Alien: Resurrection

Plot synopsis:
Hundreds of years after the events of Alien³, doctors aboard a spaceship called the USN Auriga are working on a secret project for the military; they have been attempting to produce a clone of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) working from a blood sample that was collected from Fiorina "Fury" 161, the planet where she died. In doing so, they hope that they can harvest the alien embryo, a queen of the species, that was gestating inside of her at the time. Dr. Wren (J.E. Freeman) and his team of colleagues have succeeded with their eighth attempt. They operate on the Ripley clone and remove the embryonic alien, which is still too small to struggle with the robotic arms used for the operation. After the alien is removed, Dr. Wren and his colleague, Dr. Gediman (Brad Dourif), decide to keep the clone alive for further study. They repair the wound in her chest. As she recovers, she notices a numeral 8 tattooed on one of her arms.The Ripley clone begins to gain consciousness and mature at an unprecedented rate. The ship's doctors go through exercises with her regarding language and learning, and she responds positively. She also exhibits a frightening predatory physical power, able to break her bonds and attack at will. The doctors and orderlies are only barely able to subdue her. She seems to share DNA with the alien creatures, explaining her unusual strength, and her blood is also slightly acidic. The experiment angers General Perez (Dan Hedaya), the military figure in charge of the operation, who calls her a "meat byproduct". He is only interested in the alien queen, which has also grown at a terrifying rate; it is now almost full size and is contained within a cell on the ship.The Ripley clone seems to sense what is going on. One day she eats with Gediman and Wren, and she reveals a startling flash of her former self; it seems as if the clone has retained some of Ripley's memories and personality traits. It is almost as if the woman herself has been recreated and is slowly awakening. Ripley has a fragmented conversation with Gediman. "How did you...?" she asks. Gediman tells her how they painstaking recreated her, and she intuitively guesses that they wanted the alien. Even in her dazed condition, she is cynical and tells them that they can't control it.Enter the Betty, a ragtag ship carrying a crew of space pirates. Their cargo is the crew of another ship, still in their cryogenic containers and asleep, unaware that they have been hijacked. General Perez has hired the crew, led by Frank Elgyn (Michael Wincott), to deliver the unfortunate sleeping travelers to be used for breeding the aliens. Before long the kidnapped people have been impregnated with aliens, and a number of drone aliens are now in containment units on board the ship.The Betty crew find Ripley exercising in a rec center, tossing a basketball around. Johner (Ron Perlman), one of the Betty's crew and a brutish, scarred man, attempts to engage her in a predatory manner of flirting, but Ripley easily out-maneuvers and fights back against him and one of his comrades, Christie (nm023542), and proves herself to be physically powerful beyond their expectations. At one point, her nose is bloodied; when she wipes off the blood and flicks it onto the floor, it begins to dissolve the surface, much like the blood of the aliens.One of the Betty's crew, a young waifish girl named Annalee Call (Winona Ryder), seems to have a different agenda. She slips away from the others and finds Ripley's containment unit, gaining illegal access to it. There she finds Ripley and wakes her up; Call admits that she came here to kill Ripley, but Ripley is far too cunning to allow that. She even deliberately presses her hand onto Call's knife; the resulting wound heals itself rapidly and her blood corrodes the blade. Call can tell that the doctors have removed the alien embryo already, and she tells Ripley that she is just a clone, something the doctors consider only a byproduct. Ripley seems confused and hurt by this, but she knows it is true. She releases Call, who goes outside the cell only to be intercepted by guards and Dr. Wren.Wren is furious about Call's trespassing, and he attempts to execute the crew of the Betty as terrorists. A number of things happen simultaneously. The Betty crew has a battle with soldiers who have orders to execute them. Gediman, who is experimenting with adult aliens in a cell, inadvertently teaches them how to use the pacifying equipment in the cell, which sprays freezing gas. Together the aliens revolt; two of them gang up on a third and kill it, causing its acid blood to eat through the floor of the containment unit. Gediman is snatched away by one of the aliens. Now loose, the aliens quickly begin to take over the ship. Ripley escapes from her cell when aliens begin to break through the door. The ship goes into emergency mode and some people escape in life