Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya, J.E. Freeman, Brad Dourif and Michael Wincott
Funny story about writing this review - that poster you see up above is burned into my brain. I didn't even need to look it up to know what it was, and if I had even a single inkling of artistic (read: MS Paint) ability I could have made the damn thing myself. See, I got that poster when I went to some long ago movie in the fall of 1997, and it stayed on the wall of my old room at the parents' house for something like 15 years after the fact. Hell, the thing was STILL up on that wall right up until a few months ago when I helped them move. Thus, that image has a ton of nostalgic value for yours truly. Unfortunately, that's where my wistfulness regarding Alien: Resurrection ends, because I think this movie is just a giant miscue on pretty much every level.
It certainly wasn't a misfire when it came to keeping the series alive. We've had the two AvP flicks and two more Ridley Scott-directed films since, and it made a very respectable $160 million at the worldwide box office. It promised yet more mayhem with the same main star who had been omnipresent in the series since the beginning, as well as the BIG COMEBACK (capitalized because important) role for Winona Ryder. More on that later. It had a script by Joss Whedon, a man who makes me scratch my head at the fact that he's one of the two Kings of Hollywood of the moment along with J.J. Abrams. I mean...how did that happen? One guy created Buffy. The other created Jennifer Garner. And now...they're essentially royalty. Whatever. But you get the idea. Everything was here on paper, and people came and saw on opening night. And while some fans of the series consider this to be a fun little diversion before it turned to spoof for the big smackdown, I've never liked it. No sir, I don't like it (/Mr. Horse). On with the show.
The movie starts with yet another example of the Alien series' trademark EvilCo chicanery, as members of the military find the DNA materials of Ripley. And what do they do with this knowledge? Extract the queen inside of her and make a clone. Because that sounds like a spectacular idea. Actually, it's not the dumbest story idea that Whedon could have concocted, as the opening passages of the film actually make a decent amount of sense. The movie has some fun pretty early on experimenting with this new version of Ripley (now dubbed Ripley 8), including watching her punch through walls and dunk basketballs. After all, this Ripley is half human/half alien, with all of the strengths and none of the weaknesses. Once again, Weaver is excellent in the role, and there is hope that this could be a pretty kickass movie. But then...the other characters come into the fray.
Every time I watch this movie, this is the aspect of it that completely kills it for me. It was no different this time. See, the military no-goodniks in the film rely on a bunch of mercenaries to provide them with human hosts for their alien experiments. Folks, EVERY single character in this film with the exception of Ripley 8 is nothing short of a totally hateful douchebag that desperately makes you ant to see them get killed. It's definitely a far cry from the first film, where we had this cool group of space truckers that we were genuinely fairly invested in. It's really a shame, because they're comprised of some cast, including Ron "Earl The" Perlman being his usual gruff self and an appearance from Brad "Horror Movie Gold" Dourif as one of the scientists involved in cloning Ripley. What you need to know is that there's a bunch of dislikable asshats in the movie now, and the bad guys completely and utterly fail to keep the alien project under wraps. Cue running and screaming aboard the ship where this whole thing takes place.
And now for a Lick Ness Monster Side Rant. As previously mentioned, Winona Ryder is in this movie, getting top billing along with Weaver when this one came out. In the online pro wrestling world, a frequent discussion point is how bookers take a wrestler that they're personally fond of and shove them down your throats whether you like it or not. If anyone out there thinks that Hollywood doesn't do this...they're wrong. I don't remember anyone clamoring to see Shia LaBeouf in 2007, but then all of a sudden we were constantly told that this dude was a big deal despite audiences by and large being apathetic to him (big-league franchises be damned). I think this is also the case with Ms. Ryder, and I couldn't tell you why. This flick was supposed to be her career launching point after doing nothing of note for a few years, and it didn't take. Amazingly, she got ANOTHER chance at hitting the big leagues a few years later with Girl, Interrupted, and instead she got totally outshined by Angelina Jolie. For whatever reason, directors were just OBSESSED with making her a star for almost a decade-and-a-half. I don't hate her, but I don't get why they were so determined to make it happen. Oh, and this trend? Yeah, it continues. Taylor Kitsch, I'm looking at you.
Anyway, back to Alien: Resurrection. There's actually a cool concept that the xenomorphs use this time around in the idea that they exploit their genetic memory to their advantage, along with Ripley 8 having a psychic bond with the aliens. It gets brought up whenever the story needs it, which unfortunately means we spend a LOT of time with the group of mercenaries. Most of them get picked off, and we eventually get a twist involving Ryder's character that most people will see coming if you're a veteran to this series. There's also a big finale involving the extracted queen alien and its really, really weird-looking humanoid offspring that some fans think is coolness personified. Me? I just preferred the classic brood queen from the second movie. But I'm the most boring human being alive.
In looking through some of the external reviews, there's a quote from Roger Ebert that pretty much sums up this whole film to perfection: "There is not a single shot in the movie to fill one with wonder." It really is something just how much suspense had fallen to the wayside, even by 1997. Everything about the execution of the first film, from the slow burn reveals to the eerie, simple score to the threat that escalates as the movie goes on, had been replaced by loudness, gunshots and explosions. And not the good kind of loudness, gunshots and explosions that James Cameron utilized, either. The bad kind. The annoying kind. The kind that Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich had made famous at multiplexes in the middle part of the '90s and that had already begun to infect popcorn movies, is well on display here.
Really, though, it just comes down to whether or not you care when it comes to movies like this. Given what we had to work with - a character who had essentially been stripped of everything in Ripley (including most of her memories) being tailed by a group of essentially moral-free human cargo jockeys and their crazy hijinx trying to escape from a military mad science experiment - it's just very difficult to care about anything that goes on here. Weaver has said in interviews since that she would not say no to playing Ripley again if the right project comes along, but if THIS is her swan song in the role, I do think it's kind of sad, because I don't have much good to say about it.
* out of ****. It definitely reversed course from Alien and gave us a whole heaping helping of xenomorph action again. Too bad they did it in the most obnoxious way possible. Avoid this one.
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