Review of Alien Resurrection (1997) by Diego T — 17 Feb 2014

After a near-flawless original film, a great sequel, and a mediocre third installment, the Alien franchise goes full-on anus of cinema with this laughable dung heap of a film that has the incredible power to retroactively tarnish my love of the other films. Alien Resurrection, the fourth (and, at long last, final) film in the Alien saga, is one of those Kingdom of the Crystal Skull/The Phantom Menace movies that you can get PTSD from watching. It sucks the joy and suspense out of the franchise, leaving the audience with a shadowy reflection of what was once the best Hollywood sci-fi/horror series of all time. As much as I hate to agree with Jed Groff on anything... yeah, this movie blows.

Let's set the stage: After the massive success of the first two installments in this long-running franchise, Fox knew that they had to keep the thrills up if they wanted to make sure that this series didn't morph into generic crap. So they piled on resources, money, and committees to make Alien 3. However, as the saying goes, "too many cooks spoil the soup," and Alien 3 was the result: A jumbled and unfocused mess, exactly what comes of too many people trying to cram their vision for the film into the final cut. Also, David Fincher had to direct it and has never lived it down (he's called it a "terrible experience"). Speaking of great directors whose reputations were tarnished by the Alien franchise's sequels: Joss Whedon. Sure, he didn't direct Alien Resurrection (Jean-Pierre Jeunet did), but he worked on the script, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive him for this. After Alien 3 became the franchise's first critical bomb, Fox tried to shake things up with this installment. And this... thing... is the result.

Alien Resurrection takes place 200 years after Alien 3, when scientists have cloned Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, in her last appearance in the franchise) in order to extract the alien queen from her chest. Wait, how does cloning a person also clone whatever parasites were clinging to them? If someone had ebola, and was cloned, the clone wouldn't have ebola. Fuck it. Anyway, along the line Ripley's DNA was somehow fused with the alien's, giving New Ripley superhuman strength, senses, and even the acidic blood that the aliens have. Which is funny, because at the beginning of the film we see the scientists cutting open her chest to retrieve the alien (which, through all good logic, should never have been there in the first place), and her blood doesn't melt their instruments or tools. Huh. It's almost like nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to this film's continuity. Nah, that's crazy.

Of course, as it always does, shit goes wrong and the aliens escape, leaving Ripley and a crew of mercenaries to fend off the alien horde on the ship and prevent it from reaching Earth. You see, for some reason, if there is a problem on the ship it immediately heads straight for home base, which is Earth. How does that make sense? They never thought ahead to the fact that the ship might be carrying a dangerous pathogen? Or a 10,000-ton nuclear bomb? Or, I dunno, the aliens that were being studied on it? Again, fuck it. Among the new expendable Ripley sidekicks are Winona Ryder as the obligatory android plot twist and Ron Perlman as... well, Ron Perlman. Ryder is the only one who actually tries to act in the film, with even Weaver phoning it in and collecting another paycheck. She's the film's only grace note, even if her character's dramatic secret is the same dramatic secret from the first movie.

That's not the only rehash from the other movies present here, though. Everything feels like a dumbed-down, less interesting version of the same shit we've seen in the past three movies. It even goes to the point of being set 200 years later than the other films, and yet basically reuses the exact same sets. Really? I don't know many people nowadays who live in 200-year-old houses and keep them looking exactly the same. You would think that the technology and decor would probably have changed semi-drastically between the first film and this one. But nope. Also, the dialogue is absolutely idiotic, ranging from a terrible voiceover at the beginning which calls for Weaver to say the word "mommy" to the quote "Who do I have to fuck to get off this ship?" REALLY? The guy who wrote FIREFLY wrote this? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHEDON! Get your shit together!

The only good thing I can say about this film is that the special effects have improved a lot over the ones from Alien 3, but since the CGI in that film looked unfit for a Resident Evil movie, that's not really saying much. Half of this movie feels as if it was just thrown in for Fox's makeup and monster design guys to have something fun to do. The failed Ripley clones (whoops, spoilers... not like anyone cares) are just lumps of prosthetics and clay, and the humanoid Xenomorph at the end is probably the stupidest thing I've ever seen in a sci-fi film. Okay, Skyline's brain-sucking spaceships are worse, but this places in the top five. For those of you who haven't seen this atrocity, here's what happens: The alien queen that the scientists got from Ripley's clone (which, again, is not possible) gets some of Ripley's DNA in the same way that Ripley got the alien's DNA. Then the alien queen gives live birth to an alien that looks like a skull. Yeah, you heard me. They made a skull-faced baby human/alien with severe mental retardation that thinks Ripley is its mother. I would have to call that (in the immortal words of Jeff Goldblum) "The rape of the natural world.".

Final Score for Alien Resurrection: 2/10 stars. This movie sucks so ridiculously much, it is hard to quantify in words. I begrudgingly award it two points because it has the occasional good one-liner, some strong ideas, and Winona Ryder. But I cannot recommend this film on any level, ESPECIALLY not to fans of the Alien franchise. Whereas Alien 3 could have been a strong standalone film, this most certainly could not, and would probably have been even less well-received had it not followed up the best sci-fi saga of all time (fuck off, Star Wars, at least there were no Ewoks in this). It is dull, monotonous, silly, campy, contrived, and (most reprehensible of all) stupid. It is... *takes deep breath* ...the anus of cinema.