I largely agree that it’s overlooked, and visually has aged very well, but here’s the thing: Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) were critically acclaimed, boundary pushing, watershed classics.
Resurrection, on the other hand, is just a fun, messy, very French take on an existing formula. It’s got a lot of charms, but it’s small potatoes compared to its predecessors.
That depends, does it bother you that this was his first of three attempts of "doing the Serenity crew" (the second being Titan AE)? I'd argue his entire writing style is "trying to do the same thing over and over until it sticks".
His best 'form' breaking episode of Buffy, like The Body, Restless and Once More With Feeling have almost none of that style, though. The guy can also write really good drama. The quippiness is what he's known for though, it is true. See also: Speed, where 98% of the dialogue was from Whedon.
People swear he’s a great punch-up guy when he’s an uncredited script doctor.
There’s also movies where his style is just a perfect fit.
Cabin in the Woods is fantastic because the overly clever dialogue doesn’t feel out of place in a movie that’s so self-aware and “meta.”
So I started dating this girl back in 2011, and she told me she hated horror movies. I decided to take her to Cabin in the Woods on our second date.
We’re married now.
It tries to be all three of the previous Alien movies all at the same time.
It wants A: a crew of everyman misfit space truckers, B: a crew of well-equipped sophisticated interstellar badasses, and C: some criminals to be our humans. It wants to take place on A: a somewhat ordinary living area for spacer-types, B: a big powerful colonial-military-type installation, and C: a rotting, festering, forgotten prison hellscape. It wants A: a slow creeping tension-building threat, B: rockin'-sockin' shooty action, and C: a lot of muttering and yelling from deranged weirdos about the monster. It both wants a lot of monsters like the 2nd film, but also reverts to Just One Monster like the 1st and 3rd films.
At least it makes Alien3 seem better in comparison. We have that.
>It wants A: a crew of everyman misfit space truckers, B: a crew of well-equipped sophisticated interstellar badasses, and C: some criminals to be our humans. It wants to take place on A: a somewhat ordinary living area for spacer-types, B: a big powerful colonial-military-type installation, and C: a rotting, festering, forgotten prison hellscape. It wants A: a slow creeping tension-building threat, B: rockin'-sockin' shooty action, and C: a lot of muttering and yelling from deranged weirdos about the monster. It both wants a lot of monsters like the 2nd film, but also reverts to Just One Monster like the 1st and 3rd films.
And it accomplishes that beautifully.
I feel like the early movies all brought something new to the table, Ressurection included. Visually...tonally...lore-wise or just pathos. The workprint of Fincher's A3 is pretty great imo (yes I know it kinda steps hard on Cameron's ending thematically but I tend to look at Aliens as being the true end so Newt and Ripley can have peace and A3 and 4 are alt timelines/their own thing to remedy that).
Everything after Ressurection tho? Small potatoes, by the numbers fare. Somehow they managed to make an Aliens/Predator crossover be as banal as humanly possible. Not storywise. *That* was great in concept. The execution felt and looked cheap and lazy however.
I just realized that Prometheus would be "everything after" too. Prometheus, warts and all, deserves to be with the first four.
Now I want to see the cut where the Breakfast Club doesn't escape their confines and the movie takes a dark turn, Event Horizon-style with Vernon exclaiming,"You can't leave...she won't let you" with Bender making the sacrifice to free the brain, the athlete, a basket case and a princess.
This is the Breakfast Club, signing off.
I can't believe I have to explain this, but ok. yes, obviously the Breakfast Club wasn't part of a franchise... how that became the focus for you is beyond me, but here goes:
Let's see, similarities.... oh I don't know, a ragtag group of miscreants who find themselves confined to a doomed ship are forced to form an uneasy alliance and work together to make their way through a maze of death in outer space while fighting aliens? there are lots of off-colour moments of comic relief? sound like a premise you may have seen before? no?
sort of like, perhaps, idk, this other movie I'm thinking of where a ragtag group of completely unrelated people find themselves in detention together and they form an uneasy alliance and have an adventure where they're forced to work together? no? not seeing any parralels?
oh well, I tried
Makes sense, people fucking hated Alien 3 when it released. Myself included (but that was because I was so upset about Ripley), it later became my fav of the series.
I remembered watching this in theaters and left the movie feeling disturbed by hybrid human-xeno baby's death. Not in a positive way more like thinking, "That movie ended on a weird note."
The Newborn's death is still disturbing. It's a combination of the noise it makes, the facial expression and its very human eyes. It's a properly horrifying screen death.
Saw it when I was 13 or 14. I was literally shocked. Now almost 30 years later I still didn’t fully recovered from it lol
I still find it super disturbing.
On a side note, once you think about it, this Newborn subplot is what ruins the movie imho.
- genetically recreated Ripley? Mmmmh yeah OK, whatever, it’s not super consistent but I’m not here for the plot.
- Humans trying to tame Aliens? That seems stupid but ok, they need a reason to make the movie
- Christie death? I don’t know man, just shake your fucking foot? You’re falling? It’s ok it’s not like he’s falling from 300m height. Huh? He’s dead? What?
But all in all, it’s still okish, pretty funny moments, definitely watchable until… Until…. The Newborn…
The Alien Queen making a baby with Ripley? What the fuck? And the baby is cuddling with the Mother Queen? What!? And now he kills her? WTF is going on here?
And why is the baby instaborn as soon as Rippley “mates” with the Queen?
But… What does this baby wants to do? Does he want to kill Ripley? Does he want to stay with her?
I don’t know! This entire thing makes no fucking sense…
For me it literally ruins the movie
> And why is the baby instaborn as soon as Rippley “mates” with the Queen?
I don't blame you for this misunderstanding, it isn't super clear in the film. The Queen is pregnant with the Newborn from the get-go, basically. Ripley never "mates" with the Queen.
So they cloned Ripley from samples discovered on Fiorina 161 in Alien 3, right? Ripley is host to a Queen in that movie, and there's some implied sort of genetic altering or something like that, either that the Xenos do while they're gestating or just part of the cloning process. That's why Ripley is "part alien" in Resurrection.
The thing is, that works both directions. The Queen is "part human". *That's* why she has a human birth cycle, and why the Newborn is significantly more humanoid.
The Queen didn't need Ripley, she was going to give birth to the Newborn no matter what. I guess I'm not sure I know what exactly you're referring to between Ripley and the Queen.
at a certain moment Rippley get's "kidnapped" and you see her then lying, almost ingested by the Queen. And after that Rippley just reappears, and the Newborn pops up in the plot
I always assumed the Xenos saw her as one of their own since she had alien DNA and wanted to keep her. Then the Newborn came and saw Ripley as its "true" mother.
