After Ripley's onscreen death in Alien 3, the makers of Alien: Resurrection needed to find a way to bring her back, and here's how they did it. While the number of kickass female movie heroes grows every year, one of the pioneers of the art form was Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in the Alien franchise. Ripley didn't start off as a stone cold badass, but she did still manage to defeat the Xenomorph all by herself in the original film, then returned to go bug hunting alongside space marines in Aliens.
Ripley was emotionally damaged by the loss of Newt and Hicks early in Alien 3, but eventually got back into fighting shape, shaving her head and once again taking down Xenomorphs. At the end of Alien 3, though, Ripley opted to take her own life instead of allow the evil Weyland-Yutani corporation to harvest the Xenomorph Queen embryo growing inside of her thanks to a facehugger. It's rare that suicide is the most courageous option, but in this case, it was.
With Ripley dead, one assumes the original plan was for 1992's Alien 3 to be the final film in the Ridley Scott-created franchise. Yet, nothing with a following ever stays dead in Hollywood, and 1997 saw the arrival of Alien: Resurrection, written by Joss Whedon before everyone knew who he was. As its subtitle implies, Resurrection needed to drag Ripley out of her grave, and the way Fox went about it proved to be more than a bit strange.
How Alien: Resurrection Brings Ripley Back From the Dead
Thankfully, Alien: Resurrection's script doesn't invent some laughable way to somehow undo Ripley's very definitive death in Alien 3. The story does, however, find a way around this hurdle. Instead of bringing back the original Ripley, Alien: Resurrection saw a military scientist conduct DNA cloning experiments to try and make a new Ripley, with the goal of cloning the Xenomorph Queen embryo as well. The version of Ripley viewers follow for the majority of Alien: Resurrection is actually the eighth attempt at cloning Ripley, and while the scientists were able to retrieve the Queen as a baby chestburster, Ripley 8 was also kept alive for further study, which of course backfires later on the bad guys.
This version of Ripley is decidedly different from human Ripley, as defects in the cloning procedure led to Ripley and the Queen's DNA mixing together. Thus, this new Ripley has superhuman strength and speed, and also possesses much of the knowledge and abilities of her old human self. This bonded DNA leads Ripley 8 to have a bizarre relationship with both the Queen that was taken from inside her, and the oddly changed newborn Xenomorph the creature gives birth too. Ripley 8 ends the film by making it back to Earth, but a planned sequel never happened, partially due to Alien: Resurrection not performing well at the box office.