200 years after her death, Ellen Ripley is revived as a powerful human/alien hybrid clone. Along with a crew of space pirates, she must again battle the deadly aliens and stop them from reaching Earth.
The saga continues 200 years after Ripley sacrificed herself for the sake of humanity. Her erstwhile employers long gone, this time it is the military that resurrects the one-woman killing machine through genetic cloning to extract the alien from within her, but during the process her DNA is fused with the queen and then the aliens escape. Now Ripley must decide where her allegiance lies.
Actor Ron Perlman nearly drowned while filming the underwater sequence. At one point, when trying to surface, he hit his head on a sprinkler in the ceiling, knocking him out cold. He was rescued by nearby film crew members. See more »
Goofs
(at around 1h 5 mins) Shock waves travel very far in water. In the underwater scene, every human would have been killed instantly from the grenade launcher shot at the alien. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Ripley:
[voiceover]
My mommy always said there were no monsters. No real ones. But there are.
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Crazy Credits
Many of the creature effects casting and mold making crew. Some long standing, heavily contributing members, were omitted from the credits. Supposedly due to budget concerns. See more »
Alternate Versions
The R2 Special Edition (available on the Alien Quadrology Boxset as well as separately) contains 7 extra minutes of altered and/or extended scenes. As a result, there is a little more character development, but the music has also been re-edited (a bit poorly) in some scenes. Here follows a short description:
The main titles (the distorted shots of the 7 early Ripley clones in the theatrical cut) have been replaced by an alternate opening, which starts with a close-up of a growling alien mouth. As the camera pulls back, it is revealed to be the beak of a fly, that is subsequently squashed by a thumb of a soldier. The soldier uses a straw to blow the fly's blood against a window, which shows that he is actually sitting in a nacell of the Auriga spaceship. The rest of the shot shows the Auriga slowly flying away from camera.
Directly after the chestburster has been surgically removed from Ripley 8, she wakes up from her narcosis, grips the surgeon's arm and breaks it.
In the scene where Ripley is shown drawings of a glove and fruit, directly after Genral Perez, Wren and Gediman leave, the doctor shows Ripley a drawing of a young, blond girl, which seems to trigger an emotional memory in her.
During the meal scene, Ripley repeats Gediman's 'Fiori 16', and he asks her what she remembers. Dr. Wren can also tells some more about the Weyland-Yutani company ("bought up by Wall-Mart")
The 'Betty introduction scene has been completely re-edited and extended. The scene now starts with the Betty flying towards the Auriga, Elgyn giving the clearance code over the radio (E-A-T-M-E), but now he flirts some more with Hillard, and warns Call and Vriess over the intercom to get ready. Next, Call and Vriess are shown working on the cargo, followed by some extended dialogue in which Vriess tells Call an obscene joke. This is followed by the scene in which Christie gets his hidden weapons (which came first in the original cut). Next is Johner's 'target practice', Vriess then throws a tool to his head, Call calls him names, but Johner simply replies by asking for his knife. When Vriess comments on his alcoholism, Johner demands his knife back, Call breaks it, Johner threatens her, and there is an extra line from Vriess that he and Call deserve better company.
During the deal between Elgyn and Perez, Elgyn has some more 'flattering' remarks about Call, thinking Vriess has an eye on her. After Elgyn asks Perez for three days bed and board, Perez agrees under a few conditions (no trespassing in restricted areas, no trouble, no fighting).
After Purvis shouts "What's in-f###ing-side me?!?", Wren answers: "A parasite! A foreign element!" After Call says that Purvis can be frozen and operated later, she has another run-in with Johner, followed by Christie agreeing that Purvis comes, but saying he will shoot him if he starts acting funny.
Just before everyone takes a dive through the flooded kitchen, Christie and DiStephano have a short conversation on Christie's weapons ('the disposable kind'), and Call reminds everyone to take a deep breath.
In the chapel, just after Purvis' fake chestburst, there is an extended line from Call, stating she recalibrated ground level, sending the ship into an uninhabited quadrant of Earth, before she mentions time of impact. After Ripley asks if she's the new a##hole model, she replies she couldn't let humanity annihilate itself. Ripley comments that she once tried to save people as well; she remembers a girl that had bad dreams, but she died despite her help, and now she can't even remember her name. After DiStephano enters to take them with him, Ripley asks Call if she dreams, which Call does thanks to neural processors; Ripley says she dreams about the aliens every night, and that she used to be afraid, but not anymore, since it is always worse when she wakes up.
After Johner kissed Vriess for getting them safely through Earth's atmosphere, there is an alternate ending with the Betty landing on Earth. Call warns Ripley for the military that will come looking for her soon. She says someone can get pretty lost on Earth, and asks Ripley what to do. Ripley replies that she doesn't know, since she is a stranger there herself. The camera then goes up, to reveal a post-apocalyptical Paris.
Alien Resurrection is the most radical departure in the series that has now spanned centuries in its own universe and nearly twenty years of our own earth time. Gone is the meticulously constructed suspense of Ridley Scott's 1979 original. Gone is the heart-stopping pulse of uncannily staged action from James Cameron's 1986 sequel. Gone is the Ripley who cried and fought and bled and sacrificed her own life to save the world from the horror she very nearly unleashed in David Fincher's atmospheric and underrated Alien 3. Instead, we get the all-new Ripley: cynical, sardonic, and ready with a wisecrack or a fist for anyone who crosses her path. Director Jeunet unfortunately seems to bask in self-parody, and this is where the film goes wrong. He serves up plenty of nasty evisceration and gruesome chest-bursting, but by now we have seen so much of the creatures that they are no longer terrifying. Still, I have a lasting affection and fascination with this series -- and Jeunet Alien is better than no Alien.
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Alien Resurrection is the most radical departure in the series that has now spanned centuries in its own universe and nearly twenty years of our own earth time. Gone is the meticulously constructed suspense of Ridley Scott's 1979 original. Gone is the heart-stopping pulse of uncannily staged action from James Cameron's 1986 sequel. Gone is the Ripley who cried and fought and bled and sacrificed her own life to save the world from the horror she very nearly unleashed in David Fincher's atmospheric and underrated Alien 3. Instead, we get the all-new Ripley: cynical, sardonic, and ready with a wisecrack or a fist for anyone who crosses her path. Director Jeunet unfortunately seems to bask in self-parody, and this is where the film goes wrong. He serves up plenty of nasty evisceration and gruesome chest-bursting, but by now we have seen so much of the creatures that they are no longer terrifying. Still, I have a lasting affection and fascination with this series -- and Jeunet Alien is better than no Alien.