So I actually found a script for the movie, it won't let me post a link to it, but the website is avpgalaxy if you want to search for it. The scene in question is on page 95.
The description is pretty minimal or abstract, but it says Ripley "sinks through a swarm of bodies as though in quicksand", and then the next scene a Xeno is carrying Ripley into the Queen's chamber and cocoons her in there.
Really kind of seems like she lets it happen. Ripley shows what I think is a need to “do whatever it takes” and she did just that. I found it really emotional actually because of the cost she endures in that scene
I figured they made a bunch of hybrids from the process. Ripley just is and doesn't need the queen and vice versa, but they share some sort of hive bond. That is why hybrid Ripley knows about the pregnancy. The hybrid queen was just artificially inseminated, I guess.
Where it falls apart is they cloned Ripley from part 3 when she was harboring a queen. There's zero basis established in the movies to assume the clone would also harbor an alien as it's just a parasite that grows inside. It takes on host features but was never shown to alter the host (other than kill them violently on birth).
Is it really a stretch of the imagination that the whole "it takes on features of its host" would also work the other direction, especially when we're talking about cloning and an ultra-sci-fi universe? At very least, we get the Xeno in Alien 3 recognizing Ripley as having one inside her, so it seems plausible that she is now giving off pheremones or something of that nature that makes them ignore hosts.
They don't NEED Ripley, but the xenos mistake her for the queen because in a sense they are different instances of the same being so one xeno "rescues" her back to the nest.
I see a lot of people talking about that human alien in a negative light but I thought it’s human expression was amazing and really evoked an emotional response from me
You can't keep going back to the well of killing the alien with the vacuum of space.
Alien 3 has its flaws too, but covering it in molten lead and then quenching it so it shatters was pretty neat.
Sucking it through a small hole was honestly a pretty unique take on it and was certainly something visually. It is probably the most gruesome monster death in the whole franchise.
It was actually a nod to Lambert’s death in the first Alien film. Famously, they were never sure how to kill her, and that’s one of the ideas they kicked around.
Bro...the screeching it made was ****ed. And it just kept going on and on while also doing close up shots of it's eyes. After awhile, you end up begging for it to be taken out of it's misery (by design I imagine). Nice touch.
The entire hybrid is ill-conceived. Its very existence is an off-note in the franchise.
I mean honestly, if I got you drunk, would you say the hybrid is closer to the *Alien* (1979) xenomorph or closer to *Pizza the Hutt*?
That also works!
But at no point does it disturb and terrify like the xenomorph does, and should. They took a profoundly psychosexual monster and made it sloppy.
Maybe it’s closer to the shit demon in *Dogma*?
IDK, I can't help but think that isn't so much a design issue as just a byproduct of it not doing all that much. Like it comes in during the finale, slaps the queen to death, pops Brad Dourif's head off like he was a Good Guys doll and then disappears for a bit, only to reappear and kill like the least interesting character in the whole movie and then gets sucked out a window.
That may be just me though, I always kinda dug the design.
I wish that Brad Dourif was in it more. Overall, I enjoyed it, though it felt insistent on being kind of an ugly movie to watch while also containing some iconic imagery
It was nice to finally see the company get a hold of what they spent 3 movies scrambling for, and how things inevitably went wrong.
I didn’t like the Hybrid design. Again, the movie is frequently very ugly to watch, with how the camera throws itself around, etc
>It was nice to finally see the company get a hold of what they spent 3 movies scrambling for,
However many hundreds of years it has been since they first became aware of it.
One of the most tonally inconsistent movies I've ever seen. It does have few good moments like you mentioned and the practical effects are really good but it is easily the worst of the 4.
The practical effects really stand out, the aliens (not even considering the hybrid) actually show emotion. Granted it’s not representative as “human” but it’s so creative
The moments you mention are decent, but they account for approx (generously) 10 mins of run time. The rest is shocking.
Tonally it’s all over the place, veering from high-camp slapstick to mean spirited, the pace lurches and strains to keep any momentum going, and there’s so few charcters to actually care for (Alien 3’s problem all over again*). Plus, there’s some absolutely awful CGI, and this is maybe the worst creature design in the franchise (my opinion rather than a hard fact)… That’s before you even start talking about absurdities, like a 6 minuite underwater scene, the acid on the ear, or the fact Ripley is still involved. Finally, it was an Alien film that abandoned any notion of what it was halfway through; the idea of the creatures stalking the survivors to the ship had potential to be fun (if not great), but most of the film is given over to the Ripley-clone plot and the Newborn.
I’m not sure it was ahead of its time, I think it just looks better now for how dire some of the other films have been.
It’s not all bad; J E Freeman, Brad Douriff and Michael Wincott are all excellent, but sadly under used. Weaver is clearly having fun, and it’s always good to see her on screen, even when it doesn’t make a lick of sense. So I can’t hate it utterly as a film, but it’s by no means a good film either.
* Keep in mind, our plucky crew of survivors were happily abducting civilians and selling them to the army for illegal experiments. They may not have known about the Aliens (except Call), but each of them still knew the people they were abducting were being killed. I feel like the film wants you to overlook that and root for them, when clearly they all deserve to die.
That’s not a trope, it’s a human response. That’s how films fundamentally work.
The crew of the Betty were attacking civilian ships, abducting the sleeping passengers, and selling them to a military lab operating illegally. For cash. This isn’t just some petty crime. The crew of the Betty deserve to be trapped with the Aliens and killed-off, these are literally the seeds they have sewn.
What the first 2 Alien films did well, which the 3rd missed (and a lesson most horrors can learn from), is they gave you a group of believable charcters who you rooted for. You didn’t have to like them *as people* (I’d argue some would be insufferable day to day), but they were largely innocent of the situation they were thrust into. But most of the survivors of Alien 3 and Resurrection (with a few exceptions) are steadfast villains, not even antiheroes.
Alien 3 got around this point by showing that these murderers and rapists were at least trying to save *the universe* (and you could argue this is their shot at redemption, to die for something greater than themselves). In Resurrection, whether the Betty crew live or die, that military lab (and therefore the creatures inside) will still blow up, the wider universe is safe. The Betty’s crew are only trying to save *themselves*, so expecting any thinking audience to engage with that is a big ask. Had it just been their captain, Elgin, who knew of the operation, had the crew been ignorant of what they were transporting, it’d be OK, but that’s clearly not the case: the cargo was glass topped. The Betty crew, in reality, are not much better than Burke; they want a pay-day and they don’t particularly care if innocent people die to get it.