pods; the unfortunate ones are killed by aliens. The crew of the Betty bands together, but Elgyn is killed by the creatures.Ripley joins Call and the others as they make their way across the Auriga to the bay where the Betty is docked. Ripley also discovers that the Auriga is actually moving. Wren scoffs, saying she couldn't possibly know because the ship is equipped with stealth run. However, Ripley's heightened senses are correct, the ship is moving, traveling rapidly back to homebase: Earth. The crew of the Betty is disheartened since Earth has become a polluted wasteland. They take Wren with them, although he is more of a hostage.Along the way they find the laboratory where Gediman and the others created the Ripley clones; inside are the previous seven attempts, all of them hideously deformed and bizarre human/alien hybrids. Six are dead and contained in stasis tubes, but the seventh attempt is the most heartbreaking; she is human enough to be identifiable, yet her limbs and her body are misshapen and alien. Even worse, she is still living, kept alive by tubes and ventilators. Ripley 8 is horrified, realizing now exactly what she is and where she came from. Ripley 7 begs her to kill her, and Ripley 8 uses a flamethrower and grenades to destroy the other clones. Wren is morbidly amused by her inner turmoil over her bizarre identity, and Ripley 8 looks at him in utter rage and disgust. Johner has no idea what caused Ripley's rampage; "Must be a chick thing!" he quips.The crew makes another strange discovery: the room containing what's left of the hijacked crew that the Betty crew delivered to General Perez. One of the crew members, Purvis (Leland Orser), is still alive, but Ripley suggests they leave him behind. She can sense that he is gestating an alien embryo, having been impregnated by a facehugger. Call insists that they bring him along, that perhaps if they make it to the Betty in time, they can put him in cryostasis long enough for some sort of surgery to be performed on him.A hitch in their escape plan occurs when they find that they are forced to traverse the mess hall; unfortunately, it is completely underwater now due to a flood that occurred during the chaos of the alien escape. Vriess (Dominique Pinon) has to leave his powered wheelchair behind, and is harnessed to Christie's back. Everyone must hold their breath for a painful amount of time, and Sabra Hillard (Kim Flowers) from the Betty is snatched along the way by aliens that emerge, swimming after her. Ripley watches, strangely fascinated by the creatures.When they emerge on the other side of the tunnel, they find that they've been ambushed; the shaft leading upwards from the mess hall has been festooned with alien eggs, which eject facehuggers at the humans. Ripley gets one on her face, but her inhuman strength allows her to rip it away from herself (a strange twist on the similar incident that happened to her in Aliens). Grenades clear the shaft of eggs and allows the crew to climb the ladder to the top, but aliens emerge from the water below them and attack. When Call and Wren reach the top of the shaft first, Wren talks her into giving him her gun and shoots her in the chest; her body falls back down into the water and drifts away. Ripley is horrified, as she has found something strangely compelling about Call. Christie (Gary Dourdan) is wounded and grabbed by an alien, and then sacrifices his life to give Vriess a chance to get away. Wren has escaped the shaft and sealed everyone else inside, but the door eventually opens again from the other side; Call has somehow survived the gunshot and rescued them.Ripley is not fooled, as she knows she saw Call get shot in the chest at close range. She makes Call show everyone the wound, revealing wires and white android blood. Call confesses that she is one of a legendary second generation of androids who were so lifelike that they gained consciousness and rebelled, burning their internal wireless modems and trying to pass themselves as human. The soldier Vincent Distephano (Raymond Cruz) who is with them is geeked about actually seeing this kind of android; Call seems humiliated that her secret has been discovered. Ripley now understands why she feels a kinship with Call; both of them are somehow artificial, creatures that have been created in the likeness of human beings but who are distinctively different.Knowing Call's capabilities, Ripley takes her to a small chapel, where they find a computer interface. Although Call does not want to make use of her android functions, Ripley urges her to take over the Auriga's computer. Call discovers that the Auriga went into emergency mode after the attack; it is now automatically returning to Earth, where surely the aliens will escape and infect the human race. The ship has burned too much energy for Call to make critical mass and blow it, so Ripley tells her to crash the ship. Call blocks Wren from reaching the Betty and makes