{"id":1226,"date":"2024-07-22T17:29:36","date_gmt":"2024-07-22T17:29:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2024-10-14T14:10:06","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T18:10:06","slug":"alien-resurrection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/07\/22\/alien-resurrection\/","title":{"rendered":"Alien Resurrection"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Alien: Resurrection<\/strong> (1997)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th<\/sup> Century Fox\/Sci-Fi-Horror-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes (Special Edition)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong sci-fi violence and gore, some grotesque images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Joss Whedon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Frizzell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Darius Khondji\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 26, 1997 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Dan Hedaya, J.E. Freeman, Brad Dourif, Raymond Cruz, Kim Flowers, Gary Dourdan, Leland Orser, Michael Wincott.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $47.8M (US)\/$161M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Believe it or not, Ripley is back in Alien: Resurrection<\/strong>. I know what you\u2019re thinking. She died at the end of Alien 3. How can they possibly bring her back? The answer to that burning question is cloning. A group of military scientists obtained a sample of her DNA and cloned her. Now here\u2019s the rub. The blood sample was taken after she was impregnated. Her DNA is combined with that of the Xenomorph Queen she had inside her making her a human-alien hybrid with enhanced strength, acidic blood and the ability to sniff out other aliens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0One of the things I like best about the Alien movies is the choice of directors. The studio tends to lean towards newbies with more potential than films under their belts. Prior to Alien, Ridley Scott made only one film, The Duellists. James Cameron did two, Piranha II: The Spawning and The Terminator, before Aliens. Alien 3 was David Fincher\u2019s debut. That brings us to Alien: Resurrection<\/strong>. It\u2019s helmed by French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children) making his American debut. All of these visionaries went on to successful careers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Set 200 years after Ripley\u2019s death, Alien: Resurrection <\/strong>takes place on a military vessel where Dr. Gediman (Dourif, The Exorcist III) is conducting experiments involving aliens. He created the Ripley clone (Weaver, Ghostbusters), referred to as Ripley 8, in order to extract the embryo from her womb. The plan is to keep the Queen in confinement and collect her eggs for further study. To do that, he needs human hosts. That\u2019s where the mercenaries come in.<\/p>\n

\u00a0They\u2019re a shabby bunch, these mercs. Led by Elgyn (Wincott, The Crow), they include paraplegic mechanic Vriess (Pinon, Delicatessen), short-tempered Johner (Perlman, Hellboy 1 & 2), second-in-command Christie (Dourdan, CSI), co-pilot\/Elgyn\u2019s girlfriend Hillard (Flowers, Another Day in Paradise) and newest member Call (Ryder, Beetlejuice). They arrive on the cargo ship Betty<\/em> with a special load, hypersleep chambers containing kidnapped humans in stasis, the hosts-to-be. After being paid handsomely by commanding officer Perez (Hedaya, Blood Simple), Elgyn decides they\u2019re going to stick around for a couple of days.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It doesn\u2019t take long for the new Xenomorphs to gestate and grow. Smart little buggers that they are, they use one of their own to escape confinement. Now they\u2019re loose on the ship, running amok and killing. Most of the crew manages to escape. Some, like Ripley and the mercs, do not. They need to make their way to the cargo ship before the aliens get them.<\/p>\n

\u00a0There are a couple of added wrinkles. First, Call has something against Ripley and aliens in general. She\u2019s distrustful of Ripley and wants to kill her. Second, the military ship is headed towards Earth. One of the survivors, Wren (Freeman, Miller\u2019s Crossing), explains that it\u2019s the ship\u2019s default setting in the event of an emergency. That means the aliens could potentially reach our planet. That\u2019s not good.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Alien: Resurrection<\/strong> is my least favorite entry in the quadrilogy, but that doesn\u2019t mean I hate it. It\u2019s actually a pretty good flick. It has its flaws though, the biggest being Winona Ryder. Who\u2019s the genius that came up with this bit of miscasting? She\u2019s not cut out for sci-fi-action. Don\u2019t get me wrong. Winona, the queen of twenty-something angst in the 90s, is a fine actress usually. She\u2019s good in several genres- comedy (Heathers), rom-com (Reality Bites), drama (Little Women), fantasy (Edward Scissorhands) and even horror (Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula). She is NOT a believable action star. Here, she looks more like a part-time community college student who just quit her job at the Gap to see if she likes working as a mercenary.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The good news is the rest of the cast offsets Winona\u2019s lackluster performance. It has to be one of the best supporting casts of the decade. Look who\u2019s in it- Brad Dourif, Michael Wincott, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya and Dominique Pinon. It\u2019s a virtual cattle call of cool character actors! Weaver, in her final appearance as Ripley, does a decent job, but it looks like she\u2019s starting to get tired of it. Still, she\u2019s completely bad ass here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The mad geniuses who did the special effects for Alien 3, Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis (founders of FX company Amalgamated Dynamics Inc.), return for Alien: Resurrection<\/strong>. Their use of models and animatronics is more than welcome in a time when filmmakers were starting to experiment with more cost-effective CGI. They made a few modifications to the aliens this time around (mostly to the heads and tails) and the result is quite astonishing. They\u2019re wonderfully gooey and icky. Sometimes they\u2019re downright frightening like the seven previous attempts to clone Ripley preserved in the ship laboratory. The newborn human\/alien hybrid at the end is freaky looking. It also briefly brings out Ripley 8\u2019s maternal instincts.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The screenplay was written by Joss Whedon who would go on to create the cult sci-fi series Firefly. You can see the influences of Alien: Resurrection<\/strong> on the one-season wonder that got the royal shaft from Fox. The production design is phenomenal. It looks and feels like the characters are trapped in a futuristic nightmare set in space.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Other than the look of the film, there\u2019s nothing all that original about Alien: Resurrection<\/strong>. The survival storyline is fairly routine. It\u2019s like The Poseidon Adventure set in space. Jeunet, who has a marvelous way with visuals, even borrows an entire sequence from the 1972 disaster movie classic. I almost expected to see Shelley Winters trying to outswim the aliens alongside the characters.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It would have nice if Alien: Resurrection<\/strong> had done a bit more with the ethical questions surrounding the practice of human cloning. Then again, why spoil the ride with serious stuff? It\u2019s a decent sci-fi flick the way it is, flaws and all.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alien: Resurrection (1997)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 20th Century Fox\/Sci-Fi-Horror-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 116 minutes (Special Edition)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong sci-fi violence and gore, some grotesque images, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Joss Whedon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: John Frizzell\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Darius Khondji\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 26, 1997 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Dan Hedaya, J.E. Freeman, Brad Dourif, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Alien-Resurrection-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1865,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}