Usually the only thing that can genuinely kill a franchise dead, especially when studio executives are concerned, is financial failure. Up until then, no effort by writers, directors or producers can end a series, no matter how much they may wish. This is the grand Sisyphean challenge of a film franchise, as making a good movie is just a way of temporarily delaying the inevitable crap to come. Even with skill and good intentions, good movies cannot continue indefinitely, if continuation is so demanded.
This is the position Alien producers David Giler and Walter Hill found themselves in when demanded to produce Alien3, a desperately poor sequel that sorely wishes it were better. It’s a pitiable object, as much as it angers me. But the producers hedged their bets, guaranteeing no further sequels by killing off the main character, the monsters and the series’ entire premise. But damned if the moronic, idiotic dummies at Fox could care less. Alien3 made an adequate amount of money, though less than its predecessors, but Alien was a legitimate franchise now, so more would come, damn it! (Compare this to the highly successful Alien, which somehow didn’t demand a follow-up sequel in their obtuse worldview.) To a Fox executive, schooled in every filmmaking concern except storytelling, the mere promise of creating the 54th highest grossing film of 1997 (for that’s what Alien: Resurrection was) is somehow too good to pass up. Screw logic, completion, et cetera, there will be another godforsaken Alien movie!
To the benefit of Alien: Resurrection (Resuscitation in the MAD Magazine parody), there were already countless unused crap scripts from Alien3’s outrageous zeppelin explosion of a pre-production. Let’s just reheat one of those old turds, now rewritten by a hot young screenwriter and helmed by a hot young director, neither of whom really belongs near this particular franchise, tonally. Hell, at least you’ll get your first junky script filmed, rather than your seventh.
That hot young screenwriter was Joss Whedon, now famed for television series such as “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly.” One can find the seeds of these shows in Alien: Resurrection, with the sort of quippy, clever dialogue that surely has its home – elsewhere. As written, this Alien entry is meant as a jokey write-off of the series, which is not what fans want. Still, it is exceedingly common for a long-running franchise to resort to self-mocking campiness at some point, the sort of desperate kneejerk defensive mechanism that can at least fool some viewers into thinking the later entry has an original thought. Famously (at least on the portions of the Internet I troll), Whedon was totally dissatisfied with how Alien: Resurrection turned out, that it was “cast,” “designed,” and “scored wrong.” That is, the filmmakers desperately tried to make some sort of an Alien movie out of Whedon’s proto-“Firefly” screenplay. How dare they insist upon tonal continuity?
That hot young director, meanwhile, was Jean-Pierre Jeunet, at that point best known for the dreamlike French film The City of Lost Children. Amazingly, here is the fourth auteur in four Alien entries – an auteur who totally doesn’t fit the series. Jeunet’s best days were in his immediate future, as he’d already written the script for his next film (something called Amelie) when he directed Alien: Resurrection. It’s really hard to reconcile this one-two movie punch. I doubt the Amelie trailers promised it as “from the director of Alien: Resurrection.” Jeunet employs a slightly similar visual style here as in his more personal French classics, with a heightened dream reality that is part Magical Realism and part French comics. Again, this approach is appropriate for an original futuristic thriller such as Jeunet’s Delicatessen (and downright excellent for the adorable Amelie), but it doesn’t quite fit in an Alien film. So much like Whedon’s scripted idiosyncrasies, Jeunet’s directorial efforts are tempered somewhat to jibe with accepted Alien tone. The result is a compromised film, halfway between the tones of Alien and Amelie. This satisfies fans of neither style, creating a sick orphan of a movie.
Amelie: Resurrection – ‘scuze me, Alien: Resurrection – opens with credits not over the stylish void of space, as before, but over a morphing CGI mass of vague, gooey bits of “comedic” body horror. Ah, I love images that succinctly sum of the differences between entries. And boy, does rushed CGI from 1997 not hold up thirteen years later! The credits end, at last, with a traditional shot of a model spaceship, the Auriga, which is decidedly not a Joseph Conrad reference.
