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All of which seems to have Weaver herself a bit confused. "I don't quite know how to put this," she says, "but I've developed a warm spot for that alien. There's something really, I don't know, sensuous about him. He's kinda sexy."

The Resurrection soundstage on the twentieth Century Fox lot in Los Angeles is fogged in by liquid nitrogen, giving an eerie glint to every shaft of light. Weaver and the rest of the cast--including Ryder and Ron Perlman, of TV's Beauty and the Beast fame--mill around the dank spaceship set in their skintight Army pants, knee-high combat boots, and leg warmers, carefully stepping over alien tails, limbs, and guts. It looks like an aerobics class at the Hieronymus Bosch Health & Racquet Club.

At the helm is Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the latest "unknown" director recruited into Alien service. Like his predecessors--Scott, Cameron, and Fincher--Jeunet had only a few offbeat credits (several TV commercials and the darkly inventive French films The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen, which he codirected with Marc Caro) before getting the call from Fox.

Unlike the other directors, Jeunet didn't speak much English and had to dispense most of his direction through a translator. "We were nervous at first," says Weaver, who speaks some French, "but by the end of shooting, he could yell and curse along with the best of us." Says Ryder: "Everybody always got kissed on both cheeks. It was fabulous."

Besides, it just wouldn't be an Alien movie without a Hollywood outsider in charge. "It's the Alien tradition," Weaver says. "You take a brilliant young director with not a lot of experience, give him a ton of money, and say, 'What's your vision of this crazy world?'"

Directing Resurrection was an $80 million proposition Jeunet accepted without hesitation. "David Fincher told me, 'Run like hell, man,' but the movie was actually a dream to do," he says through a translator. "I realized there's no difference making a small film or a blockbuster. Either way, you're creating a universe. This one just happens to be in outer space."

The first big scene Jeunet shot required the Resurrection cast and crew to spend approximately two weeks filming a complicated alien chase sequence in a 548,000-gallon water tank on the Fox lot.

"Hands down the worst experience of my entire life," says Ryder, 26. "Like, literally. I thought I was gonna die. I had a really bad anxiety attack, actually. We were all pretty miserable." Adds Weaver: "Going underwater with an alien was a fabulous idea. But, man, being in a dark, submerged kitchen with lots of boots in your face and guns going off and everybody's gunk all around can get really ugly."

The underwater scenes actually have a Hollywood precedent. Says Whedon: "Halfway through writing the movie, I thought of The Poseidon Adventure, which I'd seen nine times. Little did I realize how tough the scenes would be to shoot."

Back on dry land on this particular afternoon, Jeunet's goal is to get his cast to react to an alien they can't see. Such is life when computer-generated effects must be added. Ryder and Perlman do their best to act surprised, but Jeunet doesn't buy it.


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