Alien Resurrection Review
by M. Webber (MWebber AT juno DOT com)November 27th, 1997
Four Trailers and an Alien
I had a great day at the movies today (11/26). The last time I sneaked out mid-day was when Blade Runner was released. Today was better.
You can always tell if you are going to have a good day at the movies if the trailers are zippy. Today I got _four_ new trailers and three out of four where zippy.
Oh. Before we go any further - Alien Resurrection is _great_. Webbies and reviewers who give it less than 4 stars are science fiction unfriendly. Ok, on a generic scale you can quibble about giving it a full 4 star rating. It isn't the English Patient (but maybe there is something good about _that_). But, if you grew up reading science fiction and horror, relishing the special effects in 1930's and 1940's vampires movies, literally falling in love with the Bride of Dracula (I still fall for brunette vamps), then ya gotta love Alien Resurrection. It has action, it has a likeable crew of rogues, an evil but efficient crew of military and scientific types that would be at home on the X Files (or at Roswell in ID4) in their ability to "do" conspiracy, and it has the most all-time dysfunctional family since Beauty and the Beast (the real one, not Disney's cleaned up "new age light" version) - that's right, Sigourney "I know the Company's not gonna pay worker's comp for this" Weaver and the Alien. It also has some of the most outlandish, and hilarious, marksmanship I have seen since those old westerns. In short, it does homage to the prior Alien movies while carrying the mythos - and conflict - a step further, and closer to home, and while also being a damn good movie in terms of reviving the fun of movie story-telling.
The trailers.
These were trailers I have not seen before. They were new to me but since I refused to get Jackeled, Red Cornered or Annihilated, my last trailers were when I got Brain Bugged and so they may be old hat to you.
The X Files trailer was great. Looks like if they can keep up the momentum the series might make a good big screen experience. Generally I have found the better X Files episodes on tv to be better than most theatrical offerings anyway. The only weakness was the music from the series; they need to keep the theme but come up with something "larger" for the screen. The opening was priceless - just Sculley's voice calling Mulder's name. Audience clapped after it was over.
The other trailer I liked a lot was for Zorro. Yes, Zorro. I kept wondering why those yahoos in Hollywood were whispering that Zorro would be a big Sumer '98 movie and all I could think about were the Three Amigos. But no, this was one of the best trailers in a long time with great stunt work. It is going to take a lot to make "old fashioned" Errol Flynn style swordplay and tumbling translate well to the big screen in an era of big scale special effects, but if any movie can do it, based on the trailer Zorro may be it. Anthony Hopkins looked surprisingly good with scraggly long hair as the apparent mentor of Zorro; or will he be the opponent? Anyway he had presence in only a few seconds of trailer time.
"The name's Bond. [long droll pause]... you know the rest....!" Well, it doesn't write down well, but Brosnan's on-screen delivery of this one-liner in the 007 trailer played very well to my ear when he delivered it. I thought his timing was perfect, and he was droll not Bill Murray/Mr. Bean stupid. The rest of the trailer could have been cut from any number of previous movies. I will go see this movie because the bungee cord jump and tank chase through Moscow last time around were worth the price of admission, and the rest of the movie was ok too. This series is like a ride at Disneyland: it may not make you wet your pants like the old wood-frame roller coasters at Pacific Ocean Park, but you can always be sure a certain level of quality is attained and at least you won't have to wipe the vomit off your back from an even queasier passenger.
OK. Now here's a non-action trailer. Hey, I had to read Great Expectations in my freshman English class (Mr. Flowers where are you?). So I could tell, with my razor-honed frequent movie goer's intuition, that this trailer had to be for Great Expectations based on the lists of upcoming movies and the first couple of scenes. But - no Merchant Ivory period costumes? A modernized, updated Great Expectations? Ok, close your eyes and scroll down fast so I don't ruin the movie for you with "spoilers" recollected from English Lit:
>spoilers coming
>told you not to look
>serves you right!
[Spoiler: GE is about a young English boy, poor, who grows up next to a rich spinster and her adopted daughter. The boy is given an education by the rich spinster solely so that he can be her daughter's playmate, and the boy falls in love with her as they grow up together. But, he isn't good enough for her, according to the rich spinster; she must marry well. Sideplot: the little boy during the early stages of things comes across an Australian "convict" set for deportation down under (or something like that) and he helps the convict with bread and water, a change of clothes, then forgets about him. Time progesses. The boy discovers he has a secret financial benefactor who gets him educated and "proper," and he and his childhood sweetheart are thrown together by "chance" again. The boy is therefore sure the benefactor is the rich spinster, who has had a change of heart and wants the two children to grow up and get married and live happily ever after. But HERE'S THE SPOILER it turns out that the old lady all along just really wanted her little ward to grow up to be a man-killing heartbreaker since she got dumped by a guy when she was in her prime. She just wants her adopted daughter to rake revenge on the male species for her. The little boy's _real_ benefactor is that embarrassing (in Victorian England) social leper, the convict, who has grown rich in England, respectable, but never had a family or true friend of his own. Guess what? The idiot kid has no appreciation for his true benefactor, and never learns the little girl is _really_ too much like her adopted mommy. A real Charles Dickens' study in character and fate.]
