Review of Alien Resurrection (1997) by Bill S — 13 Dec 2014

Before this film was released, Sigourney Weaver once said that her character, Ellen Ripley, was going to become a burden to the story. She was, of course, talking about Alien3, but that's exactly how I feel about this movie, which, while not technically as bad as its atrocious predecessor, had a host of problems that dragged everything down.

My biggest complaint is that the story makes absolutely no sense. If you had the patience to sit through Alien3, you'll probably know that Ripley dies at the end, so why on God's green Earth would the writers resurrect her? Added to that, why make the reasons for her resurrection unclear? The characters are quite uninteresting, and even Winona Ryder's character (who's later revealed to be a robot) has much of her potential squandered by a slovenly-written script.

The production values are much better than in the previous film, with much brighter colours than previously used, but it doesn't make up for anything since most of the film is brown. Simply put it, I didn't enjoy anything about this movie, not even the action scenes, and I usually like those.

While it may have been something of an improvement over its predecessor, the end result was basically just a wasted effort that was ultimately made just for the purpose of making a cash-grabbing sequel, while also trying and failing to restore the good name of the Alien franchise.