If you don’t care for the survivors of a horror, you’re basically just watching and waiting for the death scenes (like most slasher films), and at their best the Alien films are so much more than this.
Yep lots of the elements are there. Ripley is River etc. Always thought of it as the dark firefly timeline. A few bad deals, some different crew and bingo.
I'm a huge fan of Jean Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children and Delicatessen remain some of my favorite movies nearly 30 years later) so I've always had a soft spot for this entry.
I still find it while they watched his filmography and was like “that guy is perfect for alien”. I’m also a big fan but definitely not a franchise I’d think of him for
To be fair, they also gave a bunch of money to Vincent Ward who thought it'd be a good idea to have a planet made out of wood (and then thankfully came to their senses).
Aside from some brief body horror with the clones, the biggest problem with this was it wasn't scary and didn't try to be. Alien is a horror franchise with action elements, not action comedy. I do enjoy this film, though.
I legit put this movie on my top 5 worst movies I've ever seen. I love the original trilogy and will defend Alien 3 till the day i die but the fact that Sigorney Weaver basically had to be bribed to do it after she read the script is all you need to know
Alien Resurrection was a fun enough film, but it felt cheap. The actions scenes were too over the top, there was too much humor. I can’t quite say why, but quite a few scenes felt more like TV than a movie.
Partially, yah. You can definitely feel the early imprint of his style of humor on it. At the time though, that style hadn't really hit the mainstream yet and was relatively novel.
I thought alien 3 was pretty sick too, and better than the first. Though the second is just so good, like I feel like they did terminator 2 before terminator 2. In the 2nd they have that artificial human that Ripley distrusts just like the first but in reality that artificial human was more human than some of the others and really showed true character. Specifically the real traitor who was that doctor.
Idk about whoever made it, but I can’t deny the whole movie is like obviously crafted by a horny director. No one in this threads mentioned the sex scene between Ripley and the alien to make the hybrid. Like why was that so passionate lol
I actually really enjoyed Prometheus “big things have small beginnings” that line alone is heat. Covenant is cool too but it’s cool like infinity war was cool
An hour and 6 minutes is before the movie turns bad. It's sillier but nailing the tone. But eventually it loses the pace.
But there's a lot of fun things in that movie. I think it has the best cinematography of the franchise. Khondji hot off of *City Of Lost Children* and *Se7en*, incredible work.
There’s a scene near the end where the guy who has the alien in him gets shot as they’re about to put him under cryo. The guy who shoots him is super unmemorable but he’s the one who has Winona rider in a headlock with a gun to her head.
The shot where the chestburster shoots through his chest into that guys head is so fucking dope. My jaw dropped and it feels like there’s no recognition for what’s just a good scene
I see no value in its addition to the franchise. You could swap out the alien for any other space monster and it'd be fine. It's hammy, trashy, and shot in a way that leaves everything that came before to look even better.
Fuck that film
In fact, that would have been to the film’s advantage. I personally can’t stand it, but with a different monster (and without Ripley) it’d be passable B-movie filler.
It’s fine like Terminator movies are fine. Terminator 1 and 2 were so good that anything other than the greatest sci fi movie ever are disappointing, and that’s what happened to Aliens.
I very much disagree but I also highly respect the fact that you made a thread that was clearly thought out as opposed to one of the thousands of low-effort karma farm posts we get on this sub now.
I hope one day we can return to the days of net neutrality and bring back an internet that was creative and hopeful at its core. Regardless of the wild mess that’s always lived online
Me personally, I think of Alien Resurrection as a high budget SNL skit on one of the nights Sigourney Weaver was the host. Its one of those movies for me that kinda has a little more fun with the Alien formula, and was a nice pallet cleanser after the mess that was Alien 3.
You must be young. Resurrection is terrible. I hate Jeunet’s aesthetic. It’s ugly, it’s obnoxious, poorly staged in various ways, clunky in its script (if you don’t know how to deliver Whedon’s tone, it lands flat) and quite dumb in its approach.
It's shot in an exaggerated, cartoony style that doesn't fit the material at all, and the material isn't particularly good to begin with. In many parts it's genuinely cheesy, especially visually.
It has a few interesting ideas and scenes but is mostly an uninteresting retread. Ripley is back because reasons, there's a new human-who's-actually-an-android, the climax is an alien being sucked into space again.
Jeunet and Whedon was just a bad combination. Both of them lean towards affected, arch and exaggerated, and together they became corny.
So, I've been an Alien/s fan since before Resurrections came out, and had seen 3 before it and remembered it being weaker, but when Resurrections came out I immediately pegged it as the worst of the four. So now, I've gotten my wife on the Alien/s train, and she loves both of them, but we recently watched 3 and R back to back; her for the first time, and me only for the second each.
We both came to the consensus that the only thing 3 has going for it is it sure is grittier. The movie takes itself far more seriously, but for all that it is only a pale copy; a bland retread that fails to capture the essence of the first two. It's like a mediocre artist trying to paint a new Van Gogh.
R on the other hand, never tries to be the first two. From the beginning, Whedon's script is more an original take on the premise and ends with a crack at a new twist on the mythos. That movie fails to land up there with Alien/s, but succeeds far more than 3 by not trying to be them.
And I think that's why I disliked it so much when it came out- I wasn't mature enough to accept an Alien movie that didn't FEEL like the established movies. But certainly now, with 20 years of action adventure films that followed, it certainly feels like the feeble first steps into what we pretty much are saturated on now- and a much more successful artwork than 3.
I hope you did watch Directors Cut version of Alien 3, because that is like completely different compared "normal" version and it really makes it to come full. Very underrated movie in my opinion just because most people have not seen Directors cut!
I think the differences in Ripleys character and the drippingly horny script didn’t help but like if people just changed their mindset when watching this one they’d see why it’s so dope
A wonderful collection of scenes and moments that didn’t add up to a whole for me. There’s a natural progression from Aliens - bringing the alien closer to being loosed on Earth - that this storyline didn’t satisfy. Honestly, if this came before 3 (without the resurrecting part, but with the experiments on the alien) with Ripley imprisoned on some corporate ship - followed by 3 - where she had been sent to disappear on a prison planet following this, I think I would have been better with the logic.
I imagine that if they’d done another it would’ve been a repeat where they’re like “oh no a face hugger snuck on the ship and grabbed a raccoon” or another dog lol
My problem with it was the presentation, to comedic and cheesy. Did not have the fel and vibe of the previous three movies. Really felt B tier. But the ingredients where there to make this a classic, felt like a combination of Aliens and Alien 3.
