Great concepts, weak story

Rating: 5/10 (12 November 1999)

Alien Resurrection supplies us with the logical extension of the conceptual issues raised in the previous three films; unfortunately, the story doesn't take us through them in a satisfactory way.
Ripley's identity becomes more and more entwined with that of the alien throughout the series. In Alien, it is little more than a lethal opponent; Aliens created a set of parallels between the two, primarily motherhood; In Alien3 the parallels become intersections, portraying Ripley "pregnant" with an alien. Now, Ripley and alien are reborn through cloning, a process that intermingles their genes, and conflates their identities even more. Ripley's blood is acidic, her physical traits are enhanced, and she communicates intuitively with the aliens. The queen alien, for its part, gives birth to a human/alien hybrid, which identifies Ripley as its mother. These are all pleasing developments. Also, Juenet's visuals are at least as striking as those of the previous films, crisp and stylish. Both Brad Dourif and Dan Hedaya provide solidly enjoyable performances, in addition to Sigourney Weaver's serene Ripley.
Instead of unfolding carefully and thoughtfully, however, the movie rockets into confusion in the first 20 minutes, and the rest of the film is a flacid series of chase scenes. It chooses not to focus on the most interesting of the new characters (Dourif's alien-loving scientist, and Hedaya's General Perez), who are dispatched as soon as the aliens get loose. Instead, we get to muck along with the foul-mouthed crew of smugglers as they work their way through the alien-infested ship, which, minus the shocks, is nothing less than boring.
Alien Resurrection also reverses much of the work of Alien3, which attempted to return the alien to its status as a sort of supernatural death-figure. The components of the alien (which were so utterly horrific in the first film) are now gimmicks; one alien presses a button with its extendable jaws; in another scene, a "chestburster" is used to kill one of the bad guys by placing his head right over the point of exit. (This last scene is one of several that are sure to make this film remembered as the most gratuitously gory in the series.)
There are several other moments worth mentioning (such as when Ripley discovers a lab that displays the results of failed attempts to clone her), but they are usually deflated by the lack of dramatic tact (in this case, one of the smugglers says snidely, "Must be a chick thing," after she destroys the lab in rage). This was a film with enormous potential, only a fraction of which was lived up to.