...it ties into a lot of primal and subconscious fears that are very universal for people. You know, fears of tight places, fears of the dark, of water, of fire, of high places, you name it. A lot of the Freudian tensions are there in the designs of the creature, in the implied threat, in all that. It was also a way in this specific film, in Aliens, of unifying the Ripley character and the Newt character, they both have the same nightmare, and that bonds them, it makes them the same person in a way. Watching Aliens is a lot like their experience in the films, which is you are going through this long dark tunnel and you come out at the end and you're going to be ok. They can dream again, their dream landscape is not going to have these creatures in it from that point onward. The idea is that Ripley survived the first time, but she didn't survive mentally, psychologically. At the end of this film I think you feel like not only has she's survived physically, but she's out of the woods, she's going to be ok. Its actually a better ending in that sense.