When 20th Century Fox decided that, oh wait a minute, they actually wanted to make another movie in the Alien franchise, they found themselves faced with one rather critical problem: Ripley was dead. And who would really want to see an Alien movie with Ripley at the helm? Nobody, that's who. As a result, the studio were forced to come up with a way to bring her back to life in order to continue the series and keep the fans happy (or not, depending on which way you look at it). With a prequel off the cards for obvious reasons, they eventually went with "let's bring her back as clone," which - as far as narrative conveniences go - felt pretty lame. But what other choice did they have, all things considered? Anyway, the Ripley glimpsed within the frames of Alien: Resurrection isn't actually Ripley, but a version of the famous character cloned from the DNA of the original. For Blomkamp's movie, this simply won't do - and he knows that. He has to find a way to ensure that the Ripley in Alien 5 is the same Ripley from Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 - not some shameful impostor going by the name of "Ripley 8" with neat basketball skills.