Review of Alien Resurrection (1997) by Halfwelshman — 01 Aug 2012

The only real praise I can give the fourth instalment in the Alien series is that after re-watching it, it's not quite as bad as I remembered it. It's not quite a bad film, but is incredibly mediocre, with lazy plotting, a sub-par script (from the usually immaculate Joss Whedon) and paper-thin characters.

The aliens look better than they ever have, however, and Dominique Pinon and Ron Perlman give good performances, along with some first-class hamming from Brad Dourif. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's usual post-apocalyptic steampunk aesthetic style should be well-suited to the Alien universe, but though it's striking, it sometimes comes across as a poor imitation of the work of Terry Gilliam or series mastermind Ridley Scott.

Tragically, for the first time in the series, Sigourney Weaver looks bored, the passion for the role as Ripley having completely left her eyes, likely due to the ridiculousness of the character's resurrection in this film.

Winona Ryder is also pretty awful, woodenly delivering her dialogue and unable to convey any kind of emotion, and the predictable twist involving her character does not make up for this lacklustre performance.

Resurrection commits its worst atrocities in the final ten minutes, which are truly moronic, and succeeds only in completely castrating the alien threat and removing all menace and jeopardy. While a couple of scenes work (the sequence where multiple aliens hunt down survivors underwater is thrilling, and Ripley's shocking discovery in an abandoned science lab is an effective moment of pathos), a criminal amount of the film's runtime feels like it has been copied from earlier Alien instalments, or pasted from other unfinished projects - a telltale sign of Resurrection's troubled production.

With such talent behind a project like this, the final film should be much better, but at least it provided Whedon with inspiration for a far more satisfying future project - the uninspiring rag-tag crew of space pirates we follow in this film were developed into the wonderful cast of characters in Firefly, and that is something to be truly thankful for.