<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Alien: Resurrection
Release Date	November 26, 1997
Genre	Horror Scifi
Director	Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Screenwriter	Joss Whedon
Stars	Sigourney Weaver Winona Ryder Dominique Pinon Ron Perlman Gary Dourdan Michael Wincott Kim Flowers Dan Hedaya J.E. Freeman Brad Dourif
Studio	20th Century Fox Brandywine Productions Ltd.

Alien Resurrection, the fourth film in the Alien series, which starred Sigourney Weaver and pitted her against a horde of hard-to-kill offworld monsters, was released in 1997 to mixed reviews.

Set two hundred years after the events of the film Alien3, in which Weaver's character Ellen Ripley chooses to die rather than unleash a new alien outbreak, this sequel centers around an effort by the United Systems Military to clone an alien using a sample of Ripley's tissue. The sample was taken at a time when Ripley was carrying one of the monsters' embryos. After a number of failed attempts, the scientists find themselves with a 'new' Ripley and an apparently functional alien queen. But matters aren't quite so simple: both individuals have been affected by the cloning process, and there has been a cross-over of genetic material. As a consequence, the resurrected Ripley is no longer truly human. The alien, too, is not quite herself—though this does not stop her from laying eggs which subsequently infect a number of captive human hosts with her offspring. These, predictably, get loose and begin to slaughter the soldiers and civilians aboard the military research station. Ripley and an assortment of freelance spacers are left to clean up the mess and save Earth from the latest outbreak.

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and written by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, Alien Resurrection has a wit and complexity lacking in the third film of this franchise. It draws deeply upon ethical questions surrounding issues of motherhood, new reproductive technologies, and the military's often-callous exploitation of its human resources. Though the movie pales in comparison to the first two films (Alien and Aliens) it can be rated a modest artistic success for its inventive (if scientifically laughable) means of reviving the dead Ripley character, Weaver's intriguing performance as the alien-Ripley hybrid, its focus on the theme of human treachery in addition to the alien threat, and a showstopping underwater chase sequence.