Alien Resurrection's Messy Making: Up to Five Endings, a Spider Newborn Concept and a Real Basketball Shot

People hate Alien Resurrection, but I actually have it as quite a guilty pleasure, and I think there's quite a lot to enjoy. There's a tongue-in-cheek attitude to the whole thing and an eclectic cast of characters who are all unique and memorable. Behind the scenes, though, things were a bit of a mess. The movie had up to five alternate endings during production, a new one turned up for the special edition, and there are big differences between the theatrical cut and the director's cut, which is the version I'm covering here.

Sigourney Weaver isn't technically playing Ripley this time. Cloning brought her back, and it let her play the part as a human xenomorph hybrid. Alien 3 was panned by fans and critics, but it did so well at the box office that Fox saw dollar signs and pressed ahead with a sequel, Ripley's death notwithstanding.

Fox Scrapped an Alien 3 Dream Story and Brought in Joss Whedon

Alien 3 was plagued by studio interference, so this time the studio gave the director almost full creative control. Fox originally floated a story that made Alien 3 simply a nightmare Ripley had in stasis, continuing straight on from Aliens. That idea was nixed early. Early drafts did include Newt, with the sequel propping her up as the lead moving forward.

The studio was impressed by Joss Whedon's work as a script doctor on films from Speed to X-Men. At the time he was the geek guy, and he was said to be one of the best at writing female characters. You can also see the early DNA of Firefly in the crew of the Betty. Jurassic Park had changed the industry, and just as dinosaurs chase people around the park, Fox wanted aliens to chase people around a ship. In those drafts the ship would crash on Earth, leading to a battle on the planet.

Weaver Was Paid $11 Million to Return as Ripley

After a 30-page treatment, the studio changed its mind and wanted Ripley instead of Newt. Weaver was initially hesitant. She'd pressed for Ripley to die in the last film so she wouldn't be pulled back a fourth time, and she apparently read the Alien versus Predator script Fox had in the works and thought very little of it. But they basically wheeled up a truckload of cash, and she returned.

This was apparently a nightmare for Whedon, who had no idea how to bring back a character who dove into molten lead. He reportedly butted heads with the studio, and in the end they simply said blood samples of her and the embryo were brought back. His Earth endings were set in a snowy forest, a futuristic junkyard, a hospital and a desert, but Fox kept saying they'd be too expensive. In one junkyard version, the newborn drains Call's metallic blood and gets caught by a magnetic crane, then is dropped into a trash compactor and escapes all mangled, before Ripley stabs it through the head with a spear. Even with the scaling down, Weaver apparently loved the script and how Ripley had ambiguous loyalties. Getting paid $11 million, I'm sure that didn't hurt either.

Danny Boyle Came Closest Before Jean-Pierre Jeunet Took Over

Names considered included Danny Boyle, Bryan Singer, Peter Jackson and David Cronenberg, who said he didn't even make sequels to his own movies. Paul W.S. Anderson was also considered. Boyle got the closest after Trainspotting, but speaking with the Hollywood Reporter in 2025, he revealed he didn't want to work on a CGI-heavy movie.

The chair went to Jean-Pierre Jeunet, which came as quite a shock to him. The studio was impressed by his visual style on Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, and I believe it was a solid choice, because the film is beautifully shot and wonderfully weird. Like Fincher before him, though, Whedon hated how his script was directed and shot. Jeunet shot back that Whedon is "very good at making films for American geeks," calling that kind of movie silly and stupid. I don't know if I'd be saying that after making Alien Resurrection. Jeunet brought Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman with him, and Marc Caro worked on storyboards before leaving because he didn't want to work on big budget movies. Jeunet also wanted H.R. Giger back, but the studio declined, and Giger wasn't even credited, which is mental. Amalgamated Dynamics returned, CGI replaced the rod puppets, and the xenomorphs got longer tails so they could swim.

