Around this time are the 30th and 20th
anniversaries of Predator, the ultimate oiled-up machismo action romp, and
Alien Resurrection, which is a…thing, respectively. So guess which one I’ve
decided to showcase today!
I’ll use this as an excuse to first of all talk about my
relationship with the Alien franchise—ever since first seeing the sleek,
inhuman, and classically phallic visage of the titular terror as a child, it’s
certainly been one that’s stuck with me. Despite all the innumerable spinoffs,
videogames, comics, books, and no doubt disturbingly designed toothbrushes to
come off it, the first two movies are indelible classics for me. Alien might
feel a bit of a slow burner for modern audiences, and we can chuckle at DOS
interfaces OF THE FUTURE, but the atmosphere and tension that builds up is
great, and I love the last parts of Sigourney Weaver as Ripley rushing through
steamy, flickering corridors in panic. Aliens is one my all time favorites,
combining amazing technical design, amazingly memorable characters and
dialogue, and one of the most fuck-yeah grin inducing final confrontations. You
can’t go wrong with desperate battles of survival in the dark grimy mechanical bowels of a cyberpunk future against biological killing machines.
And then…there’s the rest. Alien 3, to me, isn’t as bad as
some make it out to be, but not the underappreciated masterpiece others insist
it is in turn. It’s alright, but could’ve been better, with a much less
memorable cast of mostly indistinguishable shaved cockney convicts, and mangled
creature effects. Not everyone liked the flippant way it dealt with most of the
cast from Aliens, and I must admit it rubs me the wrong way at first. But, the
final scene of Ripley tossing herself into a vat of metal to finally end the
threat is an enduring one, and I give props to the filmmakers for having the
balls to try and end it then and there.
Boy, were they schmucks! Even though Sigourney wanted it
done with, seven years later, a huge dump truck of money was driven to her
house, and Hollywood decided to cough up the most awkward sequel since Saving
Private Ryan 2: Privates Harder. On board we have French director Jean-Pierre
Juenet, who after this promptly swore off Hollywood, and Joss Whedon as one of
the writers. The Whedon-ness definitely shines through, and it either helps the
movie or drives it down further, depending on how you feel (I’m mixed on
Joss—never got into Buffy but I liked Firefly, so eh).
The film starts off two hundred years after Alien 3, and has
to answer the burning question of how the star of the series got back after
being turned into something less than crispy leftovers last time. And said answer
is—erm, er, pfftt, something something cloning. It seems a military
organization somehow obtained Ellen Ripley’s DNA, maybe from a hair particle or
something, and at the same time, the DNA from the alien gestating inside her
fused with that, because…because…Joss wills it, I guess.
As such, said military gets to work extracting that slippery
multi-jawed monster from a clone of Ripley, because of course, they need its
species as a weapon. Now why an advanced armed force 300 years in the future would
need a slavering, inhumane, barely controllable abomination for weapons in
place of missiles, drones, and spaceships is something that’s…actually, when we
see the competence of this military later it makes perfect sense, never mind. At
least when the Weyland-Yutani conglomerate of the last movies tried that, you
could chalk it up to corporate coke snorting.
The military
project is lead by Dan Hedaya as General Perez, whose character is obviously
himself an alien, namely a semi-shaved wookiee, judging by the huge tufts of hair on
his shoulders, and Brad Dourif as a crazed scientist. How crazed? He likes to
try and kiss the creatures they thusly spawn on the glass of their pens,
because…because…well, the director has his kicks I guess. In any case, their
research ship is soon visited by a motley crew of space mercenaries and
oddballs on a rusty ship doing odd jobs for them—sound familiar? Here’s where
the Whedon comes in.
I’m not even kidding, it really is basically a
proto-Serenity we’re seeing here. There’s the smartass captain, the even more
smartass female first mate, the big dumb guy with guns (played by Ron Perlman, who
brings his awesome presence and awesome chin everywhere), the oddball one, and
the mysterious, not very talkative young woman (played by Winona Ryder, it
being the 90s). Here, however, they’re mostly a group of idiots who drink too
much and smuggle weapons onto a military ship for vague reasons, but they’re in
good company as we’ll find.
Soon they get introduced to our new Ripley, who, far from
being the ordinary shipping worker thrust into being the only one able to stand
up to the horrible extraterrestrial monster threat as she was, is now a
genetically enhanced hybrid who bleeds acid and is really good at basketball. Because
of course she is. Here, we get used to the rather jerky camerawork, which
insists on sticking fisheye lenses into people’s faces, so we can get a good
look up their nostrils. I’m not sure I like the careful, dark cinematography of
Scott or Cameron replaced by Tonsilvision.
Eventually, of course, the aliens break out, and the
response of the military garrison is to just run away to the escape pods. I
guess they were trying to avoid the fate of the Colonial Marines from Aliens, but
you’d think some advances and countermeasures would’ve been made since then.
Nevertheless, most of them all die hilariously, especially the general, and the
Proto-Firefly cast has to team up with Ripley to make their way through the bowels
of the ship while being stalked by slimy critters.
I’ll give this film some credit, the scene where the group
has to swim through a flooded section of the ship while being chased by the
aliens is actually kind of cool, actually employing some nice tension and a
setting we haven’t seen before. It’s offset by what come next, namely a scene
on a ladder where a guy fails to kill an alien at point blank range on account
of it just jerking it’s head to the side a bit, but at least it’s something. Another
genuinely effective scene is where Ripley discovers her failed and malformed
clone prototypes—it’s all nice and grotesque, and gives what little character
she has it’s moment.
Eventually, we get near the climax, where we’re hit by two
shocking twists—namely, that Ryder, with whom Ripley has been the closest to
through the movie is actually an android, and that Brad Dourif has given the
Alien queen a humanlike womb because…because…it’s what Chucky would do. Anyway,
said queen promptly gives birth to a new type of creature, one that looks like
some bizarre hybrid that seems to be made out of half-melted cheese. The
animatronics is technically impressive, but dear god is the thing hideous. There’s
some sort of half-assed effort to
make it sympathetic, but in any case, Ripley destroys it by sucking it all out
of a tiny hole in the ship, confirming that it is very literally made of
cheese, and they make their escape.
The film ends with the research ship crashing into Earth
after the characters made no effort to avert this collision course, and, depending
on the edition, the final scene has Ripley, Robo-Ryder, and the survivors
overlooking a ruined Paris, no doubt symbolizing the director’s personal state
at the time. It leaves room for a sequel that never came, after the franchise
got side-tracked with the even more awful Alien vs Predator films, and
eventually we came full circle with Ridley Scott’s prequels. So in light of all
that, how does Alien Resurrection hold up?
Well, yeah, it’s still pretty terrible, but in a bizarre and
disjointed way, which makes it watchable if you’ve got some beer and some
friends to make fun of all the weird nonsense it decides to cough up. There’s a
couple of actually well-done scenes, and it also has Ron Perlman, which already
lifts it above the shitty pile of shakeycam shit that was AVP Requiem. As
films, Prometheus and Alien Covenant were definitely better on the technical
level, but let’s just say I have some conflicting feelings on those ones.
So take that for what it’s worth, and if in doubt, just
stick to Aliens. Resurrection is a memorable mess…it’s structural imperfection
matched only by it’s bullshittery. I’m Roman, off to watch a better movie,
signing off.
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