Alien: Resurrection

Alien: Resurrection is a 1997 American science fiction-horror-thriller movie. It was written by Joss Whedon and directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It opened on November 26, 1997. The movie is the fourth in the Alien series of movies. It was the first in the series that was not made in England. The music was composed by John Frizzell. It stars Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley.

Plot 
The events of Alien: Resurrection take place two centuries after the events of Alien³. Ellen Ripley has been cloned on the outer space military science vessel Auriga. This is done so they can get the alien queen embryo that was inside her. After taking out the queen embryo, the scientists decide to keep the Ripley clone alive for further study. They raise the alien queen to adult size and collect its eggs for further use. Because of the cloning process, Ripley has several new abilities including enhanced strength, acidic blood, and a link with the aliens.

The Betty, a ship full of mercenaries, comes to the Auriga. It is bringing several kidnapped humans to be used in experiments. The mercenaries meet Ripley. Their youngest member Call (Winona Ryder) recognizes her name and tries to kill Ripley. Call thinks Ripley may be used to create more aliens. Call is too late. The adult aliens have already been created and quickly escape their confinement. Dr. Wren, one of the ship's scientists, tells them that, in an emergency, the Auriga will automatically return to Earth. Knowing that this will free the aliens on Earth, Ripley, the mercenaries, Wren, a surviving marine named DiStephano, and a surviving alien host, Purvis, set out to escape on the Betty and then destroy the Auriga.

As the group makes their way through the damaged ship, several of them are killed by the aliens. The group finds out that Call is an android. Using her abilities to control the damaged ship's systems, they set it to crash into the Earth. They hope that the aliens will be destroyed when the ship crashes. The alien queen from inside Ripley has also gain a new ability. She can give birth to live offspring now. The offspring, which appears more humanoid, sees Ripley as its "mother" and kills the alien queen. Ripley escapes soon after and heads for the Betty.

Ripley and the surviving mercenaries arrive at the Betty. As they launch, the human/alien offspring attacks Ripley and Call. Ripley kills it by using her own acidic blood to burn a hole through part of the ship. This causes the creature to be pulled through the small hole and into the vacuum of space. The survivors escape in the Betty as the Auriga crashes through the atmosphere and down towards Earth.

Reception 
Despite positive reviews for Sigourney Weaver's and Winona Ryder's performances, the movie is the least successful in the series and was not well liked by the critics. The movie cost $70 million to make, but it earned only $47.8 million in the US. It did earn a total of $161.3 million worldwide. However, Winona Ryder won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for her role in the movie.

Screenwriter Joss Whedon was extremely unhappy with the final version of movie. In a 2005 interview, when asked how the movie was different from the script he had written, Whedon said, "It wasn't a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending; it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. They said the lines... mostly... but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do. There's actually a fascinating lesson in filmmaking, because everything that they did reflects back to the script or looks like something from the script, and people assume that, if I hated it, then they’d changed the script... but it wasn’t so much that they’d changed the script; it’s that they just executed it in such a ghastly fashion as to render it almost unwatchable."

References

Other websites 
 
 

1997 science fiction movies
1997 horror movies
1990s science fiction horror movies
American monster movies
1997 thriller movies
20th Century Fox movies
Alien movies
American thriller movies
English-language movies
Screenplays by Joss Whedon
Sequel movies