And thus we have arrived at the end, closing the door on one of science fiction’s prominent film franchises. In a way this comes as a relief. Don’t get me wrong, talking about movies is what I love to do, but at the same time the last two movies of this franchise can really take it out of me as both a reviewer and a fan. Alien 3 was a bad movie but a lot of that can be blamed on studio interference, Alien Resurrection on the other hand has no excuse. It’s terrible simply because it’s a terrible movie.
I’m going to break a little bit of the trend here and actually not talk about the production history of this one because it’s unremarkable. Joss Whedon (we’ll get back to him.) wrote a script, then they hired Jean Pierre Jeunet 9the guy that directed Amelie, The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen, all of which are highly recommended.) and the movie went into production without any major problems. Honestly of the movies in the series, the making of documentary for this installment was the most dull to slog through. It was all run of the mill and the only interesting part was learning how they pulled off some of the model shots in the movie because I’m always interested in that.
So why is this one a terrible movie? I mean the last one was really REALLY bad but how could this one be any worse? It’s not nearly as bleak, and it’s got a more solid narrative than the last movie, so what’s the big deal?
Mostly it boils down to one major factor: no one was really all that interested in making this one. The director says in interviews how baffled he was that he was chosen, the producers weren’t too hot on the script, and even a lot of the actors seem to only be in this one for the paycheck. A lot of this apathy comes across on the screen as the characters slog from one location to the other with the only instances staying on the mind being weird, random moments that mostly seem to come from Jeunet’s odd style trying to fit in.
However being dull isn’t the main killing point for this one. No for that I have to say something that will probably get me some death threats, but I have to say it because it was a huge flaw with the movie: Joss Whedon’s script was not very good. Whedon’s fans have tried to defend this movie, and some with very well thought out arguments, but a bad script is still a bad script. The main issue I have is how it starts the plot and puts the xenomorphs back into the mix.
It is revealed that the actions of Alien 3 happened 200 years in the movie’s past, and a team of military scientist have cloned Ripley to try and retrieve the queen embryo that she was carrying at the time of her death. Now, for those that haven’t rolled their eyes yet, genetics don’t work that way. First of all let’s ignore the fact that Ripley jumped into a vat of molten lead wiping out all trace of the creature due to the extremely high temperatures, after all the film does. This idea of cloning Ripley to get the alien queen is patently absurd. Why? A: Ripley’s DNA does not include the alien queen embryo. B: Why didn’t they just clone the alien queen embryo? No, don’t just point out that this is science fiction, that I need to just allow my suspension of disbelief to take hold, none of that excuses this. Cloning Ripley would not net you the queen because when you clone something you’re starting with a based genetic code and duplicating it. The xenomorph is a parasite, and thus is just an invader to the body that has no real effect other than when it bursts out of the chest. It does not alter your DNA. However, if you can get the DNA of Ripley to make a clone, then just keep sifting that molten pit of lead and find all the pieces for the alien queen. One of the things that they bring up about the RIpley clone is that they are worried that she is regaining her memories and that she might remember that the last part of her life was a quest to completely destroy the xenomorphs... So why did you bring HER back again? They try to hand wave this away with a whole “the samples were corrupted” BS exposition dump, but again genetics don’t work that way. And I’m not some crazy biologist or anything, they brought this damn idea up in Jurassic Park. A crucial part of that movie was that the dinosaurs were cloned, but the scientists needed to use the DNA of a frog to fill in the holes in the genetic sequences left by, you know, being in the ground for 65 million years.
Now, you might say that part of the xenomorph physiology has them take traits from their host to shape their final form. Fine, I’ll play. Yes, this COULD potentially lead to an alien/human hybrid, but that’s it. Yes, this is something that happens in the movie, but it still doesn’t hold water. YOU STILL WOULD NOT GET THE QUEEN EMBRYO!
And it’s not like I’m ragging on Joss Whedon to bait his rabid fan base, I happen to like a lot of the things he’s done. But the man is not perfect, no one is. Hell I have several filmmakers that I love even more than him and they’ve all made some things that are less than stellar. I’m not even ragging on the rest of the people behind this film. Jeunet is a very talented visual storyteller, and his director of photography Darius Khondji does give the film a lot in the looking really cool department. But all in all this movie just never works.
It just can’t settle on a tone. It bounces between dry humor one minute, intense action the next, mind fuck horror after that and then back to wry one liners. It makes it hard to take anything in the movie seriously. Even the actors don’t seem to be all that concerned about what’s going on, mostly there to just have fun being in an Alien movie. No one’s really bad or anything, just not taking things seriously and when you’ve built an entire franchise on serious horror, playing up the camp is not a good idea.
If there’s any entertainment to be had in this movie it’s to marvel at the sheer amount of WTF moments and basically just the fact that this movie gets as bad as it does. Both version are the same kind of terrible and I again can’t really give any points to this movie because it’s just awful.
0 out of 5
But what of the franchise’s future? The xenomorphs made it back onto the big screen in the Alien Versus Predator films, why shouldn’t I talk about them? Because there’s not terribly much to say. Both films are awful, the first for being both too tame and because it plays fast and loose with the continuity and the second for being stupid, really stupid. Prometheus was probably the best idea to go with at this point seeing how the franchise had gone down the crapper. Hopefully its reasonable numbers at the box office will keep steering the franchise out of the nose dive it has been in for a long time. Fingers crossed over here.
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