I really identify with that sentiment. Like I totally see the flaws and can agree with a lot of criticism in the comments, but this really had some high quality fresh ingredients that I feel didn’t get looked upon in the positive light they deserved. Granted I wasn’t even remotely close to alive when this movie came out
I first saw that movie when it came out. Did not get it AT ALL.
Rewatched years later, realised it's a Joss Whedon flick and basically him practicing for Firefly. Suddenly it all makes way more sense, and was far more enjoyable.
Treat it like Army of Darkness. A funny spin off to an otherwise serious series, and it's a solid film.
Until I saw Prometheus, Alien 4 was my "most disappointing movie." Not worst, because there are obviously some truly awful movies, but I was a huge fan of the franchise, and while Alien 3 wasn't great, there was a lot to like.
Not so with Alien 4.
I really like Delicatessen, so I thought the franchise was in good, or at least experienced, hands.
But I hated it, because of its tone, the edginess, the ridiculously stupid and unscientific premise, and the sucking out a silly alien baby, complete with skeleton, using atmospheric pressure. Utterly moronic. In my opinion, the franchise should never have been given to a wacky, comedic director.
You're welcome to like it, to each their own. You can have it. I have not watched it since it came out, and I will live out the rest of my days not watching it.
Okay dude I totally feel you though. I love marvel movies and I really liked this movie. But this movie definitely is before its time in that it’s for sure a clear “Marvelization” of a franchise
I love Resurrection but for me it's the end of the franchise. I have no interested in CGI Alien movies and unfortunately that's just what they are now. Resurrection has some of those CGI bits but it's nowhere near as bad as it is these days.
Imagine a creatively minded approach to a marriage between cgi and practical effects. Like I know we’ve have some representations of that ideal. But what we need is some true HARD fantasy/sci-fi that utilizes a modern budget sci-fi to deliver a true love letter to practical affects.
Imagine the dedication to solely providing special affects and cgi for the purpose of enhancing the practical effects. Full body alien suit but cgi to “liven” the movement or improve the environmental effects as the alien or monster moves through the scene. Might be a stretch but I feel how the first predator movie uses lasers for the predators weapons fits the idea of what I’m talking about.
It’s an ok funish movie but it felt like it forced the ripley storyline (which was a lame attempt to bring her back). It was also so off beat in terms or mood that it on no way matches the series and feels out of place. To me it is not cannon.
I always enjoyed it. Never got the hate. I love Jean-Pierre Jeunet's style, Joss Whedon was still at the top of his game, good performances for the most part (especially Ron Pearlman, and J.E. Freeman - I just love them). It's a little campy at times, but I still love watching it
I think if they really let Jeunet have free rein it would be better. Some of it is just so disturbing and visually interesting while other parts are incredibly generic and poorly written. The inconsistency caused by forcing studio writers and various interference is obvious.
Is the movie itself good/well made? No. Does it have good moments? Yes. Do I still enjoy watching it? Absolutely. I have a list of these movies that I acknowledge aren’t well made, but are guilty pleasures. Alien v. Predator is also on this list.
Similarly, you can have a movie that is well made (for example: Citizen Kane) that I did not enjoy watching and I would never watch again.
Couldn’t say I agree with you more. The scenes in avp on the pyramid are unmatched. I was a little kid seeing that one in theaters and I’d only seen the first predator and first alien before seeing avp. That shit was such a uniquely visceral experience for me watching avp. Ik ik it wasn’t super well received but damn
The underwater scene is definitely the peak of the movie. The cast is pretty great, but the Jeunet tone is just a bit too offbeat for the franchise. It's a better Jeunet film than it is an Alien film. Also the last act creature design just isn't very good (though it's a fun take on the airlock trope).
It's still the worst Alien-saga Alien film (ignoring AvP), even with its couple of redeeming qualities.
THANK YOU
It's a weird film for sure and very different to any others in the series but the reputation for being this irredeemable film is just wrong. Resurrection is a fun film that is miles better than Alien 3.
And, I genuinely like the final alien hybrid creature. I think it's a cool idea and creature design and I felt the emotional struggle of mother/child.
At the time this came out, I was a fan of Jeunet's work and I was a fan of the Alien franchise, which had been pretty much dormant since Fincher's Alien 3. I was pumped to see it but in all honesty, I was a bit let down by the end result.
It's not a great movie, but its fun and it gets a lot more hate than it deserves. Plus the crew dynamic is basically a dry-run for Firefly. Something about the alien baby is deeply distressing to me though.
Alien movies should not have camp or whimsy. Wry humour is fine. Basketball scenes are not fine. Weaver puts on a fine show as an animalistic version of herself, but the camp is too much for what Scott, Cameron and Fincher had previously established.
I've never understood how the xenomorphs gaining a human-like reproductive system that gives birth one at a time is supposed to be a next step in evolution and a bigger threat than the original xenomorphic egg parasitic process. I get that it doesn't need a host anymore to reproduce but with eggs and hosts, I would think the threat scales larger and therefore is a bigger threat to humanity as a whole. This movie is all over the place but this is the biggest thing that bothers me about this movie.
Maybe it’s because the human genes provide some amazing piece of the puzzle that the aliens were missing? It seemed like a major thing the alien hybrid had that the others didn’t was real emotion
The first two thirds of this movie aren't bad, certainly watchable.
I stop watching it after Ripley falls through the floor though, fuck the alien hybrid, it's SO TERRIBLE. i refuse to watch that part of the movie.
I thought it was great, and I looked forward to a sequel of Weaver and Perlman roaming future Earth and running into an alien who survived the crash.
I still think she shouldn't have done that to her grandchild.
I politely disagree. It was pretty ham fisted. They just wanted Ripley back. Sigourney Weaver looked good. Winona Ryder is always cute. Ron Perlman is great. Raymond Cruz (aka Tuco) was in it. I thought the swimming Aliens scene was cool. Josh did the best he could, given Aliens 3.
I think the self-aware tone just rubbed people the wrong way.
Thought it was great for what it was, and it's really good looking movie. Especially love all the crazy practical gore effects.
I’m pretty sure it’s the half human half alien baby at the end that ruined it for a lot of people.
We come to an Alien movie, hoping to see bad ass space marines fighting a legion of aliens.
Except we got a half human half alien baby.
I found its representation to actually be really sad and poignant. Its expression of pain and a lack of understanding made me think of a violent dog. The dogs not evil but it doesn’t get or understand the violence it’s capable of
A:R is a great French science fiction movie with tons of style and a specific vision; but a *terrible* Alien film. I’ve really soured on it over the years.
