Oh dear... what a mess !!!

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2006)

Budget constraints were a major issue at the beginning, throughout and in post-production- and it shows. As an avid admirer of the Alien saga, I am thoroughly disappointed with Alien4. And there are two major reasons; one they did a very poor effort in explaining Ripley's presence and Sigourney Weaver struggled to promote credibility to the resurrection. And two, and most importantly, the image, the sound and presence of the 'alien' was so removed from the past three movies it was atrocious.
The general idea of how hosts for the queen were obtained were interesting as was the 'biological weapon' angle. Apart from that I could almost weep when comparing this trash to the first three. 6/10 in hindsight is extremely generous and is more to do with the love of the franchise than any true indication of this movie's worth.
The last half of this movie is so bad I am embarrassed for the producers. The new alien is terrible and diminishes the power and chill of the alien. The supposed claustrophobic feel they were looking for was not realised, the aliens seemed pathetic in their tenacity to destroy human life and was opposite to what was established.
The producers tried to be too clever and ended up not being clever enough.