*Disclaimer: Two points to disclaim here. First is the whole Joss Whedon of it all – while none of the allegations against him so far get into the type of sexual harassment/assault alleged against creeps like, say, Harvey Weinstein or Bryan Singer, the allegations at the very least paint a picture of a toxic guy who’s created incredibly-hostile environments on assorted sets of his, especially for women. Second, the film is yet another to feature an able-bodied actor (in this case, Dominique Pinon) playing a character with a disability.*
I don’t
know what happened; I could’ve sworn I’d posted all my reviews for the main
four Alien movies, but somehow, this
one got lost in the couch cushions. Here
it is, better late than never.
In an
incredibly backwards way, this was actually the first Alien film I ever saw, back when I was first working my way through
Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s filmography. At the
time, I could confidently state that it was the worst of his movies, and after
seeing the other three in the tetralogy, I felt pretty solidly that it was the
worst Alien movie, too (granted, I’m
not overly fond of Alien3,
either, but I think this one is worse.)
Shame, because there are a lot of good people involved/elements that
ought to work in its favor, but for me, it just doesn’t (spoilers.)
200 years
after the events of Alien3,
Ripley lives again! Sort of. She’s part Ripley clone, part human/alien
hybrid, brought to life by military scientists who – what else? – think they
can use the aliens to their advantage.
New!Ripley was in fact made as an incubator, and the fact that she
survives extracting the alien and has super-strength/other alien-borrowed
powers is just a bonus for them. A
rough-around-the-edges spaceship crew doing jobs for hire happens to be on the
military space base right around the time the newly-matured aliens bust out and
start laying waste to everything in their paths. Cue the blood bath as the crew and New!Ripley
try to make it off the base alive.
Like I
said, good pedigree here. In addition to
Jeunet’s direction, we have a script by Joss Whedon and a cast that, besides
the obvious Sigourney Weaver goodness, includes Little Women/Girl,
Interrupted-era Winona Ryder, Brad Dourif, Dan Hedaya, Ron Perlman, Gary
Dourdan, and good ol’ Jeunt mainstay Dominique Pinon (in the only performance
I’ve seen him give in English.) Bonus –
we also get Raymond Cruz, a.k.a. Tuco from the first two seasons of Breaking Bad. All the actors are fine, and the aliens are
their alien selves, but it never quite comes together.
In my
view, there are two issues at work here.
First, Jeunet and Whedon are two creators with very singular visions,
and I feel like the direction and the screenplay may be at odds. What we have is a film that looks like (a
very dark) Jeunet (think Delicatessen
without the whimsy,) sounds like Whedon (the crew of the Betty are like a
proto-Serenity crew,) but doesn’t really feel like either. For what it’s worth, I know that Whedon is
deeply dissatisfied with the film, claiming in essence that Jeunet didn’t
significantly change the script but that he directed it “all wrong” (I also know Jeunet spoke very little English
at the time and made the whole movie through interpreters, which may have been
a factor.) It seems to me like we had
two very decisive cooks doing entirely their own thing in a kitchen they were
meant to be sharing.
The other
big issue, unfortunately, involves the central premise: I hate the notion of the reconstituted
Ripley/alien hybrid. In keeping with the
theme of test-driving Firefly ideas,
she’s a lot like River. New!Ripley is
super smart, super strong, emotionally-distant and off-putting, and “jut knows
things” she shouldn’t. Not that any of
those things are inherently wrong or that “emotionally-damaged science
experiment with superhuman abilities” isn’t a character type that can work (I
think it works beautifully with River, but that’s in part because we get 14
episodes and a movie in which to understand her and what she’s been through,)
but it doesn’t work for Ripley. To me, Ripley is a fantastic hero because of
how human she is. In Alien, she’s not some superwoman; she’s
just a talented astronaut desperately trying to keep herself and the rest of
the crew alive. In Aliens, she’s shell-shocked and disoriented, and she tries to keep
the soldiers from getting themselves killed with an “are you kidding me – this again?” air. In Alien3,
she’s broken but still dragging herself across the finish line on bloody
knuckles, just ready to end it. In Alien: Resurrection? She’s not a person anymore. She’s an idea, a concept, a kick-ass action
shot with none of the truth that fueled her awesomeness in the earlier
films. And I can’t get behind that.
Warnings
Extreme
alien violence/gore, language, and drinking.
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