The Alien franchise in a nutshell:-
Alien = Horror classic.
Aliens = Action classic.
Alien 3 = Flawed and under-rated.
Alien Resurrection = A load of wank.
Alien vs Predator I & II = Not part of the franchise as far as I'm concerned.
Yes, Alien Resurrection, the forth in Fox's science fiction horror series is waste of mostly everyone's time. By 1997 when the film went into production the Fox Fuck-up Machine that we've grown to know and love was getting into it's stride. Fox did what they've tried to do ever since...hire a visionary director...and then bully the crap out of him until he turns into a bland hack. Thus French stylist Jean-Pierre Jeunet was hired to follow in the footsteps of Scott, Cameron and Fincher to helm a horror, science-fiction thriller. However, Jeunet only succeeded in capturing the science fiction aspect as his silly action romp is neither thrilling nor scary.
If you watch the Special Edition cut, the film gets off to a particularly disastrous start with a shot, which is (seemingly) a close up of the Alien's jaws. As the camera pulls out it reveals it's in-fact an insect on the windscreen of a giant spacecraft. Now it's a cool idea to play with audience expectations and introduce the story location in such a cunning way, but the execution sucks. The insect looks like it was rendered with a Commodore 64 and the extra inside the spacecraft is mugging like he's a Tetley Teabag Chimpanzee. This ain't one of your daft farces Jeunet, it's a sodding horror film!
Once the titles are out of the way the film starts (as the theatrical cut did) with one of the best sequences of the film as Ripley is seen to be a clone and the Queen Alien chestburster is removed from her body. It's moody, atmospheric, tense and has some unusual arthouse editing that makes you think Jeunet will be a great choice. Things soon begin to slide down the slipper slope of shitness and, I'm afraid to say, legendary writer Joss Whedon's script is partly to blame. Rather than concentrate on the crew of the Betty, a far more sympathetic and interesting group whom the audience can identify with, the story is contractually obliged to follow franchise megastar Ripley as she rediscovers her humanity. Ripley's not that likable, the scientists who created her aren't that likable and the military guys aren't that likable meaning the first twenty minutes of the movie are pretty rough.
Things pick up when the crew of the Betty arrive. It's obvious from the ship, the costumes and the dialogue that this group were the progenitors of Whedon's Firefly series. But only half of the dozen Betty crew members work. Micheal Wincott is cool no matter what he's in, as is anti-hero God, Ron Perelman. But the characters of Christie, Sabre and a miscast Dominique Pinon as Vriess don't come off well. That's more the fault of poor casting and Jeunet's inability to translate Whedon's witty reparte to the big screen (much as it was cussed up in the Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie) but it means that much of the impact of the dialogue is lost in piss-poor delivery.
Sigorney is fine as a resurrected Ripley, now with added alien DNA, but the baggage she carries from the previous Alien movies (ernest, straight-laced, does the right thing) means she's not quite able to convince as a reborn, half-alen Ripley. She's sort of adopted the independent, cynical, anti-hero role that occupies much of whedon's writing like Spike in Buffy or Jayne in Firefly, except here she's got competition from the brilliant Ron Perlman who's doing the same kind of thing, and it's a role better played as a supporting character in a story, not the lead. A cute and feisty Winona Ryder is the true lead of Alien Resurrection, being more compassionate and morally straight, to the point where here character should have been introduced earlier and should have had a greater focus in the story, overshadowing Ripley more.
Dan Heyada delivers a grandstanding WTF performance that has no right to be in this, or any other movie. He chooses to act like cast in a broad comedy; over the top, broad accented, bug eyed, silly and farcical. And, by Odin's Beard, doesn't the man shave his back?! There's enough hair on the man to question his Wookie heritage!
All mystery and threat the alien itself once possessed has been eradicated by poor choices. The alien no long lurks in the shadows or glimpsed in quick cuts. This time the monster lumbers around onscreen as a sophisticated glove puppet. It's so daft it looks like it could do a ventriloquist act with Brad Douiff (always excellent in any crap the man appears in).
The effects are mostly poor whether it be cartoony CGI xenomorphs or dire outer space model shots delivered from some backwater French effects house, although the make-up stuff is superb, as are the interior model shots (like the alien prison cells). The set design couldn't be more mediocre if it tried, getting it's inspiration of grated flooring and grimey corridors from every other science fiction movie post 1979. And John Frizzell's score is like something out of a 1940's monster movie; lumbering, melo-dramatic and lacking in any kind of subtlety apart from what it rips off of the previous Alien soundtracks.
The story doesn't add anything new to the Alien mythology (apart from the last 20 minutes). It's just the usual eggs, facehuggers, chestbursters, warriors and a queen. And while the Human element is pursued futher, with it's ongoing plot of researchers cloning to discover the potential for exploiting the beast for weapons development, it's still restricted to roaming around dark spaceship corridors. Hmmm. Those last twenty minutes are where the film truly comes off the rails. Ripley writhing about in alien gunge. What? Ripley caressing an alien (is it having it's wicked way with her or what?) And the Newborn, the most misconceived monster in the history of movies. Story wise, it makes sense to explore a human/alien hybrid that's the equal and opposite of Ripley's character. On film, it's silly and laughable. Any credibility, tension and respect the film had mustered disipates when the milky, puppy eyed muppet appears and it's a struggle to get to the end of the film.
It's not all terrible. Having the only sympathetic/moral character be an android is a clever twist on the norms of the series, and there's a few good scenes with Ripley playing basketball, the Number Seven clone discovery (which is one of the few moments in the film that is tonally correct), the Ripley/Call discussion in the chapel and the wonderful underwater chase sequence (only undermined by some horrible CGI aliens). There's some cool death scenes, especially Leland Orser's chestbuster which is used to dispatch an evil scientist through the skull, and Dan Hedaya's rear skull removal.
But these brief moments aren't enough to save the film, or the franchise. For that we've got to wait for Ridley Scott's return to the Alien universe in 2012 with Prometheus. And even if that film isn't a true prequel to his own 1979 classic, it can't be any worse than this. Then again what can?*
* OK. Alien vs Predator: Requiem can be worse.
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