Alien Resurrection (1997) Review

Alien Resurrection is the fourth entry in the Alien franchise and is quite possibly among the most divisive films in it as well, you either love it or hate it. Most critics and reviewers seem to have mixed feelings about it. A few love it, while others find it disappointing but I don't think anyone would call it bad. It's the epitome of a late nineties action blockbuster, very different in tone and execution from the previous ones as culture had changed a lot since the release of Alien 3 in 1992.

Resurrection was written by the now controversial Joss Whedon, who at the time was probably a good choice because of the recent popularity and critical appraisal of his hit TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so bringing back the Alien franchise with the most popular female empowerment writer in the industry seemed like a good move. Imagine a world where Joss Whedon is the icon of female empowerment. Yikes! That was, and still is, the state of the industry, unfortunately.

For all of his faults, Whedon's writing was on point a good amount of the time, so his work here isn't faulty. Whedon wanted to bring back Newt, the little girl from Aliens (1986), as a clone and have her be the protagonist but the studio executives wanted Sigourney Weaver back and decided they wanted to change the Newt role to Ripley, so Whedon rewrote a good amount of the script to accommodate that change.

Because of his imaginative and extravagant visual style French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was hired to direct, bringing along cinematographer Darius Khondji to give us a film that stands on par with the previous Alien movies in a visual sense. The production values were high and while the scope was limited to two spaceships and a few soundstages, the details and complexity of the sets made you feel like you were truly looking at a futuristic spaceship, just like in the first two movies. As immersive as ever.

Sigourney wasn't expecting to come back into the franchise and initially refused but since she liked the script and Fox gave her a great paycheck she decided to reprise her role as Ripley one last time. 

The film is set 200 years after the events of the last movie, Ripley is brought back by scientists aboard the military spaceship Auriga. This new Ripley 8 is a clone that shares DNA with the xenomorph Queen, giving her special new abilities and borderline superhuman powers (acid blood and a psychic link with the Xenomorphs among them).

A group of mercenaries arrives at the Auriga, delivering a shipment of humans that will be used in experiments at the labs. Among the group we have captain Elgyn, the brutish Johner, second-in-command Christie, the handicapped Vriess, assistant pilot Sabra Hillard (Kim Flowers) and female android Annalee Call (Winona Ryder). 

Call recognizes Ripley and becomes wary of the heroine, as her appearance could mean the return of the dreaded xenomorphs, a correct assumption. What follows is a battle for survival where our heroine will lead the mercenaries to salvation while fighting against the ferocious creatures. 

Resurrection has been largely treated as a generic sequel but I think it's incredibly entertaining and possibly one of the top five sci-fi movies from the nineties. It´s visuals are amazing, filled with detail and skillfully lit, the cinematography and sets shine all the way, really immersing you into the world (probably the closest it came to imitating the original two classics). The production values are also worthy of note, while the locations are somewhat limited they make great use of them and the constant change in scenario keeps things fresh as the film is always moving forward with a steady pace. 

The characters may be somewhat derivative as seeing Ripley trapped with a group of tough soldiers isn't something new but the actual performances, the small character details and the dynamics they have with each other are simple and well done enough that you find the group likable. 

Ripley is just as awesome as ever, her new abilities really enhance her role in the action sequences (which are greatly staged and blocked) and further cements her as a badass heroine, now being able to stand against the xenomorphs face to face. This change really shows the evolution of the character, who went from hiding and using her smarts to a more confrontational and outright warrior-like behavior. Some people may find this modification too exaggerated but this is Alien 4 we are talking about, there's really only one way to go and that is to increase the sci-fi factor to a higher degree.

Filled with practical effects and real sets, the film actually features some fantastic creature feature thrills and enjoyable monster-battling set-pieces that were certainly missing from Alien 3, even the fake CGI xenomorphs in this movie look better than the rear projected blue screen ones from part three. If Alien 3 was the original Alien done with less scares and mastery, then Alien Resurrection is Aliens done with less intensity but with just as much stimulation and with a modernized production design. 

Even if it doesn't stand in the exact same level as Aliens, and even if there´s nothing here truly different from the other films (aside from the fact that it adds more to the concepts), this fourth part is actually a rewarding experience. Total delight of superlative aesthetics and non stop excitement.

The film did very well at the box office and opened the door for more Alien movies in the future, as it proved to still be a profitable IP. As I said, reception was a bit mixed even by the people who made it. For Jeunet it was more of an interesting commercial project than anything else and Joss Whedon found it to be badly executed. However, H.R Giger said it was an excellent film and French auteur Jacques Rivette also praised it. 

I certainly hope more people warm up to this movie in future years as it is a perfect movie to redeem after all this time of doubt.

Alien³ (1992) Review

Production for Alien 3 was significantly messier than the one from the first two films, with several rewrites by about ten different screenwriters, a reluctant star asking for her character to be killed, extensive reshoots, behind the scenes fighting and tight deadlines. It was all very troublesome because 20th Century Fox had no idea of what they wanted this third movie to be like, all the executives knew was that Alien could potentially be a franchise and wanted more sequels to be made.