This is surely a special effect artisan’s movie more than a director’s movie, and scenes are arranged to present us with long and loving views of the latex sculptor’s art. (Later lengthy views of the xenomorphs do a lot to diminish their Jaws-like mystery from before.) Here we are in a space lab, where several mini Menegeles operate on a still-living Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, the only inarguably good thing about this entry), cutting a pre-natal chestburster (aw, so cute!) from her chest. The movie itself somewhat delays an explanation for Ripley’s return, but the ads, trailers, reviews, etc. from 1997 filled us all in prior to even seeing the film, so I’ll just relate it now. This is not Ripley as we knew her, seeing as she died in Alien3 of unmistakable hellish iconography. This is a Ripley clone, created from some of Ripley’s blood found on Fiora 16 (nee Fioria 161, nee Fury 161 – because they could never quite get that prison planet’s name straight). Just where did they find that blood?! Somewhere on the floor, apparently, since Ripley’s corpse was nonexistent. A true maniac would rewatch Alien3 to see if Ripley ever bleeds, but I ain’t about to see that thing again!
This is all part of an unauthorized military experiment under one General Perez (a very hairy Dan Hedaya). It is illegal, which somehow justifies the Aruba – sorry, Auriga – setting, yet another over-huge, under-populated spaceship. Now, going largely against any laws of actual biological science (even they oppose this sequel’s existence), it seems Ripley’s DNA merged with an alien queen’s DNA during her “pregnancy,” hence the chestburster they excavated from Ripley’s cavity. Yeah, they’re going ahead and creating a bunch of aliens, whose potential military application has honestly never been all that clear to me. Actually, there are enough plot hole problems with this setup, I’d rather direct you elsewhere. [link to 1,000 Hours] In short, though, the very foundation of this movie makes Alien3 seem solid.
This is 200 years after Alien3, which was itself Lord knows how long after Aliens, itself 57 years after Alien. So now it’s the future of the future of the future (of the future). Too bad no one let the production design know (or really, anyone else), since this length of time is only used to explain away the disappearance of the omnipresent Weyland-Yutani company – only to be replaced with the fundamentally carbon copy United Systems Military. Ripley herself dismisses this change, possibly meant as one of Whedon’s “clever” moments. That’s right, 1997 was when Scream made it okay to intentionally make crap for the sake of “irony” without actually being nutty B-movie fun like Snakes on a Plane.
Sigourney Weaver (the franchise’s secret weapon) saw no need to reprise Ripley yet again, so was enticed back by an even bigger payday than before ($11 million). This time, she isn’t really even Ripley. The Ripley clone has had her DNA mixed with an alien’s, for no scientifically justifiable reason. (People really didn’t understand DNA in 1997. Remember O. J.?) This allows Weaver to modify her performance, occasionally mimicking the aliens’ movements, but more often just using the role as an excuse to act weird for weird’s sake. Apparently she has many new powers, such as agility, strength, off-brand Spidey Sense, and acidic blood. Most of these are powers they’d never attributed to the xenomorphs before now – however, it very much sounds like the laundry list of skills Whedon would grant the Buffys of this world.
Titles added onscreen long after the fact explain to me what the screenplay and movie seemingly couldn’t make clear: Here comes the commercial freighter Betty (even less of a Conrad reference than Arugula – er Auriga). Inside, we meet the crew of the Serenity – no, wait, a bunch of unappealing space pirates in an Alien sequel. They are all thin personalities with broad distinguishing physical characteristics – at least this time I’ll be able to tell the cast apart, even if I can’t spell their names. There is the captain Frank Elgyn (Michael Wincott, like a younger, sleazier version of Geoffrey Rush), pilot Sabra (Kim Flowers, who wears a nice G-string), the dreadlocked badass Christie (Gary Dourdan), big dumb guy Johner (Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman), and wheelchair-bound French dwarf Vriess (Dominique Pinon). Only in a Jeunet movie could I write “wheelchair-bound French dwarf” for more than one of his films. There is also Call (Winona Ryder, the female Keanu Reeves), who initially strikes me as a lamer version of River Tan. Ah, Whedon and his tiny little ass-kicking androgynies!
