~ We were reviewing ‘Aliens’ in preparation for ‘Prometheus’ and we made a ‘discovery’: When Ripley goes down to the reactor to search for Newt, what is the point of Ripley burning the eggs and wasting all of her pulse rifle ammunition and grenades on the Queen?
Ripley and the Queen have reached an agreement; Ripley won’t torch the eggs, and the Queen will hiss to the other xenomorphs not to attack. The whole settlement is about to be destroyed in a nuclear explosion anyway, which we all know because of the constant reminder on the loud speakers, so Ripley could just calmly take the elevator to the landing platform and escape, letting the processor explosion take care of the nest. Instead she empties her guns and has to run from the queen, gets Bishop chopped in half, and loses a cargo-loader.
The answer is probably just ‘Because that’s what happens in the story’, since they needed an explanation for an egg being on the Sulaco at the beginning of the third movie.
