Over the next few days my friend and expert on the horror genre Lizzy will be recapping the Alien quadrilogy, reminding us what happened in the previous films and giving us some analysis, trivia and background about this classic series, then she'll be taking on prometheus, including thoughts on the alternative start and endings. Hope you enjoy reading these as much as I have! Beware though, ahead are quite a few spoilers.
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Alien Resurrection (1997)
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Rotten Tomatoes rating 52%
Witness the resurrection
When it opened Alien Resurrection was met with mixed reviews. Some critics praised the film as an enjoyable ride while others were rather scathing. Those who disliked the film tended to blame writer Joss Whedon stating that despite the best efforts of the actors and directors the scripting of the action sequences let the film down. Whedon himself dislikes the finished film when he was asked what he thought the problem was he blamed the actors, complaining that they did and said everything wrong.
The director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was generally praised for revisiting old ideas and adapting them in his own quirky style. Interestingly Jeunet was the second choice of director. The studio originally wanted Danny Boyle but he was busy with A Life Less Ordinary. At the time of filming Jeunet was unable to speak English and had to communicate with the crew via a translator, apart from Dominique Pinon who as well as being a francophone had been in three previous Jeunet efforts.
At the end of Alien3 Ripley commits suicide by jumping into a vat of hot lead in order to prevent the company from getting its hands on the alien queen growing inside her. Resurrection begins two hundred years later with a shot of a young girl growing inside a tube. This shot was mocked up using photographs of Sigourney Weaver as a child,
The first time that we see Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) she is unconscious on an operating table. Dr Gediman (Brad Dourif) leads a group of surgeons in the extraction of the alien queen. The life of the host is an afterthought but on seeing that her life signs are stable, Gediman tells his team to stitch her up. Before the doctor can do this however the sedated Ripley grabs him around the neck and slams him against the viewing window.
In the following scene Ripley emerges from a cocoon like shroud. The doctors refer to her as number 8, the number that is tattooed on her arm. The doctors are pleased with her progress but her aggression is off the chart. In a later examination she is seen strapped to a chair.
Watching Ripley’s progress is General Perez (Dan Hedya). Unlike the doctors he is not pleased with Ripley’s progress. He is particularly unhappy with the fact that Ripley has memories as the previous Ripley sabotaged the plan they are currently undertaking. He states that he is willing to terminate Ripley at anytime. The real prize is the fully grow alien queen they have locked away.
Over another breakfast Ripley (who is in handcuffs) asks Gediman how she was created. He tells her that they searched Fiorina for her remains and through hard work she was cloned, of course this is impossible but in horror films it is often necessary to suspend disbelief.
Ripley asks if the alien is growing and Gediman answers in the affirmative. Ripley then tells him that once the queen breeds he will die, everyone in the company will die. Dr Wren (J.E. Freeman) comes in and informs Ripley that they company folded long ago and that they are on a military station. He goes on to tell Ripley that the species has potential for urban control once it has been tamed. Ripley laughs and replies that the aliens cannot be taught tricks. He retorts that they are already teaching tricks to Ripley.
Meanwhile the Betty arrives. Down in the bowels of the ship we are introduced to the crippled engineer Vriess (Dominique Pinon, Jeunet’s answer to Johnny Depp) and his patient assistant Call (Winona Ryder). Watching them work is Johner (Ron Perlman) who throws a knife into Vriess’s leg. When Vriess complains Johner points out that he can't feel the wound anyway. This enrages Call who breaks the knife rather than give it back to its owner.
The Betty is a mercenary ship and its officers Elgyn (Michael Wincott) and Christie (Gary Dourdan) are unhappy at having to surrender to military authority.
As Elgyn receives the cash payment for his services he asks Perez why a military lab is operating outside regulated space. Perez makes it clear that the Betty’s crew is not to go wandering around the ship. Consequently there is a heavy guard as they transfer the cargo to the medi-lab.
The Betty has been transporting cryopods complete with human occupants. In the following scene the colonists are show held in front alien eggs. As one opens the unfortunate host awakes and screams while the doctors watch.
The eggs in Resurrection are different from those in Alien. Jeunet apparently felt that the static eggs from the original film were unrealistic and so had them redesigned. As well as pulsing the new ones also have a wetter looking texture.
Elsewhere the crew meets Ripley as she is playing basketball. Chauvinistic predator Johner challenges her to a game. As he invades her personal space she teases him with the ball. She then attacks knocking out both Johner and Christie who hits her in the face with a barbell cause her nose to bleed. The scientists come and call Ripley off but as she leaves she wipes away the blood and a drop falls to the floor, where it burns a hole.
