Alien: Resurrection won't revive creatively bankrupt Alien franchise
by Michael R. Smith
It began as a chilling idea, stylishly realized on screen (Ridley Scott's original "Alien") and was then transformed into a rollicking good action premise with loads of potential energy for sequels (James Cameron's epic and as yet unsurpassed "Aliens"). Unfortunately, the once promising Alien franchise has rapidly degenerated into rock video incomprehensibility (1993's "Alien III") and this latest mess, "Alien: Resurrection," slithering into theaters nationwide on Wednesday, 11/26.
Sigourney Weaver, looking haggard and gaunt in the sinewy/heroin-addict chic mode of '90s haute couture, is back as the irrepressible Ellen Ripley: implausible survivor of countless Alien attacks and now at least two lousy Alien movies. Having plunged cruciform to her death at the end of "Alien III" (she should have stayed there), the one-time space pilot turned reluctant uber-femme and Alien hunter fulfills the titular Lazarus event by emerging, via some sort of goofy cloning hocus-pocus that's never fully explained, into a brave new world of corrupt military officials and nihilistic scientific researchers hell-bent on taming the ferocious Alien warriors for their own nefarious ends.
Bad idea, as it turns out. After a baby Alien queen is gruesomely extracted from her abdominal cavity (the first of many deliberate gross-outs), it becomes increasingly clear that there's much more to Ripley than meets the eye. And when a scurvy, foul-mouthed band of contraband-carrying space pirates shows up aboard a Ripley-haunted scientific research vessel, jammed to the bulkheads with newly-birthed Alien hombres (and lots of nameless grunts and crew-members for cannon fodder), can the carnage be far behind?
Suffice it to say that you've seen it all before. As with the raptors in "Jurassic Park," the slavering nasties again break loose in spectacular fashion, and then quickly decimate the ranks of anyone carrying a working firearm that doesn't jam at a critical moment, leaving our beloved principals--none of whom ever come to life as characters--stranded in a hostile, dimly lit environment with little-to-no hope of escape or salvation (note to spaceship designers of the far future, in which the film is set: ventilated steel decking is a VERY bad idea). After a briefly suspensful underwater scene quoted directly from "The Poiseidon Adventure"--but without the benefit of a Gene Hackman or even a Shelly Winters to sell it emotionally--all that remain to challenge the rampaging, toothy horde are Ripley and the mysterious terrorist known only as "Call," played flatly and with an overt lack of enthusiasm by that doe-eyed paragon of wren-boned perfection, Winona Ryder, who really needs to eat more, and often, and whose repeated use of the "f" word to convey mock surly-ness is about as charming and convincing as the rest of this unholy and unwholesome mess. (And messy it is, too, as viewers are time and again treated to ghastly images drawn straight from the morgue-and-meatwagon school of filmmaking.) Where are Irwin Allen and Ernie Borgnine when you need them?
Squandered amidst all the grue and splatter, of which there is at least as much as in Paul Verhoeven's recent "Starship Troopers," are the great Dan Hedaya as the ranking military officer, who, with an over-the-top, spit-and-polish, gung-ho performance, seems to think that he's actually in a remake of "Dr. Strangelove"; Michael Wincott, a slickly frightening presence as the hippie-freak heavy in "The Crow," here reduced to scenery chewing and, in short order, to that which is chewed; and Weaver herself, who can't seem to decide if this is serious business or a colossal joke: When, as the hybrid Alien-shaman lady, she puts her ear to the deck and grimly announces that "they're moving; I can smell them," she may as well have said "heap big war party over next ridge, kemosabe." Puh-leese.
Wasted too are a handful of mildly diverting subplots, including one in which Ripley demonstrates superhuman physical powers. But if this is the case, then why don't we see her fight an Alien in xeno-a-womano combat? Her relationship with Ryder's Call, meant to echo that between her and the orphaned urchin-child Newt in Cameron's "Aliens," similarly never pays off. The director, French arthouse graduate Jean-Pierre Jeunet, clearly lacks Cameron's thematic vision and narrative craft--not to mention his flair for action scenes that crackle with intensity, instead of those which drip with bodily fluids. Thus, where "Aliens"--never for a moment lacking in thrills--sparkled with a refreshing humanity and pathos largely unknown to the sci-fi action flick crowd, "Resurrection" merely strobes its way blindly through blood-drenched attack after alien attack (how many of these things are there, anyway?), without ever demonstrating why it is, precisely, that we should be paying attention. Worth ignoring, too, is a frankly offensive plot-thread implying an incestuous, and also unabashedly bestial, sexual attraction between Ripley, the Aliens, and what amounts to her bastard Alien grandson, whose graphic, on-screen birth--envisioned as some sort of "symbolic" denouement by Jeunet--is about as much fun to watch as a haggis-eating contest. Gross.
But it's not the ample gross-outs, nor the grossly underused cast, that ultimately makes this "Alien" installment the most alienating of the lot, as far removed from Cameron's peak achievement in the genre as the "Freddy" movies are from "To Kill a Mockingbird." When we don't care about the humans or the Aliens, it's damn hard to care about much of anything at all.
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