Alien: Resurrection (1997) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / January 6, 2015

I suppose people should've been wary once they saw the subtitle... Alien: Resurrection hit theatres five years after Alien 3 received a mixed response and that’s putting it lightly. Whereas 3, while not as tight a film as its predecessors, still had a number of things going for it (dark humor, religious themes, acting), this film is the first within the franchise to suffer from nothing less than a full-on identity crisis.

If you thought Alien 3’s opening ruined Aliens’ happy ending, wait until you see Resurrection’s opening: Ripley—and therefore the alien inside her—are brought back from the dead through the wonders of modern science. Yep, no sacrificing herself for humanity this time à la Alien 3; Ripley’s just brought back. (Technically though, she’s cloned and it’s only the eighth one that’s a success.) What’s especially bad is Ripley could’ve very plausibly been written out of this film. The doctors extract the alien from her stomach and the lead doctor is asked what they should do with the Ripley clone. He decides that though the alien queen is their priority, they might as well keep her alive for further research. He might as well have shrugged and said “meh, why not?”

Anyway, the Ripley clone and the alien queen are alive and held in separate parts of a ship that belongs to the military. Then another ship arrives, controlled by a mercenary crew. They’re there to deliver some cargo, another ship’s (now unconscious) crew. The trade is done and the mercenary group’s leader asks if they can stay for a few days. The general in charge of the entire thing agrees. Naturally, things start going south very quickly from here on out. Several aliens birthed by the queen escape and crewmembers are quickly picked off. Ripley also escapes and teams up with the mercenaries. The ship is now on auto-pilot and returning to Earth. Realizing it’d be the end of humanity, Ripley and the others seek to simultaneously destroy the ship and escape from it.

If Alien 3 sought to replicate Alien in terms of the overall narrative and pacing, then Resurrection is trying to replicate Aliens. There’s more action here and much of it is overly choreographed, the worst offender being a bullet that ricochets two times before landing in a guy’s dome. And it’s scenes like that make you realize you’re watching a film that’s afraid to be dramatic without simultaneously being self-aware. On the one hand, you’ve got pretty riveting scenes like the one where Ripley discovers a lab filled with her failed clones, but on the other, you’ve got shit like the ricocheting bullet scene. Needless to say, the film doesn’t marry these elements together as well as it should. The presence of director Jean Pierre Jeunet and writer Joss Whedon attest to that fact. While Jeunet’s sense of visuals ensures the film looks mostly great and atmospheric, one has to agree that the future director of Amelie directing an Alien film isn’t a scenario many would label ‘ideal’. Writer Whedon has also gone on to claim his final script was adhered to, but executed in a different way than he intended. It’s obvious that, despite all the talent involved,  there was a lack of a singular vision for Resurrection which resulted in this walking identity crisis of a film. I find it really ironic that what makes Resurrection unique within the franchise is its identity crisis.

So what do you do as a viewer? The only way to approach Resurrection is by realizing it’s an incredibly self-aware postmodern flick. In other words, a crappy nineties action film lower your expectations. Maybe then you’ll get a kick out of the handful of action scenes that are moderately well-executed (the underwater scene) or some of the underdeveloped ideas (the newborn and the concept of cloning). But save for scenes like that, it’s as far removed from being a true ‘Alien’ film as can be. Oh well, at least we got Sigourney Weaver’s basketball shot out of it.

Alien³ (1992) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / January 6, 2015

Six years after the success of Aliens, Alien 3 reared its head. Directed by no one less than newcomer David Fincher, the result was altogether quite…peculiar. And one need only inquire a little about the film’s production to see why.