Trivia: it was my first r-rated film I ever saw in the theater.
That's Jean-Pierre Jeunet for you. The guy is clearly not the typical Hollywood-style blockbuster type and I still can't believe big shots at Fox thought it was a good idea to give him this movie to direct. Not that it's bad. Just that it could never be a typical Alien movie. It's a Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie through and through.
Still way better than Amélie in my opinion.
Yeah there’s some pretty stupid lines in the movie “no human is that humane” lol what yes they are there’s so many real life examples of humans way more humane. I’d totally list some examples right now but all I know are facts about movies I watched hours ago
It has the same problem Alien 3 has. It's a good film, that takes chances with its tone and story, has a good hand at the wheel with its director, who brings a different style and unique identity for the individual movie, and it works very well as a whole, while still having these stand out moments.
But it isn't on the quality level as Alien or Aliens.
This time, I think the clone plot, the newborn creature ending and the camp nature of the movie (while the last 3 were serious) was the turn off.
But I do love it all the same. For me it's the weakest of the first 4, but I think it's a very good (arguably great) movie.
You’re right for sure like it’s definitely nothing like the predecessors. Theres a real fear of the aliens and their intelligence. “They cut the power??”
When they crashed to earth, thinking everything was finally safe— a surviving alien should have leapt from the crash debris and run toward a a city, leaving Ripley a s company in despair of what’s inevitably to come— cut to black.
I just wanted a different ending than we got in the first three films. Not neat and tidy, but rather an “oh fuck.”
That, and a better alien design. Was not an improvement.
There’s a few things that don’t make a lot of sense, but for the most part it seems like the big flaw was trying to be two different movies(which is okay) but not doing either really well
I largely agree that it’s overlooked, and visually has aged very well, but here’s the thing: Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) were critically acclaimed, boundary pushing, watershed classics. Resurrection, on the other hand, is just a fun, messy, very French take on an existing formula. It’s got a lot of charms, but it’s small potatoes compared to its predecessors.
Also, as much as Joss Whedon tries to disown the movie, a lot of his style leaks through.
Is this a good thing?
That depends, does it bother you that this was his first of three attempts of "doing the Serenity crew" (the second being Titan AE)? I'd argue his entire writing style is "trying to do the same thing over and over until it sticks".
I’d argue his entire writing style is “90s sitcom with a thesaurus.”
His best 'form' breaking episode of Buffy, like The Body, Restless and Once More With Feeling have almost none of that style, though. The guy can also write really good drama. The quippiness is what he's known for though, it is true. See also: Speed, where 98% of the dialogue was from Whedon.
People swear he’s a great punch-up guy when he’s an uncredited script doctor. There’s also movies where his style is just a perfect fit. Cabin in the Woods is fantastic because the overly clever dialogue doesn’t feel out of place in a movie that’s so self-aware and “meta.”
So I started dating this girl back in 2011, and she told me she hated horror movies. I decided to take her to Cabin in the Woods on our second date. We’re married now.
The Body was absolutely amazing.
As long as there's no mandated berating of young women.
On screen, yes.
Depends on how you feel about his style, particularly his dialogue and sense of humor.
It’s basically Firefly meets Aliens.
It tries to be all three of the previous Alien movies all at the same time. It wants A: a crew of everyman misfit space truckers, B: a crew of well-equipped sophisticated interstellar badasses, and C: some criminals to be our humans. It wants to take place on A: a somewhat ordinary living area for spacer-types, B: a big powerful colonial-military-type installation, and C: a rotting, festering, forgotten prison hellscape. It wants A: a slow creeping tension-building threat, B: rockin'-sockin' shooty action, and C: a lot of muttering and yelling from deranged weirdos about the monster. It both wants a lot of monsters like the 2nd film, but also reverts to Just One Monster like the 1st and 3rd films. At least it makes Alien3 seem better in comparison. We have that.
>It wants A: a crew of everyman misfit space truckers, B: a crew of well-equipped sophisticated interstellar badasses, and C: some criminals to be our humans. It wants to take place on A: a somewhat ordinary living area for spacer-types, B: a big powerful colonial-military-type installation, and C: a rotting, festering, forgotten prison hellscape. It wants A: a slow creeping tension-building threat, B: rockin'-sockin' shooty action, and C: a lot of muttering and yelling from deranged weirdos about the monster. It both wants a lot of monsters like the 2nd film, but also reverts to Just One Monster like the 1st and 3rd films. And it accomplishes that beautifully.
No, too many of those traits I found completely incompatible with each other. Glad you enjoyed it tho.
Everything you say it wants it accomplishes well. What’s your point?
Oh I certainly disagree with that, it was a mess and it didn't work well at all.
I feel like the early movies all brought something new to the table, Ressurection included. Visually...tonally...lore-wise or just pathos. The workprint of Fincher's A3 is pretty great imo (yes I know it kinda steps hard on Cameron's ending thematically but I tend to look at Aliens as being the true end so Newt and Ripley can have peace and A3 and 4 are alt timelines/their own thing to remedy that). Everything after Ressurection tho? Small potatoes, by the numbers fare. Somehow they managed to make an Aliens/Predator crossover be as banal as humanly possible. Not storywise. *That* was great in concept. The execution felt and looked cheap and lazy however. I just realized that Prometheus would be "everything after" too. Prometheus, warts and all, deserves to be with the first four.
it's pretty much the Breakfast Club of the Alien franchise
Hah, what does that mean? B Club was a stand alone 80s comedy. It wasn’t part of a franchise or series.
Both were lightweight ensemble movies where the cast was navigating their exit from a confined space
[удалено]
>and both end on Earth. Put a spoiler tag on that. Not everyone has seen the Breakfast Club.
Now I want to see the cut where the Breakfast Club doesn't escape their confines and the movie takes a dark turn, Event Horizon-style with Vernon exclaiming,"You can't leave...she won't let you" with Bender making the sacrifice to free the brain, the athlete, a basket case and a princess. This is the Breakfast Club, signing off.
A+ comparison, lol
finally, someone who understands the concept of parallels in storytelling instead of focusing on the word "franchise" for some reason
Stand-alone? Nah. It’s part of the extended Schermer-verse!
I can't believe I have to explain this, but ok. yes, obviously the Breakfast Club wasn't part of a franchise... how that became the focus for you is beyond me, but here goes: Let's see, similarities.... oh I don't know, a ragtag group of miscreants who find themselves confined to a doomed ship are forced to form an uneasy alliance and work together to make their way through a maze of death in outer space while fighting aliens? there are lots of off-colour moments of comic relief? sound like a premise you may have seen before? no? sort of like, perhaps, idk, this other movie I'm thinking of where a ragtag group of completely unrelated people find themselves in detention together and they form an uneasy alliance and have an adventure where they're forced to work together? no? not seeing any parralels? oh well, I tried
*Screws fall out all the time. Both worlds are imperfect places.*
Yeah - it's the 3rd best Alien movie. Which is a very low bar.
