.