At the end of this scene Ripley throws a basketball behind her without looking and it goes through the hoop. Prior to filming Sigourney Weaver took six weeks of basketball lessons and practiced this shot. Due to the difficulty in getting it right and the cost of retakes Jean-Pierre Jeunet wanted to edit in the ball being dropped into the basket. Weaver persuaded him to let her try to do it for real and miraculously managed to make the shot first time. Jeunet however was still unhappy. He thought that viewers would assume the throw was faked and wanted to edit it out completely. Sigourney Weaver, who has a production credit, persuaded him not to by telling him that making the basket first time was her third best moment ever- the first two were her wedding and the birth of her daughter.
Night falls. In a nice little touch Perez is shown setting fire to black polish before shining his boots.
Gediman studies the captive queen. As he watches her he mimics her expression and then kisses the observation window. This suggests that he has disturbing affection. He admires it in a way that can be a little uncomfortable to watch. The queen however does not share his feelings She responds by attacking the glass with her inner jaw. Gediman blasts her and she squeals. When he goes to press the button again the queen backs away showing that she is learning.
Johner, Christie and Call are drinking and watching a shopping channel. Call appears drunk and when she spills their liquor Johner tells her to take a walk. Once she leaves them she is shown sober and breaks into Ripley’s cell. She goes to attack Ripley but stops when she sees the scar on Ripley’s chest.
Call asks Ripley where the alien is. She then asks who Ripley is. When Ripley recites her name Call points out that Ripley died two hundred years ago and that she is a construct grown in a lab. Call states that she will die to kill the alien. Ripley states that it can't be killed.
Call is caught and the soldiers corner the Betty’s crew. They are charged with terrorism but attack and kill their captors. Elgyn interrogates Call who tries to explain about the aliens. Like all the male authority figures in these films he doesn't listen.
Meanwhile the aliens realise that they are unguarded and sacrifice one of their own to escape. Gediman goes on to investigate and is taken out by a leathery hand.
The alerts sound and the soldiers begin the evacuation. Vriess is separated from the others and as he sits isolated in his wheelchair an alien crawls above him. He shoots and acid drips onto his legs. Unfortunately he only feels it when a drop hits his ear and he begins to scream.
The Ripley clone uses her strength and blood to escape, the same way that the aliens have.
The soldiers evacuate in an escape pod but do not get very far as Perez blows them up to kill the alien that has managed to get inside the pod. As he salutes the explosion an alien attacks from behind. His last action is to pull part of his brain from the back of his own head.
The mercenaries are trying to get back to the Betty. Elgyn gets separated and falls through and unstable floor. When the others try to pull him out only his torso remains. An alien rises up and the other run. As the alien investigates the corpse a gun pokes out from the hole in Elgyn’s chest and blow’s its head away. Pushing aside the body Ripley climbs out of the hole in the floor.
The mercenaries find Wren and Distephano (Raymond Cruz) who is one of the soldiers. Wren tells them there are another twelve aliens. Ripley tries to take charge but Call argues that she is not to be trusted. Christie argues that they need to work together in order to escape.
As they travel down the corridor one of the lifts beeps. They raise their guns and prepare for an attack but when the doors open it is only Vriess. His line here is Who were you expecting? Santa Claus. In the original script the line ended with Easter Bunny but Dominique Pinon couldn’t say Easter and it kept coming out eastern so it had to be re-written. As a joke the entire crew had t-shirts printed with the misspoken line.
It is then revealed that if there is a problem the ship returns to the Earth. The survivors decide that they have to blow up the ship. No surprises there then.
As they attempt to escape Johner asks Ripley what happened the last time that she ran into the aliens. She replies I died.
In the following scene Ripley finds a door marked 1-7. Inside the previous seven attempts to clone Ripley and her offspring. Ripley enters and views tubes what look like freak show exhibits. The worst however is a living hybrid with a human face that begs for death. Call hands Ripley a flamethrower and in a reference to the death of Ash she torches the room.
Next the escapees come across the dead colonists with the holes in their chests. One, Larry Purvis (Leland Orser), is still alive hiding behind the pods. He freaks out when Ripley approaches and asks what is happening. Ripley tells him that the mercenaries kidnapped him and put a monster in his chest, which will burst through his rib cage, and he will die. He then asks who she is. Ripley tells him that she is the monster’s mother.
After an argument they take the victim with them. As they enter the cooling tanks they have to leave Vriess’s chair behind so Christie straps him to his back.
The cooling tanks are flooded. These underwater scenes took three weeks to film and like Singing in the Rain milk had to be added to the water to make it show up on film.
As they swim through the flooded rooms the aliens follow, gliding effortlessly through the water. In the ensuing flight one of the crew is lost. Ripley watches her die with an expression of curiosity.