Eventually they settled with a young director named David Fincher. Fincher recalls that there was no finished script and that Walter Hill and David Giler (producers of the Alien franchise) kept sending new pages everyday as the budget was drying up. With such a nightmarish production, Fincher tried to do the best with what he could and has since disowned the film. Fans and critics agree that the film should better be forgotten.

How does the movie hold up today? Is it underrated or still bad? We will see. 

Right after the events of Aliens (1986), Ripley finds herself crashing on Fiorina "Fury" 161, a correctional facility that also works as a foundry and even a sort of temple as the inmate's are monk-like (a leftover from one of the earlier scripts). Inside, Ripley is in great danger from the inmates and is helped by Dillon, a spiritual leader, to survive in the mortal place. When Ripley finds out that a facehugger infiltrated the facilities, she (along with the prisoners and wardens) must face the alien menace once more.

Hardly a classic, the film is a mixed bag of interesting components and a severely faulty story and ideas thrown in. There's a good movie hidden underneath all the deviations and dull aspects of the film.

Fincher does a typically great job at directing, with creative and heavily expressive compositions, transitions, dissolves, lighting and camera movements that enrich its cinematic language in ways not often seen in franchise sequels. The narrative tone overall is almost pitch perfect, but not as great as in Aliens. Fincher's craftsmanship and filmmaking talent really shine in the Assembly Cut of this picture.

The sets and production design are top notch, continuing with the rusty and corroded industrial setting but emphasizing the deteriorating aspect more than before. The film returns to the claustrophobic horror atmosphere of the first film, or at least intends to, as it's less effective because of the incredibly high production values instead of the low budget and often hidden detailed sets seen in the original that really managed to feel like a real and repetitive location those characters moved around in. The location in Alien 3 is the opposite of the Nostromo in the original, it's too big and spacious, rarely managing to reach the same level of enclosure from the first film, a strange thing because it's main location is literally a prison.

The xenomorphs overall feel less threatening and their appearances have less tension and shock than in any previous outing. I know that it's hard to keep surprising audiences with the same monster but there's almost no real feeling of danger when the creatures show up, a very fatal flaw to have in an Alien movie.

Few moments stick out after watching it, the climax had the potential to be suspenseful but a lot of the shoddy special effects kind of knock it down a few pegs. The image of the xenomorph salivating as a distressed Ripley cringes away from it it's the only great shot in the entire film, perhaps it's one of the most iconic fragments in the franchise, so there's a lot of merit to it. 

The premise of the movie might have had potential, in the sense that the original idea was to make Ripley go through hell once more, to bring her down from her heroic role in Aliens and put her in a dirty hole with sleazy characters and more hazards. Not a horrible concept but don't you think she has had enough? I think she suffered the right amount in the previous movies to justify her status as an admirable heroine, there was no real need to bring her down other than for cheap thrills and fake misery porn, which this film could potentially be classified as considering it's tone and relentless search to make Ripley suffer to unreal levels. It's needlessly desolate and unrealistically mean, like a teenager's juvenile and angsty conception of hardship and harshness.

Close up shots of Ripley are prominent and constant throughout the picture, she also goes through a visual transformation and ends up looking like Maria Falconetti in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Fincher's way of shooting her, focusing on her affection and anguished mental state gives away his intentions regarding the suffering and following sanctification of his female character, as close ups were also prominently and systematically used in the classic silent film, a link is created between the two films through Fincher’s formal approach to shooting the film and the thematic similarities within the story as well. 

Maybe Fincher thought it would be the only way Ripley could be canonized in a hypothetical cinematic pantheon (?), but it didn't have to come at the price of artificially bringing down an established heroine. More than deeply sorrowful, she just seems desperate and fed up with the increasingly harsher situations she finds herself in throughout these movies, to the point of being physically and mentally sick, exhausted and weakened, maybe even coming off as feeble, like Joan of Arc in Dreyer’s film. Weaver still delivers a fantastic performance as Ripley but there's not much she can do to carry the picture.

Fincher has never been known for his female characters as he has been more concerned with criticizing men than developing women, or simply doing much with them. Even though Fincher barely touched the script, there's something missing and dreadfully wrong about the movie, something that you can't point out exactly but that you can feel.

The Assembly Cut is a much more compelling narrative and arrives at a certain level of epic and grandiose science fiction storytelling Fincher was aiming at, adding more flesh to the film and properly setting up the plot with very engaging introductory scenes. It might be a bit too long for my taste, but it's hard not to admire the director's vision at least on an elemental level. The creators had ambition and were trying to do something that would break the mold, as the previous two Alien movies did. The director just needed a finished script to work with.

While undeniably flawed, the film is far from awful and has elements to offer to the franchise. If there's any version I would recommend, I guess that would be the Assembly Cut, it's perhaps overlong but it has a more coherent and effective way of telling the story. 

Looking past the (sometimes) drab special effects, the pacing issues and the questionable intentions, the film is a moderately entertaining horror thriller with a science fiction angle. Alien 3 is non-commercial and isn't afraid to desecrate established characters, for better or for worse. If only a capable screenwriter with a fixed and inventive vision would have handled it, it could have been great.