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.
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