            After a nice manipulation of the 20^th Century Fox logo by composer Elliot Goldenthal, the film immediately kicks you in the balls. The escape vessel carrying Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop crashes on a prison planet in the ass end of nowhere. Ripley is found unconscious on the beach, but Newt, Hicks and Bishop have all died. If you want reason no. 1 why some viewers like to pretend Ripley’s story ended with Aliens, there you have it. The prison is home to inmates who are trying to find God. Needless to say, some find the presence of a woman most unsettling. Ripley discovers what happened from a friendly inmate played by Charles Dance and now has to learn to cope with life in the prison facility while waiting for a rescue ship. What nobody realizes however, is that our friendly neighborhood alien queen left a little surprise for them before she died at the end of Aliens.

            Alien 3 is a strange film to review. It shares a lot of elements with its predecessors: there’s a single alien wreaking havoc on the inmates; Ripley has to slowly assume a position of authority and get everyone to work together, etc. But there’s something decidedly different about this third outing and I think it’s mostly to do with the humor, which is of the gallows variety. Make no mistake, the story is very dramatic. (spoilers) Ripley discovers her fellow passengers (including potential love interest and surrogate daughter) have died; she’s forced to shave her hair due to lice issues in the prison; she discovers there’s an alien inside her, the list goes on. And yet, there are times I’d label this film a comedy, albeit a very dark Fincher-ian one. It’s mostly because of the inmates; whether it’s the spiritual Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) giving speeches or some of the inmates acting crazy, it’s a very funny film at times. Consider the scene where the warden is killed. He’s always seen carrying a small black ball. When he’s dragged up into the ceiling by the alien to everyone’s surprise, the same ball drops to the floor moments later and one of the inmates carrying a chair appropriately responds with a resounding “Fuck!”

            Also, the film’s definitely got its own style and themes. Even if you consider Alien 3 to be overall inferior to its predecessors—which I do—at least the final product’s something that has got its own feel. Whether it’s the dark humor or its many religious overtones, it’s clear that they tried to do something new rather than rehashing ideas or turning the series into a boring formula and milking it for all its worth. (We’d have to wait until the Alien vs Predator movies for that…) While the troubled production (many writers, countless script revisions, Fincher complaining about studio interference, etc.) ensured the film itself was also troubled, a revised version dubbed the Assembly Cut changed and clarified a lot of things. The consensus is now that this is the version to watch. Needless to say, it’s the version I’ve seen prior to this review and I imagine I would’ve disliked Alien 3 quite a bit had I seen the theatrical cut first.

One of the more noteworthy changes has to do with the ending: apparently, in the original version, while Ripley falls into the lava, the alien bursts out of her chest, but Ripley holds on to it to ensure they both die. This however completely negates the difficult choice Ripley faces before when talking to Bishop: have the alien taken out in an operation after which Ripley will live on or sacrifice herself. She doesn’t trust the company. She fears they’ll keep the alien alive for research purposes instead of killing it. However, if she agrees to the operation, chances are she’ll still be able to live a happy life. Finally, she refuses and decides she’d rather die knowing for certain the alien threat would die with her. Having the alien burst out of her while she’s falling only indicates that she made the right choice as she was moments away from death. Had she accepted Bishop’s offer, she’d still have died and the alien would be in the company’s hands. The ending in the Assembly Cut is definitely more bittersweet as the alien does not pop out of her chest, indicating that she might have lived happily ever after. Not to mention her Christ-like pose as she falls which befits Alien 3’s religious vibe.

All in all, I definitely like this film. Despite it not being as tightly woven as its predecessors, there’s still a lot to appreciate. Whether it’s the great acting, the religious themes or the gallows humor, you’re bound to like some aspect of Alien 3. Just make sure you’re watching the Assembly Cut.

Aliens (1986) Review: It's Mostly Good, Mostly

Lucas Versantvoort / January 5, 2015

After Ridley Scott’s Alien had broken new ground in 1979, the sequel was inevitable. This one, which hit theatres in 1986, was spearheaded by a different director however, James Cameron. His career was just picking up steam, having directed The Terminator two years earlier. As a standalone film, Aliens is pretty good. As a direct sequel to Alien however…

            The story picks up where Alien left off. Ripley—and her cat—are drifting in an escape pod when another ship recovers it. She’s saved and back on earth. There’s a committee willing to hear Ripley’s story, and like all on-screen committees, they don’t believe a single word. However, when all communications are lost with the colony assigned to investigate the alien site, the company decides they might need Ripley after all. And since Ripley’s being haunted by nightmares every single night, she thinks confronting her fears might be the best option. She joins a group of ‘hardcore’ colonial marines and they head off to planet LV-426 to find out what happened.

