Resurrection and it's effects on tension

If the story is about a fight to the death for the sake of a fight, then there is no tension around an immortal character because you know he's going to win.

If the story is about the character trying to do something, then there is tension because the immortal character can die and come back to life a thousand times and still fail to accomplish his goal.

 

Resurrection works in horror movies if they come back as zombies or something.

 

Fair point there at the top.

To your second , of course killing off the lead in a franchise will be
bad for it if is final. And Alien 3 is the worst movie in the original trilogy.
Though that franchise has taken on the Xenomorph as the leading reason
as to why it is still around, seeing as they are looking into its history with
all these 'prequel' movies. I am not sure about the comic series though
or its expanded universe.

In the game Alien Isolation, it explores a bit about Ripley's daughter.
I wonder if the comics have an expanded story on her.

 

You didn't actually say the character died, in your OP. Just "I have no son." Maybe the father thinks he's killed his son, when in fact he's only gravely wounded him? That would work, in certain circumstances, if you want the "I have no son" thing to be the cliffhanger ending.

I personally dislike most stories where somebody dies, then is miraculously brought back to life. It has to REALLY work well. Otherwise, death doesn't mean anything. He'll be back tomorrow, good as new? Doesn't work for me.

 

To be fair, the MC's father isn't 'The' villain, just 'a' villain that has a lot of prominence in the grand scheme of things.

He doesn't go to the after life, his soul is captured within the sword he was killed with and his body becomes a possessed puppet slaughtering the villain's enemies in his name.

It as a possibility is hinted at throughout, but never given focus because it's simply the MC and co learning more about how much the Villain depends on his special weapon and how getting it out of his hands would give them a fighting chance. They learn more about the past people who have wielded the weapon in question. But I do see that even that can be considered obvious or stupid.

The resurrection is very costly, aside from how much one character has to go through to make it possible, it completely shakes the MC's confidence and experiences trauma that constantly gets in his way (He is unable to pick up his old weapons, almost ends up murdering a friend because he can't unsee his killer, and even lets a villain walk all over him because "I'm not dying again!"). While also contributing to the rather shitty actions he decides to take later.

The bigger impact of this action is that effects the way people see him as well as being the reason the villain wins in the end. See, many of the other characters don't like the idea of him returning from the dead as it paints him in quite the demonic and sinful light, plus you have many characters asking "So, everyone I care about has to stay dead, but HE gets to come back!?". Contributing towards his final fate where everyone turns against him and leaves him to die alone. This is also because for this resurrection he has a 'Deal with the Devil' type deal that causes his demise later. Now that I think about it, in the grand scheme of things, his resurrection is the start of everything going downhill for him. To the point that the world is basically saying "Everything was better off with you dead!"