Alien Resurrection

Alien Resurrection (1997)

Image From IMDB

I don’t know if Alien Resurrection qualifies as a guilty pleasure, but i’ve always had a soft spot for it. Any sci-fi following a crew getting picked off one by one on a ship always has my attention, and I think this is one of the better action examples of that convention. Obviously it’s not up to the masterful standard of the first Alien movie, or the bombasticness of Aliens, but I think it’s a great instalment in the franchise.

A rag tag crew drinking rocket fuel. Insane scientific experiments lead by the always great Brad Dourif. A Joss Whedon script. Ron Perlman acting like a bullying ape. Futuristic super-powered Ripley. Winona Ryder in a genre flick. Aliens all over the place. Alien human hybrids with tits––ok, that part was fucking weird even for me! This movie really does have something of everything.

I like the fact that the movie is set two-hundred years in the future as well. It gives it a freedom that Alien 3 didn’t have. The whole cloning aspect for both Ripley and the Aliens also means they can essentially make their own rules, and build their own world too. I imagine thats part of what people could dislike about the film giving the great work previously done in the franchise, but I think it was a sensible choice for the type of film they wanted to make, otherwise, it would just be Aliens again.

The whole crew are great. Michael Wincott always plays Michael Wincott amazingly well. Ron Perlman is a riot. Gary Dourdan looks super cool. Winona Ryder stole the movie for me with a difficult role balancing her judgemental and supposedly moral character when surrounded by scumbags. And Sigourney obviously knows how to play Ripley in her sleep by this point, but I enjoyed seeing the character have more of an edge than usual.

The setting was great. The world building cool. The mixture of practical and CGI worked well. I wasn’t overly fussed about the look of the aliens swimming underwater, but liked the scene as a whole, even if I do prefer it in Deep Rising.

The atmosphere felt great through-out, and the cruel humour always works in that sort of environment. None of the characters are particularly likeable, yet you want them to survive. That’s always a delicate balance to make work and I think both Whedon and the director Jean-Pierre Jeunet handled that well.

Alien Resurrection is an easy watch. A healthy mix of fun, stupid, and cool. Everyone is game, and while the plot is simple, they do plenty with it. It has its flaws, but they’re mostly hidden in entertaining sequences and badass dialogue. Maybe not for the purest, but it’s a fun sci-fi action flick.