Postby FrDougal9000 » Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:52 pm
Alien Resurrection (yeah, I'm ripping off Gendo Papa's formatting when he talked about Mute, but it's a good way to help me structure my thoughts)
About 2 or 3 years, I watched the first three Alien films for the first time with my brother, a long time fan of the series. They were pretty good (although I felt that Alien 3 was the best one), but I was curious to check out the oft reviled Alien Resurrection to see if it was really that bad. My brother, understandably, didn't want to rewatch it and I never took the initiative to watch it on my own time. However, when he came to visit over the weekend, I finally managed to convince him into watching the film with me.
So, Alien Resurrection. It's kind of a fascinating film, isn't it? Ever since Aliens, Fox had wanted to make a sequel that could easily be turned into a big name franchise - this was why Alien 3 went through so many different concepts and ideas before it became the film that it is (which is pretty hilarious considering how many things it does that are guaranteed to end a franchise right then and there, and that's not a bad thing).
I bring this up because Resurrection does a lot of things to make Alien a franchisable brand again - bringing back Ripley (now as a badass with Kung Fu Grip Action), introducing a ragtag gang of 'likeable' soldiers, introducing new Alien types, and leaving things pretty open for a future film. But at the same time, there's all kinds of really weird or disturbing ideas - the scientist who seems to hold a fetish towards the Xenomorphs, the failed Ripley clones, everything to do with the Newborn - that make the film feel like a perversion of being marketable. As if the director was saying "You want to make a franchise out of this? Alright, then you'll have to make a franchise out of THIS!"
It's actually pretty unsettling at times, and I gotta give it credit for that.
Otherwise, it's an okay film. The editing can be haphazard and thoughtless, shot composition ranges from overly wacky to really effective, the use of colour is drab and dull for no particular reason (having a cast with dark hair wearing dark clothes against mostly dark environments is almost never a good idea), a fair chunk of the dialogue contains writer Joss Whedon's usual nonsense of inappropriate cliché lines/pointless swearing/snarking for its own sake, and I have no clue as to why anyone is doing anything beyond 'don't die/Xenomorphs, man!'
But at the same time, it's competently produced. A lot of the disturbing elements work really well, a couple of the action scenes manage to pack a punch, and the film managed to make laugh on more than a few occasions through committing to the sheer ridiculousness of its own nonsense (the sergeant guy nervously saluting his men after they got slaughtered in an escape pod genuinely had my brother and I breaking out in laughter). As something to watch for two hours, it's compelling enough to see through to the end.
I can totally understand why Alien fans hate this film, but I could never take it as a serious continuation considering how good a job Alien 3 did at ending the franchise. So I didn't, and on its own merits as some kind of weird curio, it's a decent watch.
Pen-Pen died for your sins!