RETRO REVIEW: Alien: Resurrection (1997)

Directed by Jean Pierre-Jeunet.

Written by Joss Whedon.

Starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Michael Wincott, J.E. Freeman, Dan Hedaya and Brad Dourif.

R, 109 minutes.

Alien: Resurrection shouldn’t exist. While one can debate whether there’s an inherent need for any sequel, this fourth go-round at the Alien film series adds absolutely nothing of interest to justify the venture.

Two hundred years after the conclusion of Alien 3, scientists have cloned Ripley from DNA samples. This process allows them to cultivate a queen Xenomorph, which was growing inside her prior to her death at the end of the last movie. Meanwhile, a mercenary vessel, The Betty, arrives at the space station where this is all going down, bringing “frozen” humans about to serve as hosts to create more aliens. Chaos ensues.

Each of the preceding three Alien films bear remarkable shifts in tone and Resurrection is no different. Many times it feels as if the movie is having a go at its audience, a parody of itself and the entire series, yet not in a good way. The harsh “tough guys saying tough things” dialogue that populated Aliens, and a little bit of Alien 3 as well, is duplicated here to the point of forced banality. The atmospheric musical choices in the first scene homage a motif of Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien score, only to ruin the morbid anticipation such music inspires with the bizarre image of a not-fully developed Ripley clone. Speaking of Alien, the sexual anxieties inherent in the production design of that film are reduced to a laughable extreme, best demonstrated with Brad Dourif’s scientist seductively goading Aliens through glass and Ripley ripping out the phallic inner mouth of one and handing it to Winona Ryder’s character, Call, “as a souvenir.”

While this comedic intent is established up to a point, not once is it ever done in an interesting manner or to highlight certain shortcomings in the earlier films like, say, Gremlins 2: The New Batch does. What we’re left with is a dull mixture of exaggerated camera movements, monochromatic environments and cookie-cutter characters who only exist for the explicit purpose of being offed in needlessly gruesome fashion at a rapid-fire pace.

Making matters worse, series mainstay Sigourney Weaver is asked to play a character with nothing in common to the one that made her famous. It’s a horrible, thankless role. A shell of the strong heroine we’ve come to love, this Ripley is a surly nightmare who says things like, “Who do I have to f*** to get off this ship?” Her inclusion in this movie, especially through such a craven, lazy plot device like cloning, makes the last-ditch sacrifice she made at the end of Alien 3 entirely meaningless. It’s hard to care if she lives or dies anymore after we’ve seen her do both.

Alien: Resurrection is easily the worst in the series. It’s a strange breed of dud, forgettable yet unforgivable.

 If you enjoyed N. Demmy’s piece, you can find his latest work right HERE and his earlier articles and reviews over HERE.

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