The Betty’s movie-ready crew boards the Aurelio – sorry again, Auriga – to be greeted by the ship’s computer, “Father.” This offhand reference to the first Alien is the sort of lame joke this movie peppers us with in favor or suspense or action. Perez and Elgyn make an exchange, Elgyn providing Perez with twelve kidnapped humans asleep in space pods. I feel really bad for these twelve jerks, who did no one no wrong, for they are about to serve as host to twelve facehuggers. (Gotta rush through that irritating xenomorph lifecycle so we can get to our true aim – generic monster rampage action with little genuine Alien flavor.) Elgyn realizes that his crew are to be our main characters in this one, and so for absolutely no good goddamn reason whatsoever they all decide to remain on the Aurora Outlet Mall – I mean Auriga – for however long it takes for the beasties to hatch, grow into adults, and escape. The rigid specifics of alien biology are wildly messed up here – a generous person would blame it on genetic engineering, I blame it on bad plotting.
The crew of the Betty has a lot of time to waste while we wait for a second generation of animals to mature. They start off in the gym, tormenting Ripley. This provokes an out-of-place, unmotivated action sequence where Ripley smacks them about with a basketball. This requires no commentary.
Then Call makes a botched attempt to assassinate Ripley, but she’s way too late (the best time for this would’ve been before the studio logos at the start). There is a little useless lesbian subtext thrown about here, because again, it’s Whedon. Finally Perez’s hoards of Space Marines™ seek to arrest the entire Betty bunch. This provokes an out-of-place, unmotivated action sequence where our “heroes” murder like six Marines with an assortment of pistols and a rocket launching thermos. Nice job, good guys! You’re already responsible for more violent deaths (the Marines and the facehuggers) than the aliens themselves will manage once they break free. And this is still an Alien film, right, and not a dustier, Jovovich-free Fifth Element?
Actually, yes, it is an Alien film. That means it’s about freaking time for those lovable rapscallions to escape and run rampage. Three adult aliens are in an observation chamber, overseen by a doctor played by Brad Dourif – Academy Award winning Werner Herzog regular, and the voice of Chucky! I dearly wish he had higher billing! The aliens apparently have a little Ripley DNA in them, making them “smart” – for the next couple of scenes, at least. Between this and Deep Blue Sea, something must’ve been in the water in the 90s re: smart monsters. Then we elected George Bush president.
Anyway, two xenomorphs kill the third, its acid blood creating their means of escape. Then they yank Brad Dourif through the floor, a kill which has replaced Alien3’s totally dissimilar “yank you through the ceiling.” And now these two aliens are free, so apparently the other eight or so aliens are free as well, because whatever. Another guy is frozen to death when the aliens employ the chamber’s liquid nitrogen switch. It’s not to this movie’s favor that it reminds me most of Jason X.
Alarms sound, and the majority of Perez’s Space Marines™ flee the ship rather than provide us with exciting action sequences ala Aliens. One xenomorph does manage to kill off everyone in an escape pod, which is less fun than it sounds. At this, Perez rolls a grenade into the pod, which promptly turns into CGI and explodes. Perez has now outlived his usefulness to the film, so another xenomorph takes him out with a tongue-stab. Yawn. Hold up that little sliver of brain all you like, Perez, it doesn’t make this any less tiresome.
Another alien, meanwhile, has a run in with Vriess, the wheelchair-bound French dwarf. Vriess kills the xenomorph and escapes. The immobilized midget murders a monster! Bye bye, creature credibility.
For all intents and purposes, the only people remaining on the Arigatomina – er, Auriga – are the Betty bunch. And despite the simplicity with which most of the Marines escapes the ship, the rest of this movie shall be concerned with their remarkably complicated trek to reach the docking bay.
First we join up with Elgyn (I had to look back up to recall that hideous name), all alone in a generic spaceship hallway. A few minutes’ worth of sound effects from Alien play out as he pokes about, the closest Alien: Resurrection comes to suspense. Finally a xenomorph gets him (floor grab) and snacks on his delicious torso.
