Alien Resurrection (1997)

Plot Outline: Scientists on a space ship in the future have cloned the long-dead Ripley and the alien inside her. However by mistake, they have mixed alien DNA in with hers so now she has new powers and an even more bad attitude. A band of smugglers come aboard the ship to deliver some 'passengers' so that the scientists can implant aliens in them. However the aliens escape and start to cause mayhem on the ship. It's up to the smugglers, using Ripley as a guide, to get back to their own ship and destroy the aliens before the science ship heads back to Earth and infects the planet.

The Review: Don't they know when to stop? Alien 3 was the perfect way to end the series despite the negative reviews it was getting. But no, they had to clone out this sequel and made a complete mess of the whole Alien series in the process. This is pretty horrible. It doesn't look like anyone really took this seriously from the director to the actors to even the aliens. Weaver hams it up as Ripley to near-camp level. She was a strong, powerful actress in the other films. Here she seems to be taking shots at her past roles with a silly performance. The rest of the characters are quite boring and clichéd and only Ron Perlman shows an ounce of charisma in a supporting role. They don't get much time to develop and you can easily spot who is going to get taken out next. Solid character actors like Michael Wincott, Brad Dourif and Dan Hedaya are in for so little time, you'll be hard-pressed to remember they were even in it by the end. Even the aliens don't look scary any more. In fact they look kind of funny if you have a long look at them. The big baby alien hybrid in the finale looks ridiculous - did Giger really think his monstrous creation would be turned into something so, well ordinary and cheap. It looks quite stupid and you can't help but laugh at it. There are some decent set pieces in the film but a lot of them are ruined by poor special effects (see the underwater sequence if you don't understand). There is also an excess of gore at times which is quite unnecessary. The original didn't have much gore in but was terrifying. This one seems to pile on the gore to turn it into some cheapo schlock fest (see the aliens attacking the other alien moment). But I can see over this shallow ploy to cover over cracks in the film. It really pisses me off to no end when I hear people complaining that this one is better then the third because it's got more action in it. Since when was this series about action? Unfortunately this film thinks it is and thus we get way more than we need. Probably it's main problem is that it feels disjointed from the original "trilogy." They can be classed as the birth, the life and the death of the alien - this is just a messy afterthought.

Final Verdict:  This is the worst of the Alien series by a long, long way. It's a tiresome, desperate effort to rekindle interest in the series and it fails.

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