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Alien: Resurrection (1997)
Reviewed on 2008 September 12
I wondered why this thing missed the mark. Mr. Shukti, keeper of all things trivia, said that Joss Whedon’s original script was discarded for this. This bogged down and was so overdramatic in parts that it was ridiculous, and I wanted to see more gooey, angry alien for my buck. I watched both the theatrical release and the special edition and while there was a little more critter in the latter, there wasn’t much improvement.
According to the story line it’s been 200 years since Alien 3, and the Weyland-Yutani poindexters are at it again, trying to create the ultimate weapon. It’s not enough that they obtain a steel-jawed acid-bleeding monster, but now they want to cross-pollinate the thing with human DNA to make haliens. If that’s not stupid enough, one of their top geeks, Dr. Jonathan Gediman (Brad Dourif), thinks he can cross this monster with a woman like Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and control the result. This is why we have tax dollars going to things like the Large Hadron Collider, but that’s another gripe. Gediman and General Martin Perez (Dan Hedaya) are carrying two queens on their ship/floating lab: an egg-filled Alien queen and a clone of Ripley. I’d be wary about crossing either female but so far only one eats people, and of course that’s the one that gets loose.
The claustrophobia that made the first Alien so scary is gone and we don’t get the pacing of Aliens or Alien 3. The characters are cardboard as well, and it’s hard to care what happens to any of them, even Ripley. There were a few great creature effects — the clone lab was nice and gruesome — but they were too little to salvage this. About the only character that’s likable is Winona Ryder’s Annalee Call.
Two chocolate morsels.
— Shukti