a sarcastic announcement summoning all aliens to the deck where he is. Call reveals that before the recall, she accessed the mainframe and discovered the plans that General Perez had for cultivating the aliens by cloning Ripley. Her personal mission was to destroy the operation and keep this from happening, as she understands that the aliens will wipe out humankind.When they set out for the Betty again, Ripley is snatched through the floor grating by aliens. Her connection to the creatures comes full circle; they recognize her as one of their own and take her to the nest, which is crawling with aliens and which also contains the queen. Gediman is there as well, cocooned and delirious, and he tells Ripley that the queen inherited Ripley's human reproductive cycle. After laying her first round of eggs, she gives birth as a human being would, developing a strange, uterus-like pod and birthing a bizarre creature that resembles a human being crossed with an alien. This "Newborn" kills the queen and embraces Ripley as its mother. It attacks Gediman, biting off the top of his head. Ripley escapes the nest and races to rejoin the others as the Betty takes off. She makes it just in time, making an impossibly long leap from the deck to the ship. With their pilots dead, Ripley seems to be the only one of them who has the experience to fly the ship. "Are you kidding?" she tells them, "This piece of shit's older than I am."There is final confrontation when Call goes to close the bay door and discovers the Newborn has stowed away. She barely manages to evade it. Distephano comes into the bay and is killed. Ripley senses that something is wrong and comes back to find the Newborn cornering Call. She distracts it by speaking soothingly to it; it trusts Ripley as it thinks she is its mother. She deliberately cuts her hand on its sharp teeth and flicks her acidic blood onto a glass porthole. Her blood dissolves a hole in the glass, depressurizing the cabin and sucking the Newborn onto the window. It hovers there pitifully as it is slowly drawn violently out through the tiny hole; Ripley feels torn between her desire to exterminate the species and the loyalty she feels toward them since she has their DNA. She watches in horror as the Newborn is slowly destroyed, aware that it is dying.The Auriga crashes on Earth and is destroyed. The Betty breaches Earth's atmosphere safely and Ripley and Call look out the porthole at the clouds and the sun, dazed by their experience and wondering what the future will hold for both of them. Neither one has ever been to Earth before. In the alternate version of the film released on DVD in 2003, a wide shot shows Call and Ripley sitting in the hills overlooking a desolate and ruined Paris.

Tags: boring, paranormal, cult, horror, violence, action

Review:
Thinking back, the first three films all had very solid overall stories and well developed characters while Resurrection has a very solid concept but can't seem to build a coherent movie around it.
Ron Pearlman is always fun to watch and makes a good comic duo with Dominique Pinon, but Winona Ryder absolutely kills this movie with her nonperformance.
The effects look less realistic this time out and the score at times seems to try too hard to emulate the second and third films with Goldsmith's original Alien theme being used on several occasions.
I prefer the later performance, myself.The resurrection implied in the title refers to Ripley being borough back to life 200 years after her death for the purpose of creating one of the alien queens, and then breeding the animals for twisted scientific purposes.
I see nothing but whiny, pouting little brats whimpering and griping about little nitpicky details in the movie, condemning the third sequel in the Alien quadrilogy as a travesty and an embarrassment and a pathetic way to end the series.
What I think everyone didn't acknowledge about the film was the fact that it did a damn good job of resurrecting the aliens.
Several people say that the old Ripley was gone, but by the end of the film, she was acting just like the good ol' gal we all know and love.
Fincher had originally intended the film to be much longer and with more character development, but executives at Fox had cheated him out of his own vision by removing most of said footage.Now we have "Alien: Resurrection", released in 1997 and directed by acclaimed French film maker Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
Set two-hundred years after the events of "Alien 3", Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been cloned from a sample of her DNA and must continue her ongoing fight with the deadly alien this time with the help of a group of futuristic space pirates and a mysterious woman named Call (Winona Ryder).
The fourth installment in the Alien Franchise was Alien Resurrection which had Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), cloned after she died 200 years ago in Alien 3.