>spoilers over - open those eyes, Dilbert! You're supposed to read the _comments_ and skip the _spoilers,_ not vice versa!
This trailer, non-action, actually got to me - I am a sucker for kind deeds repaid. But I can't guarantee the same for you, I guess I am just a sucker for Shakespeare and Dickens. The two greatest living opti-pessi-mists in the English language. Guess what: Ethan Hawke looks perfect as the boy grown to man. Gwynneth "I-can't-have-Brad-I'll-take-Hawke" Paltrow looks sufficiently elegantly icey, but if it were me, hey, I'd dump her, give my silent benefactor the thanks and appreciation he richly deserves instead of treating him like the hunchback in the attic (in the trailer Deniro looks like Ivan Boesky) and go looking for that cigarette-smoking femme-fatale on the Pretenders.
The last trailer is Titanic. It is starting to look good (but far, far from "Terminator II" great), or else I haven't had enough movie fixes the past few weeks. It isn't Waterworld, and the joke going around is that until the Titanic, Cameron was "unsinkable." (Did they forget the underwater ectoplasmics he did?) Still, looking like a movie I'll want to see, but not at the 11:30 a.m. opening day show like Alien Ressurection....
SHEEEE'S BACKKKK! (Alien Resurrection)
This movie is great. A Ripley that is both more human and far, far less human than ever before (she delivers the goods with good acting; perhaps our only "thinking, acting" action hero). Brad Dourif in his quirkiest role since Dune - and he really shines in his all to brief on screen moments (best lines since Brent Spiner/Data in ID4 said "we don't get out much"). A military commander who is no b.s., competent, and in a critical moment proves undeniably that he doesn't have shit for brains after all. A black, dreadlocked fast gun who really fills the part of the "gun" and doesn't lapse into stereotype. A commander of a group of misfits (where Han Solo would have ended up in a less kind, less gentle universe) who is mean enough to be convincing and caring enough to be affecting. The ugliest, meanest survivor of the group, with big facial scar, who pulls a Magnum PI style smooch that is even funnier than the one it pays unintentional "homage" to.
The universe is in the details. Brief hints of personalities and divergences: one doctor asks another if they can sew Ripley back up, and you don't know if it is out of compassion or a Frankenstein-ian curiosity. A nurse/doctor attendant who, like a Greek chorus, acts like our conscience when she can't bear to look at the face huggers attaching to their prey; and acts as our terror when she realizes that things have gotten way, way out of hand. An Alien who kills its prey with ironic finesse in a chilling scene where death is by remote control instead of the Aliens' favored method of one-to-one. The quirkiest sidekick-victim since Harvey Fierstein in ID4, who after acting Woody Allen-ish, and caring, in a panicked run, shows that when push comes to shove he can take his "hits" - even bullet hits - with the best of them. And still beat the crap out of the bad guy.
What is my favorite scene? Well if you like hand-to-hand combat, this movie has what I would call "ball to ball" contact. Just when you think, "over the head, around the crowd, nothing but air" Ripley surprises us with a move that is astonishing, predatory and - funny - at the same time. Great for basketball fans! (But wear a cup.)
And when I left the movie theater, I felt so sad - for the Alien. Like all little kids growing up in America, I realized when I first saw them that the movies like King Kong and Godzilla, even in black and white on a small screen tv and chopped for commercials, were statements of power for the helpless (little kids in America back then _were_ pretty helpless in front of teachers and police and IBM! not like today), the outsider being beaten by faceless bureaucrats in white shirts and ties, a statement of standing up and fighting back. Then Hollywood realized the same and eventually turned all formerly terrible monsters into secret protectors, secret heros, and all former "organization man" heroes into villains. Alien Resurrection has by no means gone this far, but certainly the Aliens in the prior episodes in this revitalized series were always just inhuman killing machines with no moral entitlement to an "instinct for self preservation." In this episode, though, there is no doubt that the humans are the true aliens ("It was a '_human_' that placed that thing in your chest....") while the last Alien's tortured cry - I won't give it away - at the end is truely gut wrenching.
Ripley is as conflicted, angry and compassionate as she can possibly be - but it never stands in the way of her action. She acts despite her caring both for her human and for her non-human charges. The movie doesn't flinch from the issue of her identity and human-ness when it shows Ripleys 1-7 - she is No. 8 - if she is the most kick-ass Ripley in the series, very predatory, she is also, finally, the most caring and motherly. The most human of all the Ripley's after all, though it took mother love to make her so.
That is what makes this episode great.
There weren't any throw-away characters. Human _or_ alien.
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