Alien: Resurrection Review

“Earth, man. What a shithole”

You know, before I re-watched this movie for this review I couldn’t remember it that well but I thought it couldn’t have been THAT bad but I was wrong, it’s pretty damn bad and I just don’t get it. Let’s get into more detail.

The story is a doozy, 200 years after Alien3, Ripley is cloned several times until a good copy is generated, that copy is successfully brought to life with the queen alien embryo from Alien3 still inside her, which they extract but keep Ripley alive. The company seem to think they can teach the Xenomorphs like dogs and they even rear Ripley into a functioning member of the ship. OH AND SHE ALSO HAS ACID BLOOD, SUPER STRENGTH AND THE ABILITY TO SENSE XENOMORPHS…because hybrids or some shit. And then a ragtag crew shows up with hosts for the companies testing program for the queen alien’s eggs. Of course the aliens escape so Ripley and the team of assholes work together to escape. I do not like this story, it feels almost pointless and how it throws important things away because it thinks it’s so important. They say that Weyland-Yutani is bought out by fucking Wal-Mart in the extended cut, because their evil company is clearly cooler than Weyland-Yutani, fuck you Resurrection. The issues in your plot are unexplored and you expect us to just believe the shit that’s happening. You knew people would question how the embryo was cloned as well or why Ripley has powers so you stuck in a stupid joke so we’d all be like “Ha good point, we’re too stupid to understand science, this movie is so smart” Well no, you’re stupid and fuck you again. In case you’re wondering, the new-born ugly as sin Xenomorph exists because since Ripley got alien attributes, the queen alien gets human attributes LIKE A WOMB IN WHICH TO GIVE ACTUAL BIRTH FROM! That’s what that thing is, half human, half Xeno. It’s so hard to look at. And the technology, nothing in the distance future helps anyone, metal detectors that are no more practical that the sticks we have today and fucking breath analysers that don’t work, what’s wrong with the finger print or voice readers, you pretentious waste of space.

The only slightly interesting character is Ripley but probably just because by this point, we’ve liked her for 3 movies and she’s a great actress, I doubt anything likeable about her in this movie is from anyone other than herself. We have a typical asshole villain who’s an asshole because villains are assholes and then we have our crew of “protagonists” The guys we are meant to root for but they are all assholes too and the only character (Call played by Winona Ryder) who isn’t an asshole is badly presented, she’s meant to be funny but not one scene where she tries to be funny is effective, what were they writing. Fuck these characters. Saying that upsets me, I love Ron Pearlman (Johner) he’s my guy and he’s his usual crazy self in this movie but fuck his character. I’ll give him props for working through this. And how stupid is Christie. At one point, Ripley knocks Ron Pearlman on the floor and this characters first thought is to pick up a fucking barbell with weights on the ends and literally punt the woman in the face with the end, WHO DOES THAT! He attempted murder because someone fell over. Brad Dourif is great in this movie but then he gets all freaky and weird and off-putting. I can’t even like Brad fucking Dourif in this moive.

I don’t actually mind the way this movie is directed, the shots are nice enough but there are a couple of stupid really close up action sequences that I just totally didn’t understand and apparently the movies characters were not presented in the way Joss Whedon wrote them and some it doesn’t come off as sarcastic as it should or something but that’ll probably happen if your director doesn’t really speak English. I have nothing really against him, he’s fine but the film just isn’t really handled right, maybe it would have its tones right is Joss Whedon directed it.

At least the effects are pretty good, aside from one really weird laser beam acid spit. You can tell when CGI is happening but honestly, it’s pretty good for its time. There’s a good amount of practical effects too which are mostly good but the problem with them is the design. The normal Xenomorph are just OOZING with slime and it’s really off putting and if that’s not off putting enough, the Alien queen has a fucking womb and then the ugliest thing in any movie ever comes out of it, the hybrid is gnarly and not in a cool surfer way, it’s generally hard to look at, like who the fuck approved that. The big final death scene is crazy though and as much as I love crazy gore, I have to say, that scene was unnecessary. I might have been pretty happy with it if the rest of the film had similar gore but this is so left of field it sticks out like a disgusting, slimy sore hybrid thumb and has a completely different tone.

This movie is all kinds of messed up and I just don’t know what they were trying to do, the characters don’t feel right, the story cuts corners and the designs are just not appealing at all. I don’t think this really added anything to the Alien franchise and it just makes me think of how good the other Alien films really are. The effects are okay though…so good job I guess.

Rating: **

Better than > Godzilla’s Revenge (I had to dig for that) Worse than > Alien3

Main pros

-Effects (I guess)

-I can see it, unlike AvP:R

Main cons

-Story

-Characters

-Tone

-Creature designs

-Idiotic ideas

-Seriously though the new-born is hideous