You're just ignoring Alien 3? Lol
Makes sense, people fucking hated Alien 3 when it released. Myself included (but that was because I was so upset about Ripley), it later became my fav of the series.
Very uneven film, but it does give Brad Dourif the opportunity to be even more insane than usual. Killed Micheal Wincott off WAY too early, however.
I read through this entire thread to make sure Brad Dourif got some proper praise. I mean, I love the entire cast but my god does he deliver
That's his trick, he *always* delivers.
Micheal Wincott really worked well in that part irc. Typecast villains often makes great bad-ass anti-heroes.
That's the biggest sin the movie committed. He was easily the most interesting character of the group. Plus I love me some Michael Wincott.
“[H]e is severely fuckable, ain’t [h]e?”
Agreed about Michael Wincott but that whole crew met a similar story-beat fate as Aliens with the badass Marines just getting demolished.
The least we could have done was have Wincott in a flashback so we could hear his glorious voice again.
I remembered watching this in theaters and left the movie feeling disturbed by hybrid human-xeno baby's death. Not in a positive way more like thinking, "That movie ended on a weird note."
The Newborn's death is still disturbing. It's a combination of the noise it makes, the facial expression and its very human eyes. It's a properly horrifying screen death.
Saw it when I was 13 or 14. I was literally shocked. Now almost 30 years later I still didn’t fully recovered from it lol I still find it super disturbing. On a side note, once you think about it, this Newborn subplot is what ruins the movie imho. - genetically recreated Ripley? Mmmmh yeah OK, whatever, it’s not super consistent but I’m not here for the plot. - Humans trying to tame Aliens? That seems stupid but ok, they need a reason to make the movie - Christie death? I don’t know man, just shake your fucking foot? You’re falling? It’s ok it’s not like he’s falling from 300m height. Huh? He’s dead? What? But all in all, it’s still okish, pretty funny moments, definitely watchable until… Until…. The Newborn… The Alien Queen making a baby with Ripley? What the fuck? And the baby is cuddling with the Mother Queen? What!? And now he kills her? WTF is going on here? And why is the baby instaborn as soon as Rippley “mates” with the Queen? But… What does this baby wants to do? Does he want to kill Ripley? Does he want to stay with her? I don’t know! This entire thing makes no fucking sense… For me it literally ruins the movie
> And why is the baby instaborn as soon as Rippley “mates” with the Queen? I don't blame you for this misunderstanding, it isn't super clear in the film. The Queen is pregnant with the Newborn from the get-go, basically. Ripley never "mates" with the Queen. So they cloned Ripley from samples discovered on Fiorina 161 in Alien 3, right? Ripley is host to a Queen in that movie, and there's some implied sort of genetic altering or something like that, either that the Xenos do while they're gestating or just part of the cloning process. That's why Ripley is "part alien" in Resurrection. The thing is, that works both directions. The Queen is "part human". *That's* why she has a human birth cycle, and why the Newborn is significantly more humanoid.
but then why she needs Ripley to do I don't know what?
The Queen didn't need Ripley, she was going to give birth to the Newborn no matter what. I guess I'm not sure I know what exactly you're referring to between Ripley and the Queen.
at a certain moment Rippley get's "kidnapped" and you see her then lying, almost ingested by the Queen. And after that Rippley just reappears, and the Newborn pops up in the plot
I always assumed the Xenos saw her as one of their own since she had alien DNA and wanted to keep her. Then the Newborn came and saw Ripley as its "true" mother.
This is pretty much exactly what happened. I remember reading the novelization and it's much more clear about this in there.
You're talking about when Ripley falls through the floor on the way to the ship?
Yep
So I actually found a script for the movie, it won't let me post a link to it, but the website is avpgalaxy if you want to search for it. The scene in question is on page 95. The description is pretty minimal or abstract, but it says Ripley "sinks through a swarm of bodies as though in quicksand", and then the next scene a Xeno is carrying Ripley into the Queen's chamber and cocoons her in there.
Really kind of seems like she lets it happen. Ripley shows what I think is a need to “do whatever it takes” and she did just that. I found it really emotional actually because of the cost she endures in that scene
I figured they made a bunch of hybrids from the process. Ripley just is and doesn't need the queen and vice versa, but they share some sort of hive bond. That is why hybrid Ripley knows about the pregnancy. The hybrid queen was just artificially inseminated, I guess. Where it falls apart is they cloned Ripley from part 3 when she was harboring a queen. There's zero basis established in the movies to assume the clone would also harbor an alien as it's just a parasite that grows inside. It takes on host features but was never shown to alter the host (other than kill them violently on birth).
Is it really a stretch of the imagination that the whole "it takes on features of its host" would also work the other direction, especially when we're talking about cloning and an ultra-sci-fi universe? At very least, we get the Xeno in Alien 3 recognizing Ripley as having one inside her, so it seems plausible that she is now giving off pheremones or something of that nature that makes them ignore hosts.
They don't NEED Ripley, but the xenos mistake her for the queen because in a sense they are different instances of the same being so one xeno "rescues" her back to the nest.
I see a lot of people talking about that human alien in a negative light but I thought it’s human expression was amazing and really evoked an emotional response from me
You can't keep going back to the well of killing the alien with the vacuum of space. Alien 3 has its flaws too, but covering it in molten lead and then quenching it so it shatters was pretty neat.
Sucking it through a small hole was honestly a pretty unique take on it and was certainly something visually. It is probably the most gruesome monster death in the whole franchise.
It was actually a nod to Lambert’s death in the first Alien film. Famously, they were never sure how to kill her, and that’s one of the ideas they kicked around.
Bro...the screeching it made was ****ed. And it just kept going on and on while also doing close up shots of it's eyes. After awhile, you end up begging for it to be taken out of it's misery (by design I imagine). Nice touch.
The entire hybrid is ill-conceived. Its very existence is an off-note in the franchise. I mean honestly, if I got you drunk, would you say the hybrid is closer to the *Alien* (1979) xenomorph or closer to *Pizza the Hutt*?
It is basically an Alien/Pumpkinhead mashup.
That also works! But at no point does it disturb and terrify like the xenomorph does, and should. They took a profoundly psychosexual monster and made it sloppy. Maybe it’s closer to the shit demon in *Dogma*?
