"Was it everything you hoped for?" the newly constituted Lieutenant First Class Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) asks a stunned group of hardcases who've just had a harrowing firsthand encounter with one of the hydroponic aliens she's been fighting on and off throughout the galaxy in frenzied bursts for in excess of two and a half centuries. In truth it is: the crafty continuation of a movie franchise at once rousing and reflective — genetics have been added to the traditional mix of greed, glop and guns — Alien Resurrection goes about its gooey business with a renewed sense of purpose and a maliciously funny and audience-friendly appreciation of the perpetual peril the put-upon heroine once again finds herself in.
Two hundred years after Ripley's unfortunate fate on Fiorina 161, a team of scientists circling Pluto on the top-secret United Systems Military research station Auriga have successfully cloned her (after seven false starts) in order to birth a baby Queen for study and eventual domestication of the species. Following that successful procedure, the new Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), whose DNA is entwined with that of her enemy, becomes a disposable commodity to corrupt General Perez (Dan Hedaya) and surgical team leaders Wren (J.E. Freeman) and Gediman (Brad Dourif).
Into this already-tense mix sails the Betty, a dilapidated freighter manned by a scruffy group of mercenaries, prominent among whom are leader Elgyn (Michael Wincott), wise-cracking goon Johner (Ron Perlman), paralyzed mechanic Vriess (Dominique Pinon) and spooky, waif-like mechanic Annalee Call (Winona Ryder). After conducting their nefarious business of selling warm, presumably pilfered bodies to Perez for alien research, all hell breaks loose as the aliens escape their pens, the pirates commandeer the Auriga, and a mad scramble is on to reach the dubious safety of the Betty — every thing for itself — as the conjoined vessels approach earth on a pre-programmed distress course.
With hair as limp and straggly as her new, listless approach to life, Ripley is literally a shadow of her former self, a cynical shell who in the course of her long voyage of despair has been screwed over by larcenous systems, devious people (human and synthetic) and capricious fate to the point where her every movement is numb reaction to the horror around her that just won't stop. "I don't even really think Ripley is that strong," Weaver reveals. "[Although] she may be in this one, because she is ... different."
The inventive original screenplay of Joss Whedon (Toy Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, uncredited work on Twister, Waterworld and Speed) has invigorated the franchise through bold black humor and a genuinely legitimate resolution of the provocative yet somehow cheap climax of the previous entry that takes the entire notion of Ripley vs. the mysterious species (nobody's ever bothered to give them a name, save Aliens' half-hearted "xenomorph") to entirely new and, ahem, fertile levels. "Being asked to do an Alien movie was like being offered the Grail," he remembers. "I grew up on them. Being a fan helps because I was one of those guys sitting on my couch saying 'they should let me write an Alien movie.' And they did, so I had the opportunity to really sit down and think, how do I satisfy myself as a fan?"
Whedon's solution to the tricky question of how to bring Ripley back from the dead was OK with Weaver, who'd had enough (thus the ending of Alien3) and was ready to bail altogether (this is the second film in the franchise on which she's gotten a co-producer credit). "I remember sitting in one of the exec's offices and they said they were writing this script, and I was stunned frankly because one of the reasons I died was really to liberate this series from Ripley, 'cause I didn't want her to keep waking up, 'Oh my god, there's a monster on board.' I didn't want her to become like this figure of fun that no one ever listened to and kept waking up in one situation worse than the next. So for the sake of the series and also because I heard they were going to do Alien vs. Predator, something I thought sounded awful, I wanted out... They told me they were writing a new draft and that I would find it very provocative how I was brought back... I thought it was amazing." One question: who is this "they"? Does United Systems Military (formerly the "Company") control everything now?
Reinvigorating the look of Alien Resurrection is the sensibility of French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, whose previous films Delicatessen (1991) and The City of Lost Children (1995) point directly to the familiar yet exotic and new confines of the Auriga and the Betty (which have the same spooky, almost Victorian feel as the interior of Orson Welles' magnificent Amberson mansion) as well as strange obsessions with flesh (the new Ripley is described as a "meat byproduct") and cloning (both Perlman and Pinon co-star in City). Jeunet tips his hand early on, as the credit sequence examines the hideously disfigured first seven attempts at Ripley through a distorted lens.
Ryder is just OK in a purposefully understated role, the principal attraction of which is her inscrutable motivation, the revelation of which is a true surprise (although the reason she's dogging Ripley can be guessed at but is never made entirely clear). Perlman and Pinon make the greatest impact among the resolutely grotesque supporting players, although Freeman is a convincing menace, Dourif goes pleasingly over the top in two scenes that seem custom made for his brand of beetle-browed weirdness and Hedaya is a tightly-wrapped menace who is missed when his inevitable end comes all too soon in the picture.
Definite minuses include the inevitable claustrophobia of the environments necessary for these stories ("a lot of running down corridors," Ryder calls it) as well as John C. Frizzell's colorless score.
In the end, Alien Resurrection works both as a stand-alone action extravaganza with strong nods to other genre faves including The Poseidon Adventure and Day of the Dead, and as a continuation of perhaps the strongest female character in contemporary cinema. "What happens now?" Call asks, in a final grace note that gives nothing away in the enjoyment of the film. "I don't know," answers Ellen Ripley the survivor, irrevocably changed but somehow wiser and certainly stronger for her ordeal — which may not yet be over, "I'm a stranger here myself." Such a weary redemption is indeed all one could hope for.