What people forget when they respond to this film is that Alien 3 shut down the series, very deliberately and very conclusively. Not only did Ripley die, but the driving concerns of the series that were set up in the first film had been addressed. So there was nowhere to go but in a radically new direction, and that's what Jean-Pierre Jeunet did. While the first films used the aliens and the technological context in which they appeared to address the question what makes us specifically human, this new contribution to the series is more interested in the question of a possible "post-human" future.

In Alien the enemy was not really the monster. The monster's unique method of reproduction merely served to highlight the "human condition": that we are vulnerable, that our bodies are ill-equipped for survival except in the most congenial of circumstances, that they are subject to violation by organic and inorganic forces outside of us. The idea of being "violated" through the mouth and "impregnated" by a monster is horrible, but that possibility serves to highlight our dependency upon science and technology in order to stay alive (even her on Earth), and our increasing "alienation" through technology from the natural world and from the evolutionary struggle for survival. Ash (the robot scientist) and Mother (the artificially intelligent computer that kept them alive and gave instructions) and the Company (that treats human life as expendible) were the real enemies of Alien. Ripley was a hero because she didn't think scientific fact and material gain trump human empathy (her concern for a cat) and human interests.

Aliens takes the same ideas and the same basic storyline and expands it: more military, more weapons, a girl and a sensitive soldier instead of a cat, but ends on a familiar note. Ripley ejects the threat out of the airlock and is able to escape with her body and her principles intact. This relatively optimistic resolution of both the first and the second film is what Fincher's third film rejected, by impregnating Ripley and killing off the girl and the boyfriend during the opening credits. This time the issue is raised onto a theological plane and the question is whether we can find meaning in a universe where not only are there alien forces beyond our control that can destroy us but that, as a general rule even if there are exceptions, we humans either can't seem to help ourselves or don't much care as we harm others for our own gain. Ripley seems to find meaning in her final act of destroying the alien and herself, thus saving humanity from the careless greed that would use such a monster without regard to the human consequences. With that act, while not all questions the series raises are completely resolved, the series seems to reach a logical end, having adressed gender, reproduction, humanity, science, technology, war, all in the context of defining the human over and against those alien forces that threaten constantly to overwhelm humanity.

With Alien Resurrection, the series starts again, but in a new direction. Sigourney Weaver is no longer playing Ripley, but an Alien/Human cloned hybrid who somehow remembers something of her former incarnation but no longer possesses the same kind of horror of the alien. In fact what horrifies her most are images of her own creation, visions of the technological process that brought her into being. Whereas the first three films aimed for a certain kind of realism, Alien Resurrection verges on the surrealistic nightmare landscape of Jeunet's The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen. What we see may seem silly or strange or skewed, but I think that is because we are intended to get a skewed, or post-human, vision of the human attempt to control the monster, that would seem strange and absurd through the eyes of the no-longer quite human Ripley and the android Call (Winona Rider).

Admittedly, this is a brief and undeveloped defense of the film - and in this brief form it is probably guilty of over-intellectualizing the films, and "forgetting" that the primary appeal of these films is not "intellectual" but visceral -- but I hope it suggests another perspective: that rather than think Alien Resurrection is a failure because it doesn't live up to the terms of the series as Ridley Scott set them up, we should consider the possibility that a "resurrection" of the series may require a reworking of its basic assumptions and style. I admit to being heavily influenced in my opinions about this film by Stephen Mulhall's excellent little book On Film - while I disagree with some details of his account, I think his general approach to thinking about the Alien series as a whole is quite intelligent and compelling.)

Okay, so the first Alien is the best. It always was and always will be. Aliens was an excellent sequel with high tension, drama, action, and Bill Paxton, and the really charming scene where Apone and Hicks are watching with fascination as Ripley straps into the loader, grabs a big carton, and says, "Where do you want it?" Apone (with a beautiful grin, and cigar in his fingers), "Bay 12, please." Alien 3 may have lacked the overall power of the first two, but there we see a truly grief-stricken Ripley, one ready at last to give her own life.

What makes Resurrection pay off for me is Sigourney Weaver's acting. This Ripley is a trip! She speaks in a sly, wink-wink manner, but can as easily rip your head off. Her senses are heightened, and she tears it up on the court. This hybrid Ripley, part-human/part-alien, has red acid for blood, already sees the impending doom, and seems rather amused by it all.

I find it entertaining, sly, even philosophical. Definitely worth a long look.

Okay, I admit that I am NOT a hardcore Alien fan. However, I do like Sigourney Weaver and her versatile talent as an actress, and I love good suspense and Sci-Fi.

This screenplay needed H-E-L-P! The overall concept of cloning Ripley was believable and interesting--tapping into the new development of cloning sheep, which was the current event at the time. And an interesting theme: Mankind and science not learning from the past, blah, blah....

Unfortunately, the characters were just as cloned as Ripley was. Stock caricatures of other better acted performances from films of past. We didn't care about the people who were killed, because we didn't know them. Winona Ryder was miscast and irritating to watch. The most interesting of the bunch were the Aliens themselves: smart and menacing, but we didn't really see them that much.

Sigourney did a fine job with her performance, but the new take on the NEW Ripley was a bit of a disappointment. She started out fine as a strong, don't-mess-with-me-mistah kind of woman, but she quickly crumbled into an emotional wreck whose cathartic breakdowns would've left anyone in desperate need of therapy. It is possible to make a 3-dimensional character of a strong nature while still making them human with compassion and feelings--it was done in the first two Alien films, (and even the third).

On a technical vein, the production design was good, and the underwater sequence was shot well. That hybrid Alien-human was just not very menacing looking. The "pure" Aliens were scarier. The hybrid looked more like something from Tim Burton's "Nightmare Before Christmas." The DVD was outstanding in picture and sound quality, and probably made the film more scary than it really is. Also, the menu graphics are superb. For a blast of a time, check out the trailers from the other Alien films that are included. Interesting to look back and see how they evolved.

One last thing. The end of the movie--anti-climactic. And Ripley's "I'm your mother" (I'm sorry I have to kill you) theme just didn't work. An interesting concept that was just not executed well. I wish it had worked, it could've been an intriguing pursuit for the film.