Alien Resurrection Review
by Geir Friestad (geir AT origo DOT no)November 24th, 1997
Due to a special preview-screening in connection with a filmfestival here in Norway, I was able to see this movie early. Here are my impressions and highly rambling thoughts about it:
ALIEN: RESURRECTION
Directed by: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Actors: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon,
Michael Wincott, Brad Dourif, and more.
USA / 1997
Is there any point in writing an introduction of the Alien-saga? Are there anyone here who aren't familiar with Ridley Scott's nail bitingly good scifi- horror movie "Alien" from 1979, with unavoidable sequels by James "I can spend more money than you" Cameron and David "Commercial? Me? Hah!" Fincher, respectively? I thought not... The Alien-series has always been a good source of income (perhaps with the exception of Fincher's "Alien 3"), so it comes as no surprise that the boys at 20th Century Fox have been working overtime to find a way to bring our-heroine-who-kicks-alien-butt Ripley back on the big screen, so that they can earn EVEN MORE MONEY. Having been burned once already by Fincher's attempt at being even more dark, sinister and moody than Scott was with the original "Alien," one has now come to the conclusion that humor may be a cool way of adding some spice to the Alien-series. One can almost imagine the somewhat overweight producers at Fox sweating slightly in a stuffy, smoke-filled meeting room: "Hey, this horror angle isn't working anymore. Let's throw some weird, offbeat humor into the mix - maybe that'll help the movie sell more tickets? What do you say about hiring that weirdo French guy who did those freakin' twisted dark comedies? What was it they were called again? Delicatessen and The Lost Children City or something like that. Jean-Pierre (they're all called that over there in frogland, aren't they?) will do the right thing, right? Get France on the horn, now!" They did. The result is "Alien: Resurrection."
First a short summary of the story for those of you who insist on being in the know on such stuff:
A handful of morally dead scientists (including Brad Dourif, who geeky movie- fans will recognize as the madder-than-a-bag-of-nuts Dante from "Death Machine") are performing genetic experiments on an old blood sample from Ripley, as well as our old friends - the aliens. After seven failed attempts, they manage to produce a *fairly* normal clone of Ripley, although one spawned from a blend of human and alien DNA. Meet Ripley v8.00 - she's not nice. Or is she?
All of this is going on inside some military spaceship cruising around in our solar system. Along comes the pirate ship Betty, with a cargo of cryogenically frozen people on board, which the scientists need to grow aliens in. Betty's crew consists of a selection of interesting individuals, including Michael Wincott, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon and last, but DEFINITELY not least, the incredibly cute Winona Ryder (there's no reason to debate whether or not to see this movie now, guys!).
To the surprise of no one in particular (except the scientists - of course), the aliens manage to break out of their cell, and all hell breaks loose. An emergency procedure autopilots the ship back to home base - Earth - and our pirate friends now have find a way to get off the ship and blow it up before it reaches Earth.
No big surprises in the plot department, in other words, but who had honestly expected that? It doesn't matter anyway - this is a wonderfully entertaining film, saturated with Jeunet's (where's Marc Caro?) weird and wonderful sense of humor, which is definitely helping raise the movie's entertainment value up a couple of notches.
What makes the movie infinitely much better than its predecessor (Fincher's "Alien 3" for those of you who flunked math in school), however, are the much improved characters. While "Alien 3" had a bunch of identical bald brits lining up to get shredded by the alien, this movie at least has a bunch of highly original *personalities* lining up to get shredded by the aliens. Granted, most of them die anyway, but we're at least able to see what character got whacked by the alien this time, rather than constantly asking "which bald guy croaked now?" This helps the movie a lot.
There really isn't much more to say apart from this. The movie *looks* great, as expected. Jeunet yanked the ears of his old partner and cinematographer, Darius Khondji, to work his magic behind the camera for him again (have a look at "The City of Lost Children" and "Se7en" for excellent examples of what wonderful pictures this man can conjure up). A somewhat surprising element of "Alien: Resurrection" is the ENORMOUS amount of gore it contains. Pretty much anything that moves is shredded in the most graphic and unappetizing ways you can think of. One of the "highlights" is when one unfortunate soldier gets the top of his head twisted until it shatters, spraying, uhm, "stuff" all over the place. Another scene reminiscent of Peter Jackson's "Bad Taste" has one of the characters peeling out part of his brain from the back of his neck and looking at it before he perishes. The producers sure didn't save any money on the ketchup, in other words...
However, this is not a reason not to see the movie, unless you have a weak stomach - this is a great movie. The underwater scene alone is worth the price of admission.
In closing, I should probably add that the movie attempts to build on the alien-saga by introducing yet another type of alien. They fail, however, as it's more ridiculous than scary (I would definitely like to avoid meeting it in a dark alley if I had the choice, though ;).
Still, who cares? The movie is great anyway! Go see it!
Grade: Four and a half Ripley-clones (out of five)
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