> Not a fan of Resurrection, though.

Resurrection is just not a good movie. It's too tonally jarring, and took a lot of talented people and put them in a place where they weren't working to their strengths. The took a talented French arthouse film director and tried to have him make a boilerplate sci-fi film. And then they took a comedic writer and tried to have him write a serious science fiction script.

So what you have is basically an Alien film that is bizarre in both its aesthetic and its plot, trying too hard to be clever and funny while still trying to remain horrific. Cast with a bunch of fairly good actors who all seem to think they are in different movies.

Alien 3 is a flawed film from a great visionary director like David Fincher, and as much as Fox screwed with him and the production, sending him into shooting with a film where the sets were already half finished, but the script was still being changed, you can see David Fincher's directorial vision stamped all across it.

Resurrection has this weird mishmash of Jean Pierre Jeunet (Amelie, City of Lost Children, Delicatessen) trying to direct a film written by Joss Whedon (at the time, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and rewrites for Speed, Toy Story and Waterworld), as a sequel to a franchise that was dark and horrific body/creature horror set in a bleak corporate future. Whedon's script not only abandoned the bleak corporate future (there's a deleted scene joke about Weyland Yutani, the company from the first three films, having been bought out by Walmart), Jeunet seemed to struggle with the "dark and horrific" part. About the only part of the film that seemed "on brand" is the fairly great scene where she comes across the other Ripley clones. It's the one part of the film where there are no attempts to cram in a joke, a visual gag, or be anything other than horrific, and Jeunet's flair for the bizarre actually helped the film rather than hurt it.

The main reason some Alien fans hate Alien 3 is they never got over Noot and Hix dying in the opening scene. Otherwise, the Assembly Cut (later remastered as the "Special Edition") is a fantastic character piece about sacrifice and redemption. That original ending where she just falls into the molten lead and the Alien isn't born is incredibly powerful, ruined completely in the theatrical release with a chestbursting scene that removes the sacrifice element. The score by Eliot Goldenthal is top notch too, probably the best of the franchise.