"The best thing you can do is pray for a quick death."

Rating: 8/10 (21 March 2015)

If you ever had any doubt that comic book or movie characters don't have to stay dead, "Alien Resurrection" is your proof. Sigourney Weaver is back as Lieutenant Ellen Ripley, two hundred years following her demise in Alien3, and cloned from her remains found on Fiori Sixteen. One would probably consider this film another installment of the original Alien saga, but it has a decidedly different twist with the cloning angle and the experiments aboard the USM Auriga designed to produce a new breed of alien to serve a military master.
For the most part, I'd say the film makers did a successful job in bringing their vision to the big screen with a credible balance between sci-fi and horror. The movie touches on the familiar aspects of the earlier trilogy of films with chest bursters and synthetic robots while adding a new element in the concept of a host queen Alien that bypasses the egg cycle to produce a new generation of monsters.
Weaver's character has a difficult task in requiring her new cloned form to summon up remembrances of a long ago past, and I found it intriguing the way she displayed her motherly instincts just before dispatching the Newborn to the depths of space in a creative way. I also liked the way the writers linked the story line to another franchise when Brad Dourif's Dr. Gediman described Ripley as "something of a predator, isn't she?"
So overall I didn't seem to have the same problem with the picture some other reviewers and fans seemed to have here. I think it works either way, as a follow up to the original trilogy or as a stand alone film combining elements of horror and science fiction in a compelling manner.