Are You With Us? Alien: Resurrection
By Ryan Mazie
June 4, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Only watching Alien 3 a couple of weeks ago where (since this movie has been out for 20 years, please be aware, spoilers will be used freely) Sigourney’s Ripley perishes in a molten fire with her Alien baby, I was confused how the franchise could continue. But it’s a sci-fi horror movie, so death is never truly permanent. Cut to 200 years in the future, Ripley is brought back as a clone carrying an Alien baby. How they manage this is never really explained, and to be honest, I didn’t want it to be in this pointlessly exposition-heavy flick.
Ripley now has superhuman strength, Alien senses, and… amazing basketball skills? With the baby Queen Alien surgically removed from her body, the faceless and evil Weyland-Yutani mega-corporation grow the Alien and her babies in a glass cage for unclear purposes. However, the purposes do not really matter since we all know from the get-go that the Aliens will escape and pluck off the cast one by one. That cast notably includes Ron Perlman (Hellboy) as a macho mercenary and Winona Ryder as a commanding and smart equivalent to Ripley who wants to wipe out the Aliens, having a mysterious amount of knowledge on the creatures.
Written (and supposedly re-written multiple times with up to five variations of the ending) by The Avengers director-writer Joss Whedon after his work with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Toy Story impressed the studio, Whedon smartly moved the horror franchise into something more of a darkly humored thriller. After all, there is not much left to reveal of the monsters to make audiences scream. As Ripley gains powers, the Alien does too. The franchise introduces a human/Alien-hybrid spawn that is more derisory than disturbing (imagine Skeletor as a cricket).
While Whedon acknowledges that the final product closely mirrors his dialogue, he stated that the casting, delivery, set-up, music, and directing was done wrong and out of tone. He has a point. For casting, Ryder, while competent, is too young, looking out of place against the older cast. As far as directing goes, it is competent but repetitive in terms of shot set-ups.
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who used a translator on set) keeps the production values top tier – an underwater chase scene reminiscent of The Poseidon Adventure, but this time with monsters in the water, is a highlight – but he can not pace the movie properly. The first 40 minutes are pure talk, saving the action for a non-stop last hour of Alien mayhem. Talk about lopsided.
However, Whedon is not totally clear of fault. Logic problems are aplenty (while stretches of imagination have always been used for this franchise, there has been a good amount of consistency in terms of the laws of the universe) and the plot is so thin, it only serves as a shoestring between action sequences. Also, Whedon never quite decides if the Ripley clone is part-Alien or not and where her allegiances lie in terms of helping the human crew survive versus her Alien Queen baby (did I mention that the plot is a bit soap opera-y too?).
Not scary in the least bit, Alien: Resurrection manages to be a helluva fun ride when the second half hits. I enjoyed the final hour quite a bit, in a way where I didn’t have to completely shut down my brain, although I am not sure how big of a compliment this is.
The odd thing I find with horror series is that while the film may not be with us, the franchise can be. That is because the monsters are bigger than the films themselves. While Saw VI bombed at the box office, the name recognition of Jigsaw still rings loud. Alien debuted in 1979 and even in 2012, Prometheus, a $120M+ budgeted film is riding (slightly) on the name recognition. Although the Alien creatures are with us, the film Alien: Resurrection itself is not with us. While this film kept the series in the public mind, it dwarfs in size compared to the previous three films.
Unlike the other films in the franchise that were released during the summertime, Alien: Resurrection was unfortunately given a Thanksgiving weekend release date. I never understood why studios released scary flicks during the family holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, where people normally want to see more heart-warming content. Only Scream 1-2 made a winter holiday release date work, while almost every other horror film gets slaughtered year after year.
Grossing $25.8 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend in 1997 ($16.5 million over the traditional three-day), Alien: Resurrection opened in second to another sci-fi oldie, Flubber. With poisonous word-of-mouth, Alien was gone by Christmas time a short month later, exiting theaters with a total of $47.8 million ($82.6 million adjusted); much less than the $75 million production budget. Overseas, the movie raked in $113.8 million, the franchise’s best foreign numbers yet. However, the real financial gainer from the flick was Sigourney Weaver who cashed in a giant $11 million paycheck – bigger than the budget for the first Alien film.
While the directors of the Alien franchise, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher, all started their careers with their respective installment, Jean-Pierre Jeunet never found his calling stateside afterwards. Retreating back to his native France, his only foreign film that has made a notable dent in the US box office was Amelie.
Critics were nicer with this film than they were with Fincher’s Alien 3, ranking at 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. I find this surprising given how much better I think that film is compared to this new one. On the user rated IMDb, though, Resurrection has a slightly lower score than Alien 3.
One of the most storied horror franchises of all time (sorry Freddy, Jason, and Mike Myers, but you had much bigger quality control issues), I am very excited to see where Ridley Scott takes this franchise next. With lush looking trailers, a great cast, and a prime release date, I cannot wait to check Prometheus out in IMAX 3D, where this 30+ year old franchise will be introduced to modern day technology and a third-dimension (although the graphics from the others surprisingly hold up pretty damn well).
Not a great film, Alien: Resurrection’s main purpose was to keep the franchise fresh in people’s minds until Fox figured out the next big thing to do with it. While the trashy two-part Aliens Vs. Predator saga was the wrong answer, it looks like Prometheus could be the right one.
Verdict: With Us
4 out of 10