Review of Alien Resurrection (1997) by Andrew C — 06 Jun 2012

Five years after the disappointing reaction from Alien 3, another movie was made. Like the other three, this one has a change in director. The original had Ridley Scott, Aliens had James Cameron, and Alien 3 had David Fincher. This time it's Jean-Pierre Jeunet. With Alien Resurrection, the series has been brought down lower.

The movie takes place 200 years after Ripley's (Sigourney Weaver) sacrifice at the end of Alien 3. Scientists have made many attempts to clone Ripley from the DNA they collected from her before her death. Their goal was to take the Alien Queen inside of her for their bio weapons, just like in the other movies. They succeed on their 8th attempt and extract the queen from her. But this Ripley also had some alien powers such as enhanced strength, acid for blood, and is somehow linked to the other aliens.

The military are also using humans to create more aliens. However, the aliens eventually escape from their confinement and begin wreaking havoc. Ripley joins up with mercenaries including Annalee Call (Winona Ryder), Johner (Ron Perlman), Vriess (Dominique Pinon), and Christie (Gary Dourdan), to escape from the ship.

There aren't very many positives to say about this movie. The plot is not very interesting and is filled with plotholes, but some of the ideas in the movie were cool. The cloning of Ripley was a little bland, and it diminishes her sacrifice in Alien 3. It also lacks a lot of the action that was in Aliens. The special effects are like the ones in Alien 3, only that there is more CGI done of the xenomorphs. The Alien Queen also makes a return in the movie, but is not the monster you would like it to be from Aliens. All the queen does in this movie is just produce more aliens to feed on the humans. A new alien is introduced, but we don't see it until the last 15 minutes of the movie, and I don't like that it kills the Alien Queen with ease.

The acting is worse than Alien 3. With the exception of Ripley's clone and Call, none of the characters were really all that interesting. Like in Alien 3, Weaver basically carries the movie and helps to make it watchable. Call is the only one of the new characters that I really even liked. And she does have a few surprises in her.

As for the other characters, some of them are fun to watch, but they're not very interesting in terms of character. Kim Flowers as Sabra Hillard was a worthless character. Michael Wincott had good potential as Frank Elgyn, but his character is killed to soon, like Clemens in Alien 3. Dan Hedaya is lifeless as General Perez. Dr. Wren was an uninteresting scientist despite having a chilling voice at one point towards the end of the movie. Ron Perlman was cool to watch. Dominique Pinon has his moments as the man in a chair. Raymond Cruz as DiStefano was cool, but one-dimensional. The other characters are just there as alien food.

Despite some interesting ideas, it is an unworthy addition to the Alien franchise.