Retrospective Review: 'Alien: Resurrection'

My trek through the Alien Anthology nears its end with my Retrospective Review of Alien: Resurrection. My remaining Alien reviews for the week include a Throwback Thursday Review of Prometheus and a review of Alien: Covenant which should be uploaded in the next couple days.

'Alien: Resurrection' Review

Alien: Resurrection takes place 200 years after Ellen Ripley sacrificed herself to prevent another alien outbreak. Scientists at space station Auriga have successfully created a clone of Ripley along with the alien queen embryo inside her, with plans to breed and militarize the Xenomorph spawn. The Betty, a freighter hauling mercenaries and unconscious human cargo, arrives at the installation and things go awry as the aliens escape, prompting yet another extraterrestrial engagement.

Alien: Resurrection was another desperate attempt to prolong the Alien franchise after Alien 3 supposedly wrapped things up. Jean-Pierre Jeunet took over the helm as director while Joss Whedon penned the screenplay (it's crazy to imagine that this is where the writer-director of The Avengers was just beginning). From those two differing creative voices, it's not too surprising that Resurrection wound up tonally conflicted. Jeunet wanted to take things seriously like Alien, while Whedon was going after a more lighthearted affair akin to Aliens.

Those two clashing perspectives doomed the project from the start because the kindest thing I can say about Resurrection is also probably the worst. Resurrection is one of those middling movies that's so bad that it's good. You'll find it difficult to keep a straight face amidst the most outrageous, absolutely absurd situations occurring onscreen.

Whedon had actually originally written the script to be quite different with a cloned teenage Newt (the young girl from Aliens) as the lead but somehow Sigourney Weaver was brought back around and she was forced into the narrative. On that note, I find the decision to clone Ripley for the purposes of breeding an alien army to be nearly as idiotic as the multiple attempts to revive dinosaurs in the Jurassic Park flicks. If you're an intellectual aware that there have been at least three incidents involving Xenomorphs that left practically no survivors, why in the world would you try to make more of them? I understand the characters' greed outweighed their logic but it's really just a cheap ploy to bring back another alien, otherwise these movies couldn't happen (and in this case it probably shouldn't have). And it didn't help the film that the French director didn't speak a lick of English, I can imagine how much of a logistics nightmare this project must have been based on that fact alone. You can tell that Jeunet had a tough time directing and the creative clash behind the scenes because everything's so tonally inconsistent.

The talented ensemble don't ooze an ounce of charisma and are really just playing hollow caricatures rather than fleshed out characters. Whedon's dialogue would probably sound better if it were coming from more charismatic actor but the straight-panned dialogue delivery slaughters the intent.

Even Sigourney Weaver is bad in this movie, playing an over-the-top sex-driven freak rather than the badass heroine we've come to love. Weaver's Ripley 8 is only a shadow of her former self and I unfortunately could not bring myself to care about her character in the slightest. The basketball scene's more than enough to drive home my point (if you've watched Resurrection, you'll know what I mean). Winona Ryder goes a bit too far in the robotic direction as the android engineer Call, resulting in one of her worst performances I've ever seen. Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, and Kim Flowers fill out the remains Betty crew members as the disabled doofus Dom Vriess, ill-tempered Ron Johner, cold blooded Gary Christie, cocky captain Frank Elgyn, and the sexy Sabra Hillard. Each actor strings out a one-note performance with their hollow vessels, failing to add an ounce of interest. 

While I've brought up plenty of negatives, I actually found a COUPLE improvements from Alien 3. For starters, the Xenomorphs actually looked menacing as they should when they appeared. Although they pop up far too often to be an effective tool, it's much better than the effects atrocity in Alien 3. The production design matched the Alien aesthetic and let itself well to everything occurring onscreen. There's also an underwater sequence that was fairly delightful and thrilling that I quite enjoyed.

Other than those few worthwhile elements, there's not really any other positive things I can say. The score composed by John Frizzell honors his namesake as a frantic, frizzled mess of music but doesn't mesh well with ongoing events and the monstrosity that is "The Newborn" is one of the worst looking creatures I think I've ever laid eyes upon. I have no idea why that was ever perceived to be frightening by a studio exec, especially considering that they had one of the most horrifying cinematic creatures at their disposal. Alien: Resurrection aimed to restore the franchise, but wound up driving the Alien Anthology further into its grave.

Film Assessment: F