The Director's Cut Opens With a Bug That Jeunet Never Wanted Seen

Jeunet has said the theatrical cut is his vision and sees the special edition more as an extended cut, even though Fox calls it the director's cut. I'm using it because it's longer, with an extra seven minutes. The theatrical version opens on close-ups of Ripley's clones, based on childhood photos Weaver gave the team. The extended cut opens on what looks like a xenomorph, which turns out to be a bug that gets squished, showing how insignificant it is to whoever is top of the food chain.

Jeunet scrapped this three days before the film was finalized. The CGI looks absolutely terrible, and my guess is they cut it because of how bad it looked. Jeunet has said he hates that it's seen the light of day. An unfilmed alternate opening had a girl repeat Newt's line about there being no monsters, no real ones, before a swarm of huge bugs overwhelmed her and a woman in a wheat field. Presumably the bug came from that. Here the line goes to Ripley, and she's referring to the humans: early on, we're the monsters.

Ripley 8, a Scrapped Spider Newborn and Weaver's Real Basketball Shot

Ripley's cocoonlike sack resembles spider webbing, and in the script the newborn was envisioned as an eyeless, spiderlike creature with mandibles. A more human design with Ripley's face was dropped because it looked too much like Species. The number eight on her arm kind of strips her of her identity, and a planned evil Ripley 9 never got off the ground. The special edition also adds a scene of her reacting to a picture of a young girl, which in my opinion works really well, plus Gediman's line that the company was bought out by Walmart. I personally don't mind it, because in a world where megacorporations seem to run everything, the idea has aged like fine wine.

I think the side characters are really, really good here, and after being disappointed by the ones in Alien 3, this takes things back up to the level of the first two. Then comes the basketball scene, where Ripley humiliates Johner and throws the ball over her head straight into the net. That really happened. Perlman has said he worried he'd ruin the take because his reaction was genuine shock, and Jeunet was frustrated that the aspect ratio cut off part of the throw. According to IMDb trivia, Weaver described it as one of the best moments of her life after her wedding day and the birth of her daughter.

The Xenomorphs Get Smarter Aboard the Auriga

Gediman's pen of xenomorphs shows just how much of a freak he is, and I suppose you'd have to be one to raise these things. They look absolutely horrifying as one tries to break the glass. I wonder if Whedon took inspiration from Jurassic Park, where the velociraptors had high problem solving intelligence and remembered feeding patterns. Tom Woodruff Jr. was in the suit, just like Alien 3, and the creature was changed to look scarier, with a longer head and hunched shoulders to make it look more cunning.

Despite being scared, Gediman seems impressed, but he sprays the alien with liquid nitrogen to show who's in charge. That cause and effect pays off later in the breakout. I also wonder if the cunning nature is an effect of the DNA contamination, and Ripley's DNA has made them more intelligent.

Call then uses General Perez's breath to get through a lock, and fans have no idea how she got it. I did wonder if there was a cut plot line, since he and the captain were talking about Call earlier. People have theorized she used a hacking tool that mimics breath, or that he stunk of whiskey so badly that some moonshine got her past it. No one's ever explained it.

Call Takes On Ripley's Old Role

Call finds Ripley asleep and offers to make it all stop, thinking she's doing a good thing by putting this clone to rest. I like the symmetry between them, as both are somewhat natural and go against nature. Ripley lets her go, though, and becomes somewhat of a jaded antihero. The standoff that follows feels like something taken from a spaghetti western, with quick cuts of the characters' faces, and Christie's ricochet shot was originally an unused idea from Jeunet's The City of Lost Children.

I like what Call does through these scenes. She's kind of taking on Ripley's role, trying to get people to understand the danger they're in, just as Ripley's warnings fell on deaf ears in Aliens. According to IMDb trivia, the general was originally topless, but test screenings found his body hair so funny that a T-shirt had to be added. Then the xenomorphs turn the tables, sacrificing one of their own and springing a Gremlins style trap with the liquid nitrogen button. The soldier's death is gory, but it still looks well made.