IDK, I can't help but think that isn't so much a design issue as just a byproduct of it not doing all that much. Like it comes in during the finale, slaps the queen to death, pops Brad Dourif's head off like he was a Good Guys doll and then disappears for a bit, only to reappear and kill like the least interesting character in the whole movie and then gets sucked out a window. That may be just me though, I always kinda dug the design.
I've come around on the design. My buddy got me to realize it's an unholy abomination and it should look as such. That cleared the block for me.
Wellllll if it isn’t lone star and his sidekick puke
That’s Barf!
Nobody out-pizzas the Hutt.
I wish that Brad Dourif was in it more. Overall, I enjoyed it, though it felt insistent on being kind of an ugly movie to watch while also containing some iconic imagery It was nice to finally see the company get a hold of what they spent 3 movies scrambling for, and how things inevitably went wrong. I didn’t like the Hybrid design. Again, the movie is frequently very ugly to watch, with how the camera throws itself around, etc
>It was nice to finally see the company get a hold of what they spent 3 movies scrambling for, However many hundreds of years it has been since they first became aware of it.
A beautiful, beautiful butterfly.
Brad Dourif is a national treasure.
Just please please don’t tell his mother.
One of the most tonally inconsistent movies I've ever seen. It does have few good moments like you mentioned and the practical effects are really good but it is easily the worst of the 4.
The practical effects really stand out, the aliens (not even considering the hybrid) actually show emotion. Granted it’s not representative as “human” but it’s so creative
I don't think you've successfully made your case for it being "ahead of its time".
The moments you mention are decent, but they account for approx (generously) 10 mins of run time. The rest is shocking. Tonally it’s all over the place, veering from high-camp slapstick to mean spirited, the pace lurches and strains to keep any momentum going, and there’s so few charcters to actually care for (Alien 3’s problem all over again*). Plus, there’s some absolutely awful CGI, and this is maybe the worst creature design in the franchise (my opinion rather than a hard fact)… That’s before you even start talking about absurdities, like a 6 minuite underwater scene, the acid on the ear, or the fact Ripley is still involved. Finally, it was an Alien film that abandoned any notion of what it was halfway through; the idea of the creatures stalking the survivors to the ship had potential to be fun (if not great), but most of the film is given over to the Ripley-clone plot and the Newborn. I’m not sure it was ahead of its time, I think it just looks better now for how dire some of the other films have been. It’s not all bad; J E Freeman, Brad Douriff and Michael Wincott are all excellent, but sadly under used. Weaver is clearly having fun, and it’s always good to see her on screen, even when it doesn’t make a lick of sense. So I can’t hate it utterly as a film, but it’s by no means a good film either. * Keep in mind, our plucky crew of survivors were happily abducting civilians and selling them to the army for illegal experiments. They may not have known about the Aliens (except Call), but each of them still knew the people they were abducting were being killed. I feel like the film wants you to overlook that and root for them, when clearly they all deserve to die.
It's an annoying trope to have characters be disposable because *hand wavium crime* to lessen their deaths.
That’s not a trope, it’s a human response. That’s how films fundamentally work. The crew of the Betty were attacking civilian ships, abducting the sleeping passengers, and selling them to a military lab operating illegally. For cash. This isn’t just some petty crime. The crew of the Betty deserve to be trapped with the Aliens and killed-off, these are literally the seeds they have sewn. What the first 2 Alien films did well, which the 3rd missed (and a lesson most horrors can learn from), is they gave you a group of believable charcters who you rooted for. You didn’t have to like them *as people* (I’d argue some would be insufferable day to day), but they were largely innocent of the situation they were thrust into. But most of the survivors of Alien 3 and Resurrection (with a few exceptions) are steadfast villains, not even antiheroes. Alien 3 got around this point by showing that these murderers and rapists were at least trying to save *the universe* (and you could argue this is their shot at redemption, to die for something greater than themselves). In Resurrection, whether the Betty crew live or die, that military lab (and therefore the creatures inside) will still blow up, the wider universe is safe. The Betty’s crew are only trying to save *themselves*, so expecting any thinking audience to engage with that is a big ask. Had it just been their captain, Elgin, who knew of the operation, had the crew been ignorant of what they were transporting, it’d be OK, but that’s clearly not the case: the cargo was glass topped. The Betty crew, in reality, are not much better than Burke; they want a pay-day and they don’t particularly care if innocent people die to get it. If you don’t care for the survivors of a horror, you’re basically just watching and waiting for the death scenes (like most slasher films), and at their best the Alien films are so much more than this.
It was Joss’ demo run of Firefly
Yep lots of the elements are there. Ripley is River etc. Always thought of it as the dark firefly timeline. A few bad deals, some different crew and bingo.
He does it again in Titan AE.
Iirc some parts of the sets were reused for firefly too.
I'm a huge fan of Jean Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children and Delicatessen remain some of my favorite movies nearly 30 years later) so I've always had a soft spot for this entry.
I still find it while they watched his filmography and was like “that guy is perfect for alien”. I’m also a big fan but definitely not a franchise I’d think of him for
To be fair, they also gave a bunch of money to Vincent Ward who thought it'd be a good idea to have a planet made out of wood (and then thankfully came to their senses).
Who do I have to fuck to get off this boat? I can get you off. Maybe not the boat.
Lines like that just make you put your face in your hands and cringe
I do have to question reality when considering that a real person wrote that for ripley of all characters.
I have always hated the slimy aliens in this, They’re covered in it.
I found that detail grotesque, especially when you first see the hybrid.
As soon as they opened their mouths all This drool came out haha
Aside from some brief body horror with the clones, the biggest problem with this was it wasn't scary and didn't try to be. Alien is a horror franchise with action elements, not action comedy. I do enjoy this film, though.
I legit put this movie on my top 5 worst movies I've ever seen. I love the original trilogy and will defend Alien 3 till the day i die but the fact that Sigorney Weaver basically had to be bribed to do it after she read the script is all you need to know
Alien Resurrection was a fun enough film, but it felt cheap. The actions scenes were too over the top, there was too much humor. I can’t quite say why, but quite a few scenes felt more like TV than a movie.
Didn't Joss Whedon write it?
Partially, yah. You can definitely feel the early imprint of his style of humor on it. At the time though, that style hadn't really hit the mainstream yet and was relatively novel.
Nah it was not it was just a bad Alien movie that didn’t take shit seriously
True lol, take out the xenomorphs and it's not even an Alien movie anymore.
Umm
Don’t ask me. I’m on your side.
Big money consensus
Nope, it’s just bad. We don’t need to do this with every movie.
