“200 years after her death, Ellen Ripley is revived as a powerful human/alien hybrid clone. Along with a crew of space pirates, she must again battle the deadly aliens and stop them from reaching Earth.”
In a lot of ways the premise for Alien Resurrection is ludicrous. Ripley, burnt in a gigantic furnace at the end of Alien 3, has been cloned back into existence. Where exactly did they got her DNA from is anyone’s guess and the subject is wisely avoided in the screenplay.
Putting aside the fact that Alien 3 gave Ripley’s character a fitting end to her character - sacrificing herself to save humanity taking an alien queen with her - Alien Resurrection does at least give Ripley’s character an interesting wrinkle: how much of her is human or Alien after the cloning. They play with this in the script for a short time but it is jettisoned in favour of action and comedy.
Written by Joss Whedon who would go on to make Buffy the vampire slayer and Avengers and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (delicatessen) as a dark action comedy.
It is probably fair to say that Alien Resurrection is the least interesting in the franchise of movies. It relies more on humour than atmosphere and dread which are the hallmarks of the alien series. Not as visually striking as the other movies in the series despite some nice sets and a bigger budget. Perhaps due to the choice of grungy aesthetics which worked better in the previous films. It’s a very mixed bag - heavy on gore and slime and weak on story and characterisation. The only character given anything to work with is Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) the others are slight and single dimensional.
Winona Ryder and Dan Hadeya should get special mention here, one playing an android like her charisma batteries had run dangerously low and the other auditioning for Spaceballs the movie - his death scene hilarious for all the wrong reasons.
Not to say that its terrible, it's not. It does have some interesting sequences primarily the underwater chase which is really good. The biggest issue besides the ott one liner approach is the fact that the movie isn't remotely scary or really that intense. Gone are the sweaty intense sequences being replaced by something more predicable and by the numbers. It feels more like a series of scenes cobbled together than a cohesive story.
The ending where the ship is on course to land back on earth releasing aliens on an unsuspecting populace is halfheartedly explored almost to the point that we don’t care. It’s an after thought to get characters from set A to set B with a few wisecracks thrown in for good measure.
I read Joss whedons original screenplay before the movie even came out in the late 90s. There was some very interesting sequences that didn't make the cut: an extended chase through a biosphere where aliens were attacking left and right and the hybrid alien which was a bizarre, albino blood sucking spider Alien. The script had potential but it was constructed the same as the eventual film. So despite Whedon claiming that they (The filmmakers) ruined his screenplay I would wager that it is largely intact. The only notable change being the ending which was much better in the screenplay than the movie.
Speaking of which the hybrid alien human match up when it is eventually revealed is very underwhelming. As a design it’s neither scary nor particularly articulate. Its a wonder this design wasn’t scrapped in favour of something better. The original screenplay called for something more interesting - a hybrid alien/human spider with distinct red markings.
Which brings us back to the budget - perhaps it was too expensive, jettisoned along with the other action sequences from the script. Taking with it a sense of originality. At its core there was an interesting premise: Ripley as a hybrid - part alien part human.
Which sort of sums up the movie really. A watchable mess that has interesting elements coupled with eye rolling moments.