The reason why I think that it wasn't "Alien" material because there was to much comedy even though the second installment of Alien had some comedy in it, it still didn't seem like it went over board like I thought it did in the forth installment but if thats what the director wanted then thats the way it would be but it didn't fit but this is my own felling about the movie but don't get me wrong it was still a good movie I think it deserved better then a 6.0 out of 10 vote maybe more like a 7.0 but remember this is only me comments..
Ripley has done enough, she gave her life as the final act of destroying the aliens, but when I saw the film I was impressed, Ripleys come back was believable & as usual Weavers performance was compelling.
I can admit that the plot in this movie was not as strong as in the other three and Winona Ryder didn´t really act very well, which can also be said about Sigourney Weaver, I´m sad to say considering the brilliant acting in the other three, but the overall acting was really good, with the performance of Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman.
Amélie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet did a fantastic job and gave us the best Alien film of the lot.I loved the first two, but this was so much more.First, there was the lighting.
With Resurrection, we finally get to have fun with both the story and the characters, thanks in large part to fine performances by Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, and Ron Perlman.
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen (1991), The City of Lost Children (1995)) directs this pacy science fiction-action-horror film set purely in space.
The storyline was a tad simplistic but perhaps that was for the best, with fewer gaps showing and allowing the film to progress at a fluid pace.As good as hoped?No. But considering the impact and flavour of the original film, (which despite the effects looking dated today, it is still the most powerful and believable film of the four) I certainly was not disappointed - In fact I think I'll see it again - Soon.Dan. Actually a great Alien film, just not the one fanboys wished for...
There was never going to be a point in retreading Scott's or Cameron's takes..and after what the studio did to dir Fincher on Alien 3 the franchise definitely needed the touch of an auteur with an inventive vision.I just saw Heaven's Gate after many years of reading what a terrible film it supposedly was - only to discover it's actually a great film...
I hope time is the great equalizer for films like AR..many appalling films get lauded and do very well commercially whilst often audiences and critics don't understand or appreciate certain others because they do not suit the times or fashion..Alien Resurrection is one of those breaths of fresh air that operates on a level above what many so obsessed with the genre are able to appreciate.When you consider how truly awful the AvP films have been this is easily a masterpiece by comparison!.
The previous films, in order, are Alien (1979), Aliens (1986), and Alien 3 (1992).Taking place 200 years after the events of Alien 3, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is now a clone living on a military ship as the subject of scientific experiments.
Shortly after a ship of "space pirates" docks to complete a deal with the military ship's shady General Perez (Dan Heyda), things start to go haywire, and once again, humans are fighting for their lives.Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's series entry is most similar in tone to Aliens, James Cameron's action-heavy take on the alien mythology.
The primary differences are those rooted to each film's place in time--Aliens is a typical mid-80s actioner, this is a typical late 90s actioner--and distinctions due to James Cameron's style versus Jean-Pierre Jeunet's, although in some ways, this is a more unusual film for Jeunet, who has leaned more towards surrealism and "art films" throughout his career.On the other hand, the script for Alien Resurrection, which was written by Joss Whedon (of television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly fame), can be easily seen as more surreal than the other entries in the series, if not darker (the tone of Alien 3 makes it difficult to call anything darker).
Sigourney Weaver was always one of the best things about the series--she presented a deep, intelligent, resourceful character, and in Alien Resurrection, she gets action hero-like physical prowess to boot.
The story is good  for some of the film, turning the conspiracy story up to 10 with aliens being bred in captivity, but after the aliens get out the story is mostly a chase and kill deal and then goes onto some nonsense about a new breed of alien that looks like milky bars!Apart from the visuals and the conspiracy angle this is pretty ordinary stuff, it doesn't deserve to be part of such a classic series.
The performances are so-so, Weaver enjoys the fact that her character is allowed to be more powerful than usual but this doesn't actually make it a better performance, the fact that Jeunet fills the film with the French actors from his other films makes it slightly more interesting but no less average.Just because Jeunet put the guns back into the Alien series doesn't make it good.
Alien 2 was doubly astonishing because it was almost as good as Alien 1 and, as any film buff knows, the sequel is rarely if ever that good.Expectations were high going into Alien 3, the prison planet movie, but the entry was disappointing and for the first time fans started to wonder if the franchise was going to self-destruct.For this reason, Alien 4, Resurrection, was disappointing in every possible way.
