In a highly controversial move, in 1995 20th Century Fox decided to resurrect Ellen Ripley, the action heroine who perished at her own hand three years earlier. It is in the film as bad a choice for the doctors who clone her as it was for the executives who decided to bring her back to the screen. Oddly enough, the non-english speaking director Jean Pierre Jeunet was brought in to direct.
Jeunet was given free licence with Joss Whedon’s script, changing it drastically to make the Newborn more a perverse baby than Whedon’s demonic translucent nightmare. In fact, most of his contributions seem to involve the inclusion of visual setpieces at the sake of atmosphere. And yet, it is his whimsical style that leads to some of the more memorable scenes in the film; the elegant opening sequence, the simultaneously horrifying and fascinating scene in which Ripley encounters her failed predecessor dying in agony, and the beautiful ethereal birth sequence. Sadly, though, they remain independent scenes and the film itself is a confused jumble of ideas and setpieces that don’t hold together.