Along comes everyone else (sans Ripley). Not only is the Betty bunch here, but so are two other guys whom they picked up at some indeterminate point. One is token Marine DiStephano (Raymond Cruz, who always plays Marines). The other is the evil Dr. Wren (J. E. Freeman), Ripley’s principle tormenter during all those genetic experiments. I could’ve mentioned him far earlier, except I was too busy nitpicking the movie’s stupid premise instead. And right, I almost forgot, that xenomorph who did in Elgyn is still there, and about to corner everyone. That’s the chance for Ripley to arrive, blow the beast away, and join this motley crew. And Alien: Resurrection becomes the kind of film that really bugs me, with an over-large cast just wandering endless halls until enough of them are dead and the movie can end.
So they’re creeping down another indistinguishable hallway (the second of, like, thirty) when Ripley stops, her Alien Sense acting up. Apparently the Arigato Gozaimashita – I mean Auriga – is moving. According to Wren, following an emergency it is standard procedure to return to its port of call, which is three hours (and thousands of light years) away. And this port of call? Earth. Thank you! Finally they’re going to show fans a long-held dream: xenomorphs rampaging all over Earth!...Right?...Right? (Don’t get your hopes up, this is just the screenplay intentionally pissing us off again.)
They head down another anonymous hallway, so it’s time for another isolated event (the scenes could be rearranged into any order and the plot would be the same). Ripley happens upon a laboratory filled to the production crew’s capacity with failed clone monsters. This is the best scene in the movie, as it’s both tonally dark and filled with gooey, gory goodness. Ripley finds one mass of flesh still alive and pleading – it’s another Ripley, believe it or not. This one pleads for death, and the Ripley clone we’re aligned with obliges, weeping as she toasts the room with a flamethrower. End grotesque, heartbreaking scene, cue alleged witticism from Johner to undercut everything we’ve just seen.
Another hallway later, and what’s our next event? They find the birthing chamber, eleven of the twelve sacrificial victims now dead. The twelfth, Purvis (Leland Orser), has yet to perish, because somehow his chestburster is still incubating even while its brothers and sisters are now murderous adults. This does not work in the slightest. So another guy joins our mass of heroes (now up to nine) at precisely the moment the cast should be getting culled. And everyone knows Purvis isn’t long for this world, so taking him along is just like harboring a zombie infectee. The predictable scene shall follow later in the movie.
And…a hallway! It’s been a while since we’ve seen a xenomorph, right? Well, wait a little longer. Now the group finds the next bit of ship they must pass through, because there’s apparently only one route through this massive ship, and it’s through the kitchen. And the kitchen is flooded. Did they forget that, contrary to "Star Trek" convention, space isn’t actually the ocean?! Why is it flooded? Whatever, they’re all gonna swim underwater, over the course of like six minutes – after a while of this, I forget to be frightened. So finally a couple of xenomorphs appear swimming along behind the group. I’d cheer, only these beasts are now portrayed via late 90s CGI. (Practical shots intercut with the CGI illuminate how much shinier the computer aliens are.) One of the cast has to die now, so might as well make it…oh…Sabra!
This nutbar action sequence continues into an elevator shaft that is populated by a dozen eggs – hatching right on cue, of course. I’m not even sure how the queen (who’s later portrayed as unable to lay alien eggs, mind you) was even able to fit into this smallish area! [Head pounds against table.] I won’t be able to get through this sequence through nitpicking, so here’s the broad strokes: Wren shoots Call in the chest and escapes alone through a door. Johner kills the other xenomorph, which somehow dominoes into an incredibly lame (possibly non-fatal) death for Christie. Nice one, Johner! And then Call revives and rescues everybody.
Everyone regroups to relax, since we can’t have the unrelenting terror of an Alien movie in the final act, now, can we? Ripley notices Call’s chest milk…Oh geez. Call’s an android, not lactating, okay? But this “surprise” development comes just in time, for it seems they need an android to do…whatever it is Call does next, in order to prevent…whatever it is Wren was about to do from wherever he is. It isn’t the clearest thing ever. However, Call can, er, call up the ship’s mainframe. Ripley wants to blow up the Auriga (I’ve run out of joke names for it) before it reaches Earth (visions of a wildly over-budget alien apocalypse dancing in her head), but Call cannot do that. What Call can do, though, is redirect the Auriga to crash into Earth. Oh sure, that’s a much better solution. Whatever, they’re going with it, because the alternative (this unsanctioned ship landing peacefully at a station where many, many Marines can address the xenomorph threat) is far worse. Gah! [Head hitting table yet again.]
