Alien 4 : Resurrection

#33 - Alien: Resurrection (1997. dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

For all that Alien3 got wrong, it’s no match for the top-to-bottom botch job that is Alien: Resurrection. Written by fanboy saint Joss Whedon and directed by the whimsical Jean-Pierre Juenet (whose partnership with Marc Caro ended when he agreed to direct this film), Resurrection promised a new beginning for a franchise that had been literally consigned to molten lead; what it delivered was a jokey, dramatically uncertain, tonally scattershot cash-in which, the abominable AvP notwithstanding, finished the series off for good.

It was the second attempt at a coup de grace for the Alien franchise. Initially, Sigourney Weaver had envisioned Alien3 as the concluding chapter, but when that film evoked a hostile response from a fan base displeased with the unceremonious dispatching of Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Newt (Carrie Henn) from Aliens, a fourth go-round seemed like a good idea. Enter Whedon, who concocted a convoluted rebirth of Ripley that cleverly called for her to be crossbred with her acid-bleeding burden. Whedon also dropped in a group of pirates who sold stolen cryo-tubes to the military for experimentation - another viable story element.

But did any of this shit make sense in an Alien movie? Though the notion of a partially-xenomorph Ripley was intriguing, Whedon invests the proceedings with his usual glib bullshit; rather than write an actual character, he just slathers on the lame repartee. Though we love Ripley, the real Ripley died when she did the Nestea plunge at the end of Alien3. The protagonist of Alien: Resurrection is just some hybrid dreamt up to extend a franchise that seemed revivable. It wasn’t. And the new characters, led by a tough-talking clone that should never have been played by Winona Ryder, are just as flimsy. Michael Wincott and Ron Perlman have fun with their scoundrel caricatures, but they don’t hang around long enough to make much of an impression. Brad Dourif gets the best scene in the movie as a sadistic scientist who tortures the xenomorphs until they can’t takes no more.

Alien: Resurrection might seem like a stretch for this list, but you have to remember the hype back in 1997. People thought the series was salvageable. I recall excitedly purchasing a ticket to see the movie a week early at the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens as part of an Alien-themed weekend of screenings; by the time we got to Resurrection, the entire theater felt ripped-off. As with The Phantom Menace two years later, I tried to talk myself into liking it, but I knew. A decade later, the film’s uselessness is undeniable. - Jeremy