Review of Alien Resurrection (1997) by Carl M — 31 Jan 2013

What do you do when your main character is dead and you are out of originality? Start cloning, of course! ALIEN RESURRECTION marks the unfortunate return of Lieutenant Ellen Ripley; Unfortunate, in this case, because of the ridiculous direction in which the filmmakers have taken the character, and the poor scripting that makes her a shell of her former self.

200 years after sacrificing herself to protect the human race from utter annihilation, Ripley has been cloned with unexpected results: The DNA of the Queen Alien that she is harboring within her has fused with her own.

Military scientists have successfully managed to remove the Queen while keeping both alive, but it isn't long before a new breed of aliens are unleashed upon the vessel. Like AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS and DEEP BLUE SEA, ALIEN RESURRECTION was tailored specifically for the MTV Generation.

Acclaimed director Jean-Pierre Jeunet gives us a flashy, gore-filled spectacle, but one that is agonizingly boring and entirely without substance. RESURRECTION pastes together bits and pieces from the previous films without achieving a single success of its own.

It just goes to show that the series should have died with Ripley at the end of the third film.