There are 43 minutes left – before the crash, that is. Far fewer for the film, thank Jeebus. Everyone runs down a…hall, where they find a sticky resin on the floor, just like a porno theater. And those danged aliens, who are hardly even in this movie, then go and yank Ripley through the floor to the queen’s lair below. Everyone else continues on – no heroes in this group.
The movie chooses to stay with the Betty bunch in favor of Ripley. This disinterests me, so I’ll just say that the Purvis chestburster makes its grand entrance (in an awful CGI moment as we zoom through Purvis’s esophagus), shattering Wren’s skull at the same moment. Everyone else kills it. Ah, it’s a good thing they sacrificed series continuity for that little moment, isn’t it?
Queen’s lair. The weird, biological, body horror stuff reaches a head, in a moment that I feel more generous towards than most. It might be a strange evolution of the Alien idea, but at least it commits to the strangeness. See, the queen is pregnant, like, human pregnant (hence she doesn’t lay alien eggs), and going through her gooey labor pains for Ripley’s viewing pleasure. A cocooned Brad Dourif is here to serve as herald for the giant, illiterate xenomorph. With a giant swell of filmmaking, the queen gives birth to…to Pumpkinhead! I mean, c’mon, look at ‘em!
It’s a good thing they kept Lance Henriksen out of this entry, ‘cause that would exacerbate the similarities.
Actually, this new beast is a human/alien hybrid, a “humalien.” A “beautiful, beautiful butterfly” in Dourif’s estimation. The queen and her newborn humalien bond lovingly, then the humalien goes and kills her because why the hell not I guess. Ah, it considers Ripley its true mother, and Ripley is feeling some “conflict” in regards to species loyalty. The humalien examines Ripley with its human eyes, human nose and human tongue. Yeah, the concept is interesting, but the design’s pretty stupid. Ripley runs off, and Brad Dourif offers his cranium to the baby as a tasty meal. Mmm, Dourif.
Ripley flees down, what else, hallways, wending her way for the Betty. It is about to take off, but delays to let Ripley (and almost certainly the humalien) aboard – whatever deaths happen from here on out are totally Ripley’s fault. And those deaths are limited to…DeStephano. The Marine I briefly mentioned about 1,500 words ago. (Final survivors shall include Ripley, Call, Johner, and the French dwarf – that is, the four top-billed actors.) Anyway, the humalien considers feasting on the synthetic Call when Ripley interrupts: “Put her down,” a sad, sad variation on “Get away from her, you bitch!” Ripley is “conflicted” a little more about her hideous new son, meaning Weaver gets to act against tons of latex and jelly, and then kill it anyway. Ripley hurls a little of her acid blood (she eats too many oranges) into the Betty’s glass window (required on all spaceships). The humalien, disoriented from its scant few minutes in this world, shrieks as it suctions out through a pinhole, transforming into unconvincing CGI gore. At least this movie shows us intestines, something most movies won’t.
It’s a happy ending for our four survivors, who look on in joy as the Aurebgtfoolksduila or whatever it’s called plows into the Earth (somewhere around Atlanta, I think), causing an extinction-level event. Nice one, heroes! We aren’t supposed to think about this, though, or it’s supposed to be one of Whedon’s “jokes.” But it’s okay, right, because human apocalypse or no, four fictional characters have survived! And the alien race is dead (again), right? Except for all that Ripley DNA that, like, she’s covered in. So that same idiotic window is still open, only not even Fox is fool enough to continue on this thread.
While Alien: Resurrection didn’t exactly put an end to the Alien franchise, it did kill off Phase One. The xenomorph had, at this point, reached Universal monster saturation levels, meaning it was time for the producers to follow the lead of the desperate, late-era Universal monster movies. That’s right, folks, crossovers! But before we can consider a completely post-dignity Alien film, we must visit that other franchise that would sacrifice its good name upon the crossover altar. It’s time…for Predator!
Related posts:
• No. 1 Alien (1979)
• No. 2 Aliens (1986)
• No. 3 Alien3 (1992)
• No. 5 Alien vs. Predator (2004)
• No. 6 Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)
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