Apr 09, 2001 04:02 PM
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Alien : Resurrection
Starring
-Sigourney Weaver as Ripley 8
-Winona Ryder as Annalee Call
-Brad Dourif as Dr Gediman
-Ron Pearlman as Johner
-Directed By Jean-Pierre Jeuner
After two excellent trailers, I was hoping to see another Aliens. A gun packed, bug hunting two hours of excitement. How wrong I was. This film had high praise from preview audiences.
Fox seemed really pleased with their latest film in the alien franchise. Where did they go wrong? Who thought they were making a good film? After throwing herself into a molten pit of lead, Ripley is back. But how? After getting a blood sample from the stores on Fiorina 161 (called Fiorina 16 in the film. A very poor error to make), Ripley 8 is the eighth clone that has been produced. The movie starts with the doctors removing the queen alien chestburster from within Ripley 8. They place it in a holder and take it away to be cultivated. The Ripley clone gradually becomes aware of herself and starts to regain memories of the original Ripley. This fascinates the Doctors who study her, and carefully too, after a demonstration of her new strength. Meanwhile a band of smugglers come aboard and deliver an illegal cargo, which turns out to be humans in stasis. It turns out that the humans are being used to breed aliens. This is shown by a room full of restrained humans who can only scream as face huggers emerge from eggs right in front of their shocked faces. As the smuggler crew do their own thing to pass the time, one of them (Annalee Call) sneaks off and tries to assassinate Ripley 8 without much success. We then see Dr Gediman try to teach the aliens control by showering them with nitrogen every time they do not follow orders. Here's where the film starts to pick up.
Dr Gediman is studying three aliens in a holding cell, and after an amusing moment where he plays with one and pretends to kiss it, we see for the first time aliens communicating with each other. One alien spurs on the other two to attack each other. And with the death of one of the aliens, the leaking acid blood burns through the holding cell. In a panic Dr Gediman activates the nitrogen jets. When the smoke clears, there's only a hole in the cell and a dead alien. Two are missing. With Ripley 8 being half alien she can sense what the aliens are up to and is surprised that they are after her. She escapes her cell just as the aliens break in. Then she meets up with the smugglers. The ship is put on red alert. After some more decent action sequences the film starts to go downhill on a steady pace.
The rest of the film seems to be the survivors of the ship, smugglers and Ripley just pondering their way back to the Betty (The smuggler ship). Along the way we get to see the previous seven Ripley clones. Very horrific. The film picks up again when we have an underwater chase sequence which leads onto a elevator shaft chase. These two sequences relieve the film for a while until it goes back to plodding off to the betty. Then Ripley is captured by aliens. They don't kill her because she's almost one of them almost. Then we see the Queen alien with a pregnant stomach. Because when cloned, both Ripley and alien were mixed slightly, it turns out that the queen alien that grew from the chestburster has the reproductive system of humans. The queen gives birth to the worst alien creature you'll ever see.
The new-born. Now the film has hit an all time low. This creature is worse than all of Alien 3. The queen gives birth to a white alien with skeletors face (remember He-man). It looks evil but when we see it close it has black eyes and gives us a sad look. At this point I didn't care anymore. I just gave up with the film. What made it worse was that Ripley STROKES it like a mother and then the ending just copies Aliens. The special effects are as usual these days, excellent (except for the new-born). The aliens have gone back to the aliens design with bumpy skull heads rather than a smooth dome. The aliens are achieved with high quality puppet work and CGI.
All exterior space ship shots are extremely well done and I was later surprised to find that It was all model work. ADI is a company run by two guys Gillis and Woodruff and they did all of the puppet work on the film. They did an excellent set of aliens but they created the new-born. In the making of book, you get to see some excellent half human/alien designs by artist Chris Hall. These designs are very good. But it is ADI who turned it into the pants that is the new-born. It sucks. Apparently Fox are so pleased with Alien : Resurrection (can't see why) they want an alien 5. I can only hope they surf the internet find out the true reaction from real fans and make a better film than this. Alien : Resurrection a film with a good first half but then plunges downhill into the pit of pants and falls past Alien 3 on the way. YES! I consider it worse that alien 3 in most respects.
Yes I am biased but I was expecting so much more and consider myself a true alien fan who has been extremely let down. 97 has been a year for poor films, and this is another one. PS H. R. Giger gets no credit in this film (He created the alien for the original movie). ADI get the alien creation credit. If Fox make a Alien 5 I pray they bring back Giger to create some new alien designs. ADI also ignored his designs when they worked on Alien 3 as well.
