SHOULD'VE STAYED DEAD
I keep asking myself, where can the ALIEN movies go after Ripley dies
at the end of ALIEN 3? ALIEN RESURRECTION seems to have lots of ideas.
You can take "The Company" which was faceless and monolithic in the
first three movies and turn it into the United Systems Military (just
another name? I thought so too). You can inject cool girl Winona Ryder
as an android with a conscience who is trying to destroy the aliens. You
can bring back all those aliens we're familiar with to terrorise a bunch
of people on a ship that will auto-pilot back to earth when it's in
trouble (which is quite fun I guess, but by the third sequel of the
alien movies, no one seems to be interested in earth anymore). And you
can most importantly bring back Ripley (ie. resurrect her!) and drag in
some technical jargon about how she's cloned along with the queen alien
she died with in ALIEN 3 and how this has made Ripley half-alien and the
alien half-Ripley and so on. These are all quite interesting concepts...
but in trying to so hard to outdo the first three ALIEN movies,
RESURRECTION gets nowhere near to them, and finally descends into a
pathetic creature flick.
The problem, as I expected but refused to accept until after the movie,
is that the ALIEN movies have nowhere left to go. It ends up being not
half as compelling as James Cameron's ALIENS. There's lots of gunfire
and all, plus alien and human guts being splattered about... but that
looks a little too much like this season's STARSHIP TROOPERS, and so it
comes across as a meaningless bloodbath. I think one problem is that
there's minimal characterisation in RESURRECTION. Somehow in all the
ALIEN trilogy, the other characters around Ripley had personalities.
Remember Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) in ALIENS? Or Bishop (Lance
Henrikson) from ALIENS and ALIEN 3? In RESURRECTION, everyone is a flat
out uncultured and unlikeable pain, especially Ron Perlman... which
makes me wonder why he survives the whole film. Winona is hardly
acting... which is not entirely her fault, since the script doesn't even
make her out to be an android till the last 30 minutes or so. And then
Ripley goes and screws up the lack of development about the "android
with the conscience" but saying to her : "no human could be so humane".
The corny one-liners are also out of whack in RESURRECTION. We'd never
have expected these crappy lines in the last three ALIEN movies. Most of
all we wouldn't have expected Ripley to be such a pain herself. For some
reason, being resurrected isn't what it's all cracked up to be. I
expected there to be hints about some residual angst in Ripley, some
flashbacks to enhance the notion of the ceaseless warfare against man
and alien, both of whom are different kinds of beasts. But here Ripley
seems so distant and detached. She's got the alien inside her blood, has
become extra strong and is as frigid as can be. For some reason, I'm not
even on her side because of the corny one-liners she spouts. She tells a
man who has an alien growing inside him : "there's a monster in you, and
I'm its mother". It's all too much of a departure from the old Ripley. I
guess it's okay that she's different and that it's radical and all, but
to so callously throw away all the character development of the last
three ALIEN movies is just a bit too much for me. I didn't appreciate
the new coldness in her, and I didn't even feel like she needed to
survive the movie. It wouldn't have mattered because she didn't get my
sympathy anymore.
But to give RESURRECTION some credit, it's got some good action scenes.
Not half as good as James Cameron's ALIENS (I mean, Cameron only
directed TERMINATOR, T2, TRUE LIES and this season's TITANIC so...
duh!), but forgivable. I think the coolest sequence was the underwater
chase scene with the aliens swimming and attacking the pathetic humans.
That was pretty wild, although I don't understand how anyone could hold
their breath for that long. The cinematography was good too, and that we
owe to Darius Khondji (SEVEN and EVITA). It's stylish and dark... but
somehow it can't save the movie from being your average creature flick.
And here's what kills RESURRECTION entirely. The last 20 minutes. It
just makes a nosedive into an intolerable creature flick. It's so
outrageous in trying to surpass the other ALIEN movies that you need
someone to explain to you why the film has taken the nosedive. So voila,
you get one of the scientists in a cocoon telling Ripley (as he's
strapped by alien goo to the wall) that the queen alien has gone into a
second cycle of gestation, and this time, the child is a half-Ripley...
and it's so gross looking and so ugly and so intolerable that
immediately, everything the last three ALIEN movies have built up
degenerates into an ugly and gruesome creature flick. This is a little
bit of a spoiler, but the child of the queen alien is so hideous that
it's a pointless addition to the film. It's an albino with human eyes,
and it doesn't have the wild jaws of the normal aliens, it has a long
human tongue... perfectly gross! It thinks Ripley is its mother and
licks her over, and caresses her... and yes, Ripley (who by now is so
fargone with her half-alien crap) hugs the alien back. I guessed by now
that another pitched battle between Ripley and the queen alien (like in
ALIENS) would've have been too predictable, but to make out a new alien
that wasn't even stylish or scary or cool was killing the whole film in
one fell swoop.
When Ripley was sniffing the man with an alien inside him, she smelt
the alien growing in his chest. The alien hybrid also has a nose, and
it's constantly sniffing around. I'm sure it's because something stinks,
and it's this plot, this climax, and the ruination of the whole concept
of the ALIEN movies. I'm not sure about you, but as far as I'm
concerned, Ripley should have stayed dead.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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