Some interesting ideas, but falls short in too many departments too often to work

Rating: 5/10 (24 January 2020)

The annoying thing about "Alien: Resurrection" is that it is primarily an action film that comes with the odd scare, rather than an actual horror film which happens to include the odd second-unit set piece. It is additionally lacking in that atmosphere most science fiction films have when they place characters far off into the future or depict events on other planets or in the vast chasm of space. Things here feel more synthetic than the other films, and it makes you appreciate even more what Cameron did in the first sequel when he managed to keep "Aliens" genuinely frightening in spite of the heavy artillery its characters had access to.
"Resurrection" unfolds on a heavily guarded space station, a few hours from Earth, in the distant realms of the 23rd century. After the moaning and wailing which greeted the aftermath of the killing off of three beloved characters at the beginning of "Alien3", "Resurrection" rather curiously opens with the bringing of another one back to life. Look away now if you haven't seen "Alien3", but following the death, nay evisceration, of Sigourney Weaver's Ripley, scientists, in a film shot the year of the cloning of Dolly the sheep no less, have managed to recreate her as she was just prior to her decision to extradite herself from this mortal realm. The decision behind this is/was born out of the fact she possessed inside of her a young alien queen, likely the only one in left in existence, at the time of her plunge, which is a shifty organisation's only means of obtaining the spawn of this queen - the likes of which they require for their own ends.
The base soon welcomes a motley space-crew who are delivering people in hyper-sleep to the scientists and military personnel while Ripley undergoes the death-roes of her treatment. The gang offer somewhat fertile ground for characterisation - the captain and pilot are in a relationship; Ron Perlman plays the rugged equivalent of a twenty-third century seadog; there's a mechanic in a wheelchair (but wouldn't robotic technology enabling him to walk exist by now?) and a young angelic looking woman named Call (Winona Ryder) who holds her own in the rough, working-man dominated space. Frustratingly, few get beyond a perimeter of stock status.
What is additionally curious is that Ripley is not the protagonist per se in this edition; her mannerisms and behaviour, whilst executed flawlessly by Weaver herself who must play someone who is neither human nor animal and, on top of that, artificially created in the first place, are cold; detached and strangely invulnerable - she is not the Ripley of the franchise prior to now and this sits a little uncomfortably. The film, in fact, lacks any kind of presence of a hero around which we might revolve our interest. Much time is spent in the opening act on characters that are removed within minutes of the second, while Weaver plays someone whose arc has already been completed in the other three films when she played out some interesting dynamics with the alien creatures to do with motherhood and fostering children.
The Queen they get out of Ripley does what they want and the staff get their aliens on cue, only to see them escape, of course, and wreak havoc on the spaceship, all around the time the transporters come to blows with the marines on board when Call, the one we thought least likely of the crew to start trouble, breaks house rules. Confusingly, the vast army of soldiers already on board abandon the ship at the first sign of a problem, thus calling into question as to what their purpose was in the first place in case of an emergency, and the film beds down into a nice, comfortable groove of depicting an array of people, military personnel included, striving to get to the remaining route off the ship, which is the craft the mercenaries arrived in, which of course is miles away from where anyone begins.
I suppose there is an air of unpredictability in who will live and who will die, but this doesn't compensate for much when we realise how poor characterisation has been to this point. To everyone's horror, the mother ship's programming has automatically kicked in, meaning it is in the process of returning to Earth - an odd contingency if you know what you're dealing with on board is as dangerous as it was. There is much talk on concepts of universal brotherhood and sticking together from one character among the band of survivors, but as soon as they realise Earth is the ship's destination and that these animals will probably ravage the planet, making a dangerous detour to try and stop it seems unappealing. Where else did they expect to be able to go if not Earth?
"Resurrection" falls rather a long way short in the pacing and atmosphere stakes - it unfolds on a ship too close to Earth in the first place for it to feel like we're lost in the barren wildernesses of outer space, unlike "Alien", and where in Ridley Scott's film the characters had to make up a course of action as they went along as they faced their situation, they plod their way to a fixed destination in this entry, knowing full well a sort of reprieve awaits them when they arrive. What was additionally lost on me was the film's commentary - does it disapprove of the science behind cloning? Is toying with genetics a bad thing? That cross-breeding is a dangerous game? Long after you realise the new addition to the franchise, a giant white mutant, can understand English, it will probably be lost on you too.