She’s back.
Ellen Ripley, alien butt-kicker extraordinaire, returns from the dead and is primed for action in “Alien: Resurrection,” the fourth adventure in the “Alien” series. And back in the sci-fi saddle as Ripley is Sigourney Weaver.
“Ripley’s not the same Ripley,” Weaver reveals during a conversation at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Paris a day after the film’s world premiere. “She’s not trying to save the world or trying to save anyone else.
“This time, she’s trying to save herself.”
Directed by French auteur Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man behind the revered films “Delicatessen” (1991) and “The City of Lost Children” (1995), the latest “Alien” finds a cloned, peeved and emotionally detached Ripley joining forces with a ragtag group of smugglers, scientists and military sorts (Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Leland Orser, Dominique Pinon, Michael Wincott). Together they fight desperately for survival as a swarm of Aliens bear down on them aboard a claustrophobic spaceship.
Weaver not only stars in “Resurrection,” which Twentieth Century Fox unleashed on moviegoers Wednesday, but she also serves as one of the film’s producers.
That’s there’s a new “Alien” to discuss is both something of a minor miracle and a major surprise given that Ripley died in “Alien 3” and the film met with a tepid box-office and critical response.
So what brought the 48-year-old actress back into the fold? The estimated $12 million paycheck, perhaps? Or the chance to redeem the franchise?
“My husband and I live in New York City, and we live very simply,” Weaver says, dismissing the money issue.
It wasn’t a matter of redeeming the franchise, either, for Weaver has always defended director David Fincher’s much-maligned “Alien 3” as a solid, effective outing.
“What brought me back was the script and the idea that the studio was very committed to making a great `Alien’ film,” she says. “They understood what it was about them that was worth doing.
“They held out to find a very original young director. They were going about it in the right way. And, also, it was a wonderful story that let me play this opposite side of Ripley.
“She’s almost a brand new character. All of her senses, her physical being, her mental acuity, her central awareness, they’re all tuned up. She . . . has a very different outlook on life.”