            As I said, as a standalone action flick, I mostly like Aliens, mostly. Though some of the events and dialogue are clichéd, it’s usually Sigourney Weaver’s acting that kept me fully immersed. I think it’s also got something to do with her outfit. I mean, a leather jacket in an 80s action flick? Pff, you know shit’s about to get real.

One of the things I like the most is the slow build-up. The whole film tends to feel ‘grounded’. It’s not about going from one overblown action set-piece to the next, but to make you feel like you’re standing right next to Ripley and the others, experiencing their panic, trying to figure out the best course of action.

Other things like the relationship between Ripley and Newt are also pretty well done. Whenever the action cools down, the film takes its time to let their relationship develop. The same goes for the romance between Ripley and Hicks which is, thankfully, mostly suggested and implied, though the symbolism gets way too obvious in the scene where he’s teaching her how to handle ‘guns’ *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*. But overall, there are no hands wiping a steamy window à la Titanic. Instead, there is a mutual connection based solely on their ability to remain cool, calm and collected under extreme circumstances.

The film also mostly looks good, mostly. While the space scenes remind one of how incredible 2001—a film made in 1969—still looks, the aliens themselves still look as detailed as they did in Alien. It’s pretty mindboggling how James Cameron and his team made the aliens look so good with only roughly a third of the budget Alien³ had.

In the end, it’s a good action film and I enjoyed it a great deal. Despite the film being ridden with clichés, the was still a genuine feeling of tension. The final thirty minutes are basically one big action scene and once it’s all over, there’s a genuine sigh of relief.

However, as a direct sequel to Alien, things become more ambiguous. On the one hand, I appreciate they tried to do something different. They could’ve easily remade Alien with a different set of characters being picked off one by one, but that movie already exists: it’s called Alien. Instead, Cameron went his own way and turned it into a straight-up action flick. So, I appreciate that at least they didn’t get all formulaic on me. On the other hand, the concept of the alien—or Xenomorph—lends itself far more to pure horror. Remember one of those deleted scenes from Alien? It was a short scene where the alien crawled towards someone or something to that effect. But the reason it didn’t make the cut is obvious: the alien was completely visible and instead of being horrified, you were looking at it, thinking ‘that’s a guy in a suit’. So Scott and co applied the Jaws principle: rarely, if ever, show the monster in all its gory glory. It’s all about fear of the unknown. What you can’t grasp, visually or intellectually, is the definition of horror. That’s what the alien is all about. In Aliens however, one can only watch aliens being blown into a pile of yellow goo for so long before they go from ‘horrifying, perfect hunting organism’ to ‘cannon fodder’. So, what the film gains in action, it loses in horror. There’s a reason the 2010 video game adaptation Aliens: Colonial Marines—formatted after Cameron’s film—failed. It’s because you associate the Alien franchise with horror. Fending off endless waves of aliens with guns à la Call of Duty isn’t what the Alien franchise is about at its core. No, it’s is about a sense of dread; it’s about being the hunted and not the hunter…which is why 2014’s game adaptation Alien: Isolation was such a good game.

So, how do you judge Aliens in the end? Is it fair to judge it for being a failed horror film, for the ways it doesn’t adhere to the groundwork laid in Alien? Or do you judge it as a film that tried to be something else from the get-go? The latter would be the correct answer I feel. Aliens took the concept in new and exciting directions and did so with aplomb. Though I firmly believe Alien is by far the superior film, I still enjoy Aliens for what it is and for all the things it does right.