Directed again by a French guy (okay, fine, Jean-Pierre Jeunot), the story is set about 200 years after Ripley's death.  Apparently the Company (my, it has real staying power) had gotten some of Ripley's infected DNA, and has been spending the past two centuries trying to get it right.  Er, cloning her, that is.  Getting that perfect mix of alien and human is pretty hard, it seems.  They finally get it right, and even get a little alien critter from Ripley's belly without killing her.

Enter a cargo ship captained by Michael Wincott and crewed by unsavory dudes like Ron Perlman.  Winona Ryder is mechanic Call, and Dominique Pinon is Vriess, another mechanic in a wheelchair, but is NOT helpless by any stretch.  The captain's babe Kim Flowers and Gary Dourdan as Christian bring up the rest.  Their cargo?  The captain knows, but the rest don't, that it's 12 people in stasis.  More on that later.

The Ripley clone is not supposed to have her memories, but has some, anyway.  Dan Hedaya as the general in charge is not pleased.  Always creepy Brad Dorif plays the creepy head scientist who thinks of the aliens as his children.  Aliens?  Gosh, wonder if the Company infected those 12 people with embryos?  Nice people.

Ripley meets Wincott's crew during a basketball game, where she displays rather un-Ripley-like strength, agility, and the ability to take a blow to the face with a barbell.  And acidic blood, too...  Later on Call tries to kill Ripley while she sleeps, which fails, since Ripley wakes up and sticks the knife into her own hand, which wrecks the blade.  Ripley's "baby" is gone, so Call has no further plans to kill her.  Like she'd succeed anyway, BWAAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Anyway, the general decides to protect that secret about killing the 12 people by killing Wincott and his crew. The crew is paranoid enough to expect stuff like this on a regular basis, though, and use their smuggled weapons to blast their way to safety.  Problem:  Dorif's alien pets have escaped into the complex.  Bodies pile up quickly.  Soldiers trying to escape are ripped to pieces by an alien that sneaks in.  The general gets it in the back of his head.  So the cargo crew has to rely on Ripley to get them out alive.  The captain,  his babe and Christian don't survive.  The captain by being yanked through the floor, his babe during a great underwater sequence, and Christian... Well, he carries Vriess on his back during the underwater sequence.  The last alien grabs him.  An amazing stunt by Perlman offs the alien, except the thing still won't let go.  So Christian sacrifices himself by cutting himself free of his friend and falling back into the water.  I get teary-eyed here!  Other dudes in the group are an officer, a grunt, and one of the 12 whose embryo hasn't burst out yet.

The officer shoots Call, who shows up alive at the top of the shaft.  Gosh!  Turns out she's an "auton," or an autonymous robot, part of a series that had shined on that whole Asimov's Robotic Laws crap and acted on free will.  Ripley talks her into plugging into the main computer and clearing a path for them to their ship.  But on the way, Ripley falls through the floor and is sucked into something very black and gooey and Gigerish.  It turns out that there's a queen onboard, with Dorif cocooned up but quite insane.  Ripley's "legacy" to the aliens is a human reproductive system.  The queen gives birth to a skeletal alien/human hybrid that immediately kills its mother and Dorif.  Ripley escapes and makes it to the ship.

The officer goes nuts, and during the standoff, the grunt mutinies and holds him at gunpoint.  The infected dude goes even more nuts as the embryo starts its "birth" for real this time.  He takes the officer with him, though, by holding him into position until the embryo bursts out of his head!  So cool.

They take off, but of course we all know the alien newborn is on board.  It takes out the soldier and almost Call.  Ripley kills it in the most gruesome manner I've ever seen.  She flicks some acidic blood onto a porthole, which opens up a hole into space.  Explosive decompression ensues, which is briefly plugged up by the newborn with its own body.  It then dies slowly and agonizingly as its body is sucked bit by bit through a hole maybe an inch in diameter.  I actually felt sorry for the thing.

The remaining crew arrives on Earth at last.  A happy ending?  Hey, they survived!  Earlier on, though, Perlman had referred to Earth as "a shithole," so it's debatable.

Vulgar, violent and gory.  Not normally my favorite combo for any film, but I liked it, anyway.  So it's not the "real" Ripley, but at least she didn't bloody well die here!