3 out of 5

Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

It’s not fantastic, and a far departure from the tenseness of 1 and 2, but Alien: Resurrection at least understands itself and tries to deliver a fun, interesting movie-going experience, a detail that the the third movie forgot. So Ripley is back after a long time – the plot brings her back from the dead and maybe she’s not completely human anymore. Along with her, some future scientists brought back those lovely aliens, intent on learning from them and intent on ignoring the fact that past attempts to do that kinda stuff have failed. What director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (and Marc Caro and Pitof, who helped with design) does here is play to his script’s strengths – written by Joss Whedon, master of the several character development / light sci-fi / serious consequences plots – by keeping things mostly light and breezy and memorable with some great character scenes – but also remembering where the series started, and giving us some amazing sets, and lighting, and awesome, awesome non-CGI aliens. The plot, by this point, is mostly unnecessary – that the aliens will get loose and cause havok we know, but the ramp up from alien to aliens with single alien to queen is continued here… and we get a new fantastic breed that is all sorts of creepy to look at. Ripley’s character also develops nicely, thanks to that beginning ‘we brought ya back’ hook. And in comparison to 3, where Fincher’s industrial sets were supposed to make us feel dirty and enclosed but instead just made us bored, Jeaunet’s sets highlight the characters and action, keeping it mostly simple (except some key scenes) with some effective lighting direction. So the film isn’t amazing – it’s expected, but it’s very fun, and was probably the best way to juice things up after the previous installment.