Alien Resurrection (Collector's Edition) [DVD]

For a franchise, the Alien movies are... a mixed bag. Everyone has opinions on the idea, let alone execution, of sequels to great (or any) movies. Some are great and most are not, and in the end one wonders... what will they add onto in the future? (Look around: A LOT!). In the case of the Aliens line up, this Alien Resurrection have my wife and I a bit of enjoyment on a Saturday afternoon, and the promise that we would return at least once. But no, it's not as great as 1 and 2.I will never begrudge the efforts and talents of filmmakers (screenwriters, actors, directors, etc) for not merely their talents, but the sheer will that goes into bringing something to life. But when films and their makers (producers and studios) keep revisiting the same set up, it comes at great risk. There are others past 2 that we have tried and failed to enjoy or like. That's our taste - or the 'fact' that capturing light in a bottle more than once is at best hard. In this case, Alien Resurrection is at least a stand up with some redeeming value and enjoyment along the way.So all of the said, a few spoilers...It's been two hundred years since Ripley died at the end of Alien 3 (not a fan) and (movie) scientists have cloned our heroine for their evil purposes. It took us seconds to wonder, why didn't they clone the cat? This Ripley turns out to be a "hybrid" of human-alien - because of course you'd do that - and the 8th of the line up of tries. The first 7? You'll have to watch and see. As a group of mercenaries lands on the ship where of course they are also doing stupid things like trying to breed the aliens, they are dropping off some captured humans - who will, what? Yep, become hosts for the new breed being developed.Aliens come along, people die, Ripley is called upon to either save the day or die, and we find out that "family" sometimes has to kill it's members to stop things like Aliens getting to earth. It's crazy and sci fi and we again have the super brave woman doing the smart things while men all around go for greed and the feeling of power and an overwhelming need to be stupid... but it's all good fun and Ripley again makes the tough calls to get some of them home...In the end we did enjoy it. There is a lot going on and to unpack, but it is fun and there is tension and excitement and a robot, but no cat. Hope aboard and take another ride into space and see what happens...

What people forget when they respond to this film is that  Alien 3  shut down the series, very deliberately and very conclusively. Not only did Ripley die, but the driving concerns of the series that were set up in the first film had been addressed. So there was nowhere to go but in a radically new direction, and that's what Jean-Pierre Jeunet did. While the first films used the aliens and the technological context in which they appeared to address the question what makes us specifically human, this new contribution to the series is more interested in the question of a possible "post-human" future.In  Alien  the enemy was not really the monster. The monster's unique method of reproduction merely served to highlight the "human condition": that we are vulnerable, that our bodies are ill-equipped for survival except in the most congenial of circumstances, that they are subject to violation by organic and inorganic forces outside of us. The idea of being "violated" through the mouth and "impregnated" by a monster is horrible, but that possibility serves to highlight our dependency upon science and technology in order to stay alive (even her on Earth), and our increasing "alienation" through technology from the natural world and from the evolutionary struggle for survival. Ash (the robot scientist) and Mother (the artificially intelligent computer that kept them alive and gave instructions) and the Company (that treats human life as expendible) were the real enemies of  Alien . Ripley was a hero because she didn't think scientific fact and material gain trump human empathy (her concern for a cat) and human interests. Aliens  takes the same ideas and the same basic storyline and expands it: more military, more weapons, a girl and a sensitive soldier instead of a cat, but ends on a familiar note. Ripley ejects the threat out of the airlock and is able to escape with her body and her principles intact. This relatively optimistic resolution of both the first and the second film is what Fincher's third film rejected, by impregnating Ripley and killing off the girl and the boyfriend during the opening credits. This time the issue is raised onto a theological plane and the question is whether we can find meaning in a universe where not only are there alien forces beyond our control that can destroy us but that, as a general rule even if there are exceptions, we humans either can't seem to help ourselves or don't much care as we harm others for our own gain. Ripley seems to find meaning in her final act of destroying the alien and herself, thus saving humanity from the careless greed that would use such a monster without regard to the human consequences. With that act, while not all questions the series raises are completely resolved, the series seems to reach a logical end, having adressed gender, reproduction, humanity, science, technology, war, all in the context of defining the human over and against those alien forces that threaten constantly to overwhelm humanity.With Alien Resurrection, the series starts again, but in a new direction. Sigourney Weaver is no longer playing Ripley, but an Alien/Human cloned hybrid who somehow remembers something of her former incarnation but no longer possesses the same kind of horror of the alien. In fact what horrifies her most are images of her own creation, visions of the technological process that brought her into being. Whereas the first three films aimed for a certain kind of realism, Alien Resurrection verges on the surrealistic nightmare landscape of Jeunet's  The City of Lost Children  and  Delicatessen . What we see may seem silly or strange or skewed, but I think that is because we are intended to get a skewed, or post-human, vision of the human attempt to control the monster, that would seem strange and absurd through the eyes of the no-longer quite human Ripley and the android Call (Winona Rider).Admittedly, this is a brief and undeveloped defense of the film - and in this brief form it is probably guilty of over-intellectualizing the films, and "forgetting" that the primary appeal of these films is not "intellectual" but visceral -- but I hope it suggests another perspective: that rather than think Alien Resurrection is a failure because it doesn't live up to the terms of the series as Ridley Scott set them up, we should consider the possibility that a "resurrection" of the series may require a reworking of its basic assumptions and style. I admit to being heavily influenced in my opinions about this film by Stephen Mulhall's excellent little book On Film - while I disagree with some details of his account, I think his general approach to thinking about the Alien series as a whole is quite intelligent and compelling.)

I would say this hasn't aged that well. Out of all the Alien movies this is my least favorite as it's a bit cheesy with waaay over the top acting and not in a good way! Even the picture isn't as good as Alien 3 and that came out 5 years earlier. So a bit disappointing really but it's still an Alien movie so it's worth a purchase if you can find it cheap.

Not as great as I remembered from when I first saw it but I was probably transfixed by the lovely Winona. You also get the impressive Sigourney as well. Not to mention direction by Jean-Pierre Jeunet who gave you "Delicatessen" and "The City of Lost Children". It`s good fun.

It’s alien franchise, enough said

Great film promptly delivered

Just re-watched the whole Alin/Promethus/AVP series. Great film, one of my faves in the set and the Aliens I think are at their best visually, hasn't aged badly either.