In Defense of "Alien: Resurrection"

“There's a monster in your chest. These guys hijacked your ship, and they sold your cryo tube to this... human. And he put an alien inside of you. It's a really nasty one. And in a few hours it's gonna burst through your ribcage, and you're gonna die. Any questions?”

 

When I was younger, a sequel to a film meant one thing: More.

More adventures with Marty and Doc, more terminators and aliens, more stars and space (final frontiers and wars), more weapons that are lethal, to infinity and beyond ‘Thunderdome’.  You get the idea.

In the 90’s with Hollywood when they think sequel, they also think: More.

More money!  Because of this you get a much different teen wolf, a worse karate kid, one too many Godfathers, and the worst Batman ever.

And as of late the third and fourth films of a series seem to be the death nail of said series like the ‘please no more’ adventures of Jack Sparrow, Neo and his tired bullet-time pals, the taming of John McClane, and more Jason and Shrek movies you can shake a stick at.

But as movies are subjective, a case can be and usually is made for why a film series hasn’t died, but got better.  I will admit the film I’m about to discuss does not fall in that category, it does however warrant a defense.  This is where I begin to talk about “Alien: Resurrection”.

Released in 1997 when the few aliens in sci-fi we had was action and comedy-centric as in “M.I.B.” and “The Fifth Element” or super serious like in the brilliant “Contact”.  Being a sequel “Alien: Resurrection” was held to a standard that almost had to be followed and with the success of James Cameron’s “Ailens” and flop of David Fincher’s “Alien 3” “Resurrection” had a lot to live up to at the same time a lot to make up for.

The story takes place 200 years after the events in “Alien 3” scientist on a space station have cloned Ellen Ripley and in turn resurrect the acid-blood alien species.  A rag-tag crew, who has brought human hosts aboard to be infected unbeknownst to them, get stuck as aliens break free and all hell breaks loose and they have to trust the unstable Ripley clone to help get them off the ship before they all die.

First the bad, this film was really miscast, from the loud and awkward performance by Dan Hedaya, the non-captain like Michael Wincott and Winona Ryder who plays it like a whiny teen with a twist that feels only slightly more like a whiny teen.  And more importantly than all of the casting missteps, another director should have been hired that understood the uniqueness and humor of a Joss Whedon script.  Maybe the original choice of Danny Boyle would have made it work.  Don’t get me wrong Jean-Peirre Jeunet made some good stuff, see “Amelie” and “City of Lost Children”.  He just didn’t fit this franchise.

Since I mentioned Whedon, time to talk about the good.  The story is bold, jumping 200 years and not explaining why cloning takes so long in this future, and why so many aliens need to be hatched and studied.  But we get to see aliens chase people with guns, which we missed since “Aliens” and it almost worked all the way with the crew of the Betty who slightly foreshadow of the crew of Serenity.  We get shades of Zoe and Jane with Kim Flowers and Ron Perlman as Johner, who has one of the best scenes as he faces off against a spider.  This film has aliens swimming underwater, basketball, a chest-bursting scene that plays like a crazy horror movie, Brad Dourif torturing aliens, which lead to a clever escape, and the clone Ripley played very animal-like by Sigourney Weaver still really works as a character and the centerpiece of the film.

Now I wouldn’t put this in the class of the first two “Alien” films but it’s far better than “3” and while not as beautiful as the semi-quasi follow-up/ prequel thingy that is “Prometheus” it’s still a fun watch, mainly because after seeing just about everything Joss Whedon has done, I can imagine how the lines in the film should have been read and see the winks and plays on stereotypes that are attempted in “Alien: Resurrection”.  That’s how I watch it now with, Whedon-goggles, trust me its way better than enduring those God-awful A.V.P. films.   Though I’m still not too sure which hybrid alien is worse.

--Robert L. Castillo