The General's Grenade and a Different Ripley

One of my favorite moments is the general rolling a grenade down a corridor to stop a xenomorph escaping on a lifeboat. He may hire goons to feed people to xenomorph eggs, but he won't risk the universe. Then he reaches back and pulls out a bit of his brain. Fox execs worried audiences would find it funny, but the director was adamant they keep it, and I agree, because 9 year old me loved this.

When Ripley shoots the alien through Frank, I wondered if it was intended as a sort of reverse chest burster. Her line "Was it everything you hoped for?" can be taken two ways, one being the overt sexual nature of this film, which I feel Ripley exhibits a lot more here. It's interesting to see her coming out of her shell, and I don't think the old Ripley would have stolen Frank's ammo. The argument about trust is an intentional nod to Dallas and Ripley arguing over Kane in Alien. I also love the ring light circles in Weaver's eyes, which kind of hint something's off; I'm pretty sure no other character has them except Call in one key moment, when she plugs into the computer.

Ripley 7 Was the Scene That Made Weaver Sign On

Ripley then finds the abominations created before her, and I love the creature design and the body horror. The seventh iteration is still alive in complete agony and asks to be killed, a line from a deleted hive scene in the first film where Dallas asked the same. Weaver played Ripley 7 by putting her head through a hole in the floor, with puppeteers below the table controlling the body. It's repurposed from unproduced Alien 3 scripts, but here it's Ripley destroying herself, and this is the scene Weaver said made her sign on.

Then we meet Purvis, whose stasis pod was intercepted on his way to a new job, and who now has a chest burster inside him. It's like Alien 3, where Ripley walked around as a ticking time bomb, and I do think he's a nice addition to the group.

The Underwater Sequence Was Apparently Full of Close Calls

The water scenes were shot on a specially constructed sound stage on the Fox lot that took almost a week to fill. The water looked too clear, so milk was added to make it murky. The actors trained for four weeks in 15 sessions, and it took 3 weeks to film. Perlman apparently nearly drowned after knocking himself out on a sprinkler in the ceiling and had to be rescued.

Winona Ryder had almost drowned at 12. She would rather they used a body double, but was told it would be too obvious, and she suffered an anxiety attack during the scene. Tom Woodruff Jr. went in wearing a full alien suit, getting oxygen through a very small straw, but from what I can gather the practical shots looked absolutely terrible and were replaced with CGI. In the end, I think it's one of the more memorable underwater scenes in a movie, with clear allusions to Jaws.

Call's Secret, the Newborn, and Where Resurrection Ranks

Call turns out to be an Auton, a robot designed by robots; most were massacred after a recall when they refused orders, but she managed to hide. This plays out in a chapel, which really plays into the resurrection theme. A new special edition moment, where Ripley remembers a girl who had bad dreams but can't recall her name, is just so heartbreaking. Ripley sinking into the nest was meant to look like a Giger painting, which I believe they achieved very well.

I know people hate the Newborn, and the one in Romulus, but I love them both; to me they're some of the most terrifying creatures in the franchise. The puppet needed a crane and nine puppeteers. Ripley avoids its eyes, a rule Weaver learned making Gorillas in the Mist. As it's pulled through that small hole into space she seems to hesitate, and even I felt a bit bad for it. The special edition ends on Earth with a toppled Eiffel Tower, a little nod from a French director.

An Alien 5 set on Earth was planned, but Weaver turned it down as she didn't like Whedon's script, and James Cameron's treatment was stopped after Fox screened the first Alien vs. Predator movie. It's just been announced that Ridley Scott has taken over the sequel; he called Romulus okay and intends to include David. I think there's a lot to like here, and the Betty crew were great. I'd say it's better than Alien 3 but nowhere near the first two. It was the first Alien movie not nominated for an Oscar, but it's definitely not the worst in the franchise.

Where does Alien Resurrection rank for you among the Alien films?