The success of Aliens was due to the fact that James Cameron realized that for now only an action movie would do, making a totally different genre of his sequel.
If you ask me, I think this is a good sequel since it flowed naturally from the first three movies: we have the Ripley character and a bunch of people being hunted by the Aliens trying to make their way out into space.
I thought this new Ripley and Alien-queen-in-one was a great find (albeit with disgusting consequences, making a smart anti clone statement at the same time); she was almost like a predator herself, with a humoristic and unpredictable tweak, still keeping her strong character alive that made her an extremely credible protagonist in the first three movies.
It's a ton of fun, even if it is objectively a "bad movie."Two-hundred years after the events of the previous film, scientists working for the military successfully clone Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the queen embryo she had been impregnated with, intent on allowing the alien life-form to reproduce so that they might study its race.
Along the way, she will uncover startling and deadly revelations about the project that brought her back to life, and come face to face with a devilish new threat...Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet from a script by the world-renowned geek-god Joss Whedon, "Resurrection" does so much right that it's frankly a shame it's so routinely dismissed without much thought.
Despite being dead for 200 years, military heroine Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) appears alive, well and enhanced with alien attributes, including acidic blood.The mercs eventually discover that there are other genetically engineered aliens aboard and that the infested ship is headed straight for Earth.Thanks to French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, this third sequel in the Alien franchise manages to stand on its own merits, despite sharing similarities with its predecessors.
Yes, she died in the third film, but writers have found an unoriginal and somewhat far-fetched way of bringing her back, which surprisingly ends up being perhaps one of the most interesting subplots in the whole movie (and one of the only ones too), as it leads to one pretty haunting scene later at the mid- point of the feature.The script certainly isn't the film's strongest asset, as it serves no purpose other than getting the spaceship crew to confront the notorious alien creatures through all areas of the spaceship, with plenty of bloody and gooey fun throughout.
It does borrow elements from the previous films: Ripley develops a relationship with one of the characters that's a bit reminiscent of that she had with Newt in Aliens; there is a lot of action and gun play, just like there was in Aliens; it follows the tradition of featuring a robot character; the crew of the spaceship is composed of a few macho characters that might remind you of those in Alien 3, etc.
Overall, Alien:Resurrection, despite its fundamental flaw of suffering from a linear and quite predictable script that might borrow too much from the previous outings, is still a welcome (yet maybe unnecessary) addition to the franchise, and a technically competent film which profits greatly from Jean-Pierre Jeunet's approach in visual storytelling.
While "Alien: Resurrection" continues the story of extraterrestrial monsters going after humans, there's something of a dichotomy with Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).
It kind of bothers me that people hate this film just because of the hybrid.Alien=Horror Aliens=Action Alien 3=Suspense Alien Resurrection=ThrillerEach of the Aliens have there own unique settings & each of them feature a different Alien,Like on Alien it was 8 foot tall,Aliens Had a Queen,Alien3 had a runner & This movie had a Newborn, I thought the new born was the coolest thing I ever seen.
Not only is she a lab rat, but the doctors and scientist have managed to capture the aliens and the queen and test them like lab rats along with bringing the queen's eggs and experiment human guinea pigs.Other cast members include Winona Ryder as Annalee Call, a member of a mercenary team led by Michael Wincott where other supporting characters include Ron Pearlman as a hotshot gun-shooter who remains a likable for the fans to enjoy.
Because in real life, (just as Number 8 (the cloned Ripley) says in this new film Alien Resurrection), we die.
One redeeming aspect of Resurrection is that it is ruthless and seemed to have good gore effects that were disturbing and were of quality to the first two alien movies.
I seen it a couple times now and it remains just as adrenaline pumped and enjoyably over-the-top entertainment.Anyhow French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet and writer Josh Whedon (best known for penning "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer" TV series and than later on the TV show and movie "Firefly") would definitely change the tone of the franchise with this well-budgeted sequel "Alien Resurrection" as its broodingly surreal visual edge and venomous tongue-in-cheek approach were the signature styles of its creators.
