BEFORE: As stated, I never saw the third movie in the franchise before - so why would I have seen the 4th? Plus I was sort of busy in 1997 and beyond...but I was lucky enough to get all the installments from Cable On Demand a few months ago. I think the other reason I never watched this before was that shortly after its release, some staffer on the Howard Stern Show revealed the movie's big plot twist on air, and I hate when people do that.
THE PLOT: 200 years after her death, Ellen Ripley is revived as a powerful human/Alien hybrid clone who must continue her war against the Aliens.
AFTER: Well, actually there were many more plot twists than the "big one" I knew about - but it was still disappointing to have a big reveal in the film, and for me to know about it in advance.
And I'm not talking about Ripley's death, either - since "Resurrection" is part of the title, and the movie is set 200 years after the last one, I don't think I'm giving anything away by pointing out that Sigourney Weaver's character died at some point, and this movie figured out a way to bring her back. Though the process and the result tend to lead to a number of new questions...
For one thing, I'm not sure that the cloning process seen in this film would (or should) work as depicted. And since the other word in the title is "Alien", it stands to reason that the Aliens will be making another appearance, whether you believe in the scientific process that makes it possible, or not. No alien, no movie. No Ripley, no movie, so let's just take those things as a given, and move on...
The Company that Ripley used to work for, the one that she tried to prevent from gaining control of an Alien - is long gone. But in its place is a sort of mega-military-industrial complex (the kind that LBJ warned us about...) with a very similar motive: obtain alien, study alien, try not to die in the process. Good luck with that, guys.
The new-and-improved Ripley clone has super-strength, acid blood, and considers herself the "mother" of the new Alien Queen. Unfortunately this makes her very ambivalent throughout the film about her old motives: find alien, kill alien. Now she's got this weird kinship/empathy with them that trips her up and slows her down.
So, it's up to a ragtag group of space pirates - sorry, cargo ship crew members - to find, locate and destroy, while the aliens are trying to do the same to them. Hmmm, where have we seen this plotline before? Oh, yeah, every other film in the franchise. (and why do they always have to be so "ragtag"? Can't anything in movies be accomplished by a group of well-equipped, similar-minded over-achievers?)
And once again, the storyline remains open for yet another sequel - God, it would be so EASY to pick up on the obvious hints at the end of this movie as to what the next step in the battle between humans and Aliens would be...but no, the franchise got pulled into a completely different direction. Sometimes I wish that when a film franchise has four films with four different directors, they would just get together for coffee and compare notes or something. Just so there would be a little bit of continuity, and one director could tee up the storyline for the next guy...
But why does the fourth film in a franchise have to suck so bad? "Superman IV: the Quest for Peace", "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (too preachy with all that hippy save-the-whales stuff...), "Jaws IV", "Batman and Robin", and "The Concorde: Airport 79" - do I need to continue? Even "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace", while more awesome than most other films, might be the weakest of the 6 Star Wars films...
Also starring Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan (pre-CSI), Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya, and Leland Orser (one of my favorite "Hey, it's that guy!" character actors)
RATING: 3 out of 10 cloning tanks (again, it's 4 for story, minus 1 for excess gore)
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