Alien Resurrection

Review by Jason Gaston

 

Well, let's just say that I know firmly believe that the Alien movies should be officially put to bed and never touched again.

In the forth of the series, Alien Resurrection, Ripley the Vampire Slayer is cloned by the military two-hundred years after her death in Alien³ along with the nasty little alien that was gestating inside of her. While the new Ripley, who now has heightened instincts and abilities thanks to the alien, grapples with who she is, a pirate ship docks with the military ship carrying Winona Ryder and Ron Pearlman and a few other uninteresting pieces of cannon fodder and, as the captive aliens breed and escape, all sorts of riots and mayhem take place.

Alien Resurrection tries to reinvent the movie series by mixing the claustrophobia of the first movie with an army of aliens from the second movie.  I can see that director Jean-Pierre Jeunet tried to correct the mistakes of the last movie by introducing a more diverse cast.

The story of Alien Resurrection was almost (almost!) completely original to the series as well, having the military trying to train the aliens as biological weapons, but that little element of Alien Resurrection quickly died turning the movie into the same old story of cardboard box tunnels and startle-cuts that sank Alien³. Another lesson unlearned with Alien³ is that Jeunet continued the practice of showing the entire alien at once rather than a little at a time. The most effective element to Alien Resurrection was Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of the new part-alien/part-human Ripley. The woman is a superhero now!

If you like action, you'll like this movie despite some terrible special effects at the end and an unintentionally hilarious muppet white alien.

Still, this is just the latest sock in the jaw to a formerly great movie series.