Rest assured, it's a lot better than Deep Rising.So the set up is one thing but the real meat of the film sees these rouge space travellers, of whom include Ron Perlman's Johner and Winona Ryder's Annalee Call as well as heroine of the hour Ripley fight and fend their way off the ship to safety.
Now off to the good stuff Sigourney Weaver potrays the Ripley clone in a different way but It's not bad I especially liked the scene where she founds out about the other Clone experiments failed.
While all of us agreed that Alien was a really good, definitely scary movie -- a real undie-stainer if you're not used to horror -- none of the people with whom I watched Alien Resurrection could remember much about the two other installments of the saga.
From Ripley's weird little body movements into which she occasionally lapses to the makeup and costume design of the human/alien hybrid at the end of the film, this is one visually trippy experience.The cast is pretty good -- with stand-outs being Sigourney Weaver (the ultimate femme bad-ass), Brad Dourif (the weird and crazy alien-obsessed doctor), and Michael Wincott (the surly yet likeable captain of the spaceship Betty).
Resurrection manages to take the unintentionally amusing and laughably patchy Alien3 and come up with a plausible way to bring back Ripley from the dead.Now all those expecting Ripley to bond with a cutesy little girl, strap together two guns or get down with her bad self inside a power suit will no doubt feel let down by the new "alienated" Ripley that manages to be far more menacing and infinitely more interesting than the old one.All those expecting the Marines to kick Alien butt will also be disappointed - in this film they actually manage to do the more believable thing and vacate as soon as possible rather than provide the Aliens with HostsRus. This Ellen Ripley is unsure who she likes less, the humans or the Aliens - she's unsure of what she is or whether living is worth doing.
Resurrection had some good things going for it - not least Jeunet as director - but it's a pity that Dan O'Bannon (Who wrote Alien) did not have more of a direct input..
Years into the future, a clone of Ellen Ripley and other survivors find themselves trapped in an abandoned research ship overrun by the aliens they bred from her remains and try to escape before they're killed one-by-one.This here is an unjustly maligned sequel and actually has a lot of good stuff going for it.
The film takes place in 2850 (200 years after Alien 3)but does not really seem like it actually.The story is about Ripley resurrecting from the dead after 200 years had passed after many failed tries.
Good movie, though there is a few bizarre scenes here and there including one with Weaver and an alien.
Basically a haunted house movie set inside a spaceship (two, actually) full of the eponymous Aliens, writer Joss Whedon scraped the bottom of the cliche-barrel, bringing us not-at-all-lame scenes of people wandering down dark hallways and sticking their heads into acid-burned holes for no particularly good reason (other than to be eaten, of course).
Fans of the Series HATE that movie but I'm a fan and I feel Alien 3 is very underrated and deserves a second glance ( like that David A.R White Film ) In spite of this, Alien Resurrection was made.
An Awful Film With Near Nothing Going For It. Alien Resurrection is directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and once again stars Sigourney Weaver, this time as a clone of Ellen Ripley.
I found nothing good about Alien: Resurrection; even Sigourney Weaver's acting was pretty bad..
All dynamics were stripped from the characters by the poor script, and left the characters as nothing more than names and bad acting.The worst part of Alien: Resurrection is the main antagonist towards the end of the film.
While Resurrection shouldn't have been made to start with, it actually does a good job at being a decent movie entertainment-wise.Sigourney Weaver is back as Ripley, who's somehow resurrected after over two-hundred years.
Not a smart move in part of the Alien movies but I like how the direction was executed.Alien fans shouldn't be too disappointed by Resurrection, it's got some fun action scenes.
The only bad thing about this movie is that after watching you realise that is the end of the brilliant series , but after I guess Weaver is getting too old for this fun stuff.
Two centuries after her death, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is revived as a powerful human/alien hybrid clone who must continue her war against the aliens.Roger Ebert felt "there is not a single shot in the movie to fill one with wonder", later naming it one of the worst films of 1997.
The film, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, contributes nothing new to the series aside from better quality visual effects and a reason (albeit, a weak one) to resurrect Ellen Ripley.
Signourney Weaver, as in the previous two movies, is a standout and brings a new dimension to the character as a resurrected clone.