A membrane covers the surface of the water. A ring of eggs surrounds it and another crewmember is attacked by a facehugger. As he falls Christie blasts at the eggs. Allowing the swimmers to escape before the pursuing alien attacks.
Wren leads the team up the ladder. At the top he pretends that they door won’t open and asks Call for her gun. She foolishly hands it to him and he shoots her in the chest. While they are trying to deal with Wren the alien climbs the ladder. In killing it Christie is burned with acid. Viress is left clinging to the ladder supporting himself, Christie and the alien. Christie commits the supreme sacrifice to destroy the alien by unclipping himself from Viress.
While the others are recovering from this the door opens and there stand Call dripping wet. When they demand to know how she survived she is found to be an android. Not just any android either, Call is an android built by androids. There is suggestion that Call is a mistake. She was built to be too human.
Call is forced to access the main computer by hard wiring herself to it. As already stated Call has feelings in the way that the previous androids do not. Ripley describes her as being too human to be human. Accessing the computer makes it clear that she is a piece of machinery and this upsets her.
Having the computer she discovers that the ship has lost too much power to detonate. So Ripley tells her to crash it. She changes the destination of the ship to an uninhabited area and resets the ground level. Wren meanwhile is trying to override the system but Call stops him and alerts the aliens to his presence.
Ripley and Call bond as Ripley tries to patch the android up. Glimmers of Ripley’s maternal side emerge. Call tells her that before she was recalled she accessed the government’s computer and tried to save the crew of the Betty from themselves. Ripley tells Call that she once tried to save people. She tells her about Newt but says that she can no longer remember the girl’s name.
As they near the docks the Ripley clone senses that they are near the nest and that they alien queen is in pain. She climbs into the nest and is caressed by her offspring. The studio wanted to cut this scene as they thought it could be interpreted as a love scene. Sigourney Weaver insisted that it stay in.
The crew make it back to the Betty but are ambushed by Wren who shoots Purvis. As he tries to blackmail the crew into taking the aliens back to Earth. Purvis, whose chest is beginning to pulsate, drags himself off his deathbed and attacks Wren. He holds Wren to his chest so that the baby alien burst through them both.
In the nest the cocooned Gediman explains that the queen developed a second reproductive chamber. This one was a womb with a single baby. This is a part human part alien hybrid and was Ripley’s true offspring.
The queen gives birth to an albino hybrid with a human face. This new alien kills its mother as it emerges and then attempts to bond with Ripley. It makes an almost human cry as it licks her face.
Ripley flees the nest as the hybrid kills Gediman. As always she has only moments to spare to get away making a death-defying leap onto the Betty. Distephano quips I thought you were dead, to which Ripley replies I get that alot.
As always an alien tries to hitch a ride. The hybrid surprises Call in the cargo hold. It seems either curious or scared as the Betty takes off. It then kills the final soldier and attempts to hurt Call. Ripley enters and like a mother scalding a child tells the alien to put her down. The alien complies and then Ripley sucks it out into space.
In the director’s cut Ripley and Call arrive back on Earth. Their final conversation takes place above the ruins of Paris with the Eiffel Tower broken in the background.
Alien Resurrection is one of those films that a lot of people did not see the point of. On paper it is actually one of the strongest films having a well-regarded director, writer and cast. In previous instalments the actors had been up and coming stars, most of the secondary characters in Aliens got the job because they had just done Terminator. In Resurrection however they were already established names. Brad Dourif had been some of the most critically acclaimed films of all time and would go onto be Grima Wormtongue. He was also a legend in the horror genre for providing the voice of Chucky in the Child’s Play films.
Winona Ryder got second billing for Resurrection. By the time she made the film she had already crossed over from being a child start and had been nominated for two Oscars. Yet she apparently agreed to the film without even reading a script. Apparently she was a big Alien fan and wanted to show off to her younger brothers.
Despite being set in space several centuries in the future it is very much a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film. There are the same functional sets as the previous films but lit and stylised in a way that makes ugly things pretty. The colours in this film are vivid and sumptuous. Even the lighting has been carefully crafted. As the film goes on it gets dark.
The final reference is in the final scene of the director’s cut. Here is a ruined Paris engulfed by a rising dust line, the same as the one that covers the outside world in Jeunet’s previous film Delicatessen.
Alien Resurrection is a film that does not appear to take itself too seriously. When he agreed to make the film Jean-Pierre Jeunet was encouraged to make it more violent in keeping with horror films of the late 90’s. He opted to make it a black comedy with lots of knowing little references to original Alien. This is always a risk however not taking itself seriously is one of Resurrection’s strengths. A third sequel is never going to be able to break new ground but being fun may make it memorable.
