Inspired by… well, copying the How would you have made Alien3? thread, I was wondering how you would have made Alien: Resurrection.
Personally, I think it would’ve been interesting to have introduced the aliens that we first saw in the original Alien; something along the lines of those other aliens (let’s call them Protoss for now) attempting to systematically wipe out the aliens after they have lost their homeworld to them.
No Ripley clone, no antiquated vessel en-route to Earth for any stupid reason, just an action-packed movie taking place at an off-world Weyland-Yutani weapons research facility.
The only thing i would have changed was the Ripley clone stuff. Wayland-Yutani finds the original derelict ship where the first Alien came from on the planet from Aliens instead of using Ripleys DNA. The rest of the premise wasn’t really that bad, i loved the idea of space pirates selling test subjects to be used on research.
The big key would be to not have Ripley involved. As noted, I really liked Alien3, and thought killing her off was such a perfect ending to her story. Moving on would have been the best thing to do, but noooo…
The concept of cloning Ripley was always kinda silly to me because there was pretty much an entire xenomorph corpse left behind at the end of Alien3. The exterior was covered in lead, sure, but the insides were all there (what didn’t melt threw the floor, at least). If there were going to be cloned aliens, they had their source of material right there.
Although I don’t know how they’d pull it off, I always thought it’d be cool if, when cleaning out the facility, they came across a small batch of face hugger eggs. The director’s cut of Alien showed how a single drone could still create face huggers on it’s own, and I always wondered why the creature in three killed so indiscriminantly and fast, so this could be a easily explained explaination in hindsight. So, the company manages to take what they’ve found and move it to a research facility on a small colony somewhere in space. They manage to create a small hive, and perform some various tests on cloned xenomorphs in hopes of fiddling with the genetic code to create a proper queen that they can use. This leads to a few breeds of larger and stronger xenomorph in the pens.
Then, the military would come in with hopes of implimenting their biological weapons program, start to get things underway, and then, all hell would break loose. Just because I did love that one scene so very much in Ressurrection, I’d leave in the bit with the two aliens killing the third to escape. Lots of fighting in an attempt to keep the creatures from escaping the facility and reaching the colony outside, which would include the discovery of an underground hive that tunnels out from the facility. The end would leave everyone thinking they’ve cleaned up their mess, but the film would end with a shot of a few face hugger eggs far away from the facility on a local farm right by a bunch of cattle (gotta keep the franchise going somehow).
Not that impressive, I know, but it leads to some new xenomorphs and lots of people dying and things getting blown up, so I think it would help “make up” for Alien3 (assuming you feel offended, which I know you do).