Alien Resurrection (1997)

Why does Resurrection look misspelled, always? What a shitty word.

I recently obtained the legendary Alien Quadrilogy set, and decided to start with the film that I had never seen in it's entirety (only in bits and pieces on AMC), Alien Ressurrection. Resurection. Resurrection. Even spelled right it looks misspelled. Godammit.

I'm glad I started with this film because it's (I think we'd all agree, unless you're one of those fools who thinks Alien 3 isn't good) the worst film of the series. But on it's own, it's kind of enjoyable. It's got a terribly overbearing score (I wonder how much of the film doesn't have music playing over it. 10%? 15%? Couldn't be more than 20%) and absolutely no sense of dread or atmosphere (something all three films before it did quite well), but it is often quite pretty to look at, it keeps things moving at a decent pace, and in the catagory of Hedya destruction, it's second only to Blood Simple.

Turning Ripley into a weird emotionally autistic Xeno-Sapien (not to be confused with Homo-Morph, which refers to Jake and Marcos slash-fic) is probably the film's worst choice, because it simultaneously kills the emotional core of the series and any sense that these poor humans don't stand a chance of survival. I mean, after the shit hits the fan, her re-introduction is her casually blowing an Alien away. Even if we had some sort of emotional investment in the Space Pirate characters (which we most definitely do not), we can't feel all that worried for them. They gotta Momma on their side. They should have pulled a Psycho and killed her off halfway through the movie. We'd be left with the half-baked characters, but at least there'd be a sense of danger.

All in all, it's just short enough and gooey enough that I don't hate it.

Next up, I give Aliens yet another try. After Reserection, I bet I'm going to appreciate it a whole lot more.

From the first 15 minutes, I really thought I was going to like the film. It seemed interesting, visually stunning and had little touches that made me feel more at home with the world (things like Hedya having to breathe into he security thing a second time because it didn't register the first time). Those kinds of touches are what made me settle into the blue-collar worlds of Alien and Aliens (Alien 3 works for me because the set design goes the opposite way, going bigger and more operatic). But those quickly were overtaken by long dull scenes of Ripley spouting out cryptic nonsense about "her babies" (that scene between her and Winona Ryder is painful to sit through) and the half-assed characterizations of the space pirates.

I wonder if my tolerance of the film has to do with the fact that I had heard how terrible it was for years, so I had no real expectations whatsoever.

Christie (double handgun dreadlock dude) felt much more like a leader than Ripley, though.

Back to our originally scheduled Alien 3 derail.

I liked the idea (and how the victim alien was completely unwilling to be the escape plan) but the execution was a terrible mess of unclear shots and quick cuts. Considering it's the first real bit of Alien violence in the movie, it's pretty disappointingly shot.

If the film continued to progress the idea of the Aliens being much smarter, that'd be great. But they kind of abandon that idea when the military abandons the ship.

That was pretty creepy.

The best part of these special features is the near 7 minute featurette just about Sigourney Weaver making that behind the back shot. They're much more excited about that swish than the rest of the film.