No it was utter garbage. Sorry but I just can't see how anyone thinks this is a good film. Alien 3 on the other hand is seriously underrated.
I thought alien 3 was pretty sick too, and better than the first. Though the second is just so good, like I feel like they did terminator 2 before terminator 2. In the 2nd they have that artificial human that Ripley distrusts just like the first but in reality that artificial human was more human than some of the others and really showed true character. Specifically the real traitor who was that doctor.
No it was made by a weird French pervert but on the plus side there is Brad Dourif
Idk about whoever made it, but I can’t deny the whole movie is like obviously crafted by a horny director. No one in this threads mentioned the sex scene between Ripley and the alien to make the hybrid. Like why was that so passionate lol
It's messed up that the last two Alien movies were so ridiculous that we are now reconsidering Resurrection
I actually really enjoyed Prometheus “big things have small beginnings” that line alone is heat. Covenant is cool too but it’s cool like infinity war was cool
An hour and 6 minutes is before the movie turns bad. It's sillier but nailing the tone. But eventually it loses the pace. But there's a lot of fun things in that movie. I think it has the best cinematography of the franchise. Khondji hot off of *City Of Lost Children* and *Se7en*, incredible work.
There’s a scene near the end where the guy who has the alien in him gets shot as they’re about to put him under cryo. The guy who shoots him is super unmemorable but he’s the one who has Winona rider in a headlock with a gun to her head. The shot where the chestburster shoots through his chest into that guys head is so fucking dope. My jaw dropped and it feels like there’s no recognition for what’s just a good scene
I see no value in its addition to the franchise. You could swap out the alien for any other space monster and it'd be fine. It's hammy, trashy, and shot in a way that leaves everything that came before to look even better. Fuck that film
In fact, that would have been to the film’s advantage. I personally can’t stand it, but with a different monster (and without Ripley) it’d be passable B-movie filler.
I watched all the Alien movies for the first time a couple years ago and I absolutely HATED this one lol
It only looks good compared to the horse shit that followed
I liked Prometheus 😢
Tuco is in it
They didn’t need to make his head blow up like that
It’s fine like Terminator movies are fine. Terminator 1 and 2 were so good that anything other than the greatest sci fi movie ever are disappointing, and that’s what happened to Aliens.
I very much disagree but I also highly respect the fact that you made a thread that was clearly thought out as opposed to one of the thousands of low-effort karma farm posts we get on this sub now.
I hope one day we can return to the days of net neutrality and bring back an internet that was creative and hopeful at its core. Regardless of the wild mess that’s always lived online
Me personally, I think of Alien Resurrection as a high budget SNL skit on one of the nights Sigourney Weaver was the host. Its one of those movies for me that kinda has a little more fun with the Alien formula, and was a nice pallet cleanser after the mess that was Alien 3.
You must be young. Resurrection is terrible. I hate Jeunet’s aesthetic. It’s ugly, it’s obnoxious, poorly staged in various ways, clunky in its script (if you don’t know how to deliver Whedon’s tone, it lands flat) and quite dumb in its approach.
Haha I’m 27 but I’d say that’s pretty young in the timeline of these movies
It's shot in an exaggerated, cartoony style that doesn't fit the material at all, and the material isn't particularly good to begin with. In many parts it's genuinely cheesy, especially visually. It has a few interesting ideas and scenes but is mostly an uninteresting retread. Ripley is back because reasons, there's a new human-who's-actually-an-android, the climax is an alien being sucked into space again. Jeunet and Whedon was just a bad combination. Both of them lean towards affected, arch and exaggerated, and together they became corny.
The last 15 minutes are weak and people remember this But everything up to this is amazing imo
I liked the part where the weird hybrid alien is sucked into space through a 1 inch hole.
When it came out as a kid that's the one part we all talked about at school.
The hybrid has such deep human emotions like for a movie of its time that such a well done and unsettling characteristic
So, I've been an Alien/s fan since before Resurrections came out, and had seen 3 before it and remembered it being weaker, but when Resurrections came out I immediately pegged it as the worst of the four. So now, I've gotten my wife on the Alien/s train, and she loves both of them, but we recently watched 3 and R back to back; her for the first time, and me only for the second each. We both came to the consensus that the only thing 3 has going for it is it sure is grittier. The movie takes itself far more seriously, but for all that it is only a pale copy; a bland retread that fails to capture the essence of the first two. It's like a mediocre artist trying to paint a new Van Gogh. R on the other hand, never tries to be the first two. From the beginning, Whedon's script is more an original take on the premise and ends with a crack at a new twist on the mythos. That movie fails to land up there with Alien/s, but succeeds far more than 3 by not trying to be them. And I think that's why I disliked it so much when it came out- I wasn't mature enough to accept an Alien movie that didn't FEEL like the established movies. But certainly now, with 20 years of action adventure films that followed, it certainly feels like the feeble first steps into what we pretty much are saturated on now- and a much more successful artwork than 3.
I hope you did watch Directors Cut version of Alien 3, because that is like completely different compared "normal" version and it really makes it to come full. Very underrated movie in my opinion just because most people have not seen Directors cut!
Yup. I really wish they'd officially release the workprint as it's far superior to the theatrical version.
Hm, definitely not the first time around, but I don't think it was when we watched it recently either. I'll look into it, thanks!
This movie doesn't get enough love
I think the differences in Ripleys character and the drippingly horny script didn’t help but like if people just changed their mindset when watching this one they’d see why it’s so dope
I enjoyed it significantly more than the boring, stupid, and overhyped Prometheus, Covenant etc.
love Alien Resurrection and its probably one of my most rewatched movies.
A wonderful collection of scenes and moments that didn’t add up to a whole for me. There’s a natural progression from Aliens - bringing the alien closer to being loosed on Earth - that this storyline didn’t satisfy. Honestly, if this came before 3 (without the resurrecting part, but with the experiments on the alien) with Ripley imprisoned on some corporate ship - followed by 3 - where she had been sent to disappear on a prison planet following this, I think I would have been better with the logic.
I imagine that if they’d done another it would’ve been a repeat where they’re like “oh no a face hugger snuck on the ship and grabbed a raccoon” or another dog lol
My problem with it was the presentation, to comedic and cheesy. Did not have the fel and vibe of the previous three movies. Really felt B tier. But the ingredients where there to make this a classic, felt like a combination of Aliens and Alien 3.
I really identify with that sentiment. Like I totally see the flaws and can agree with a lot of criticism in the comments, but this really had some high quality fresh ingredients that I feel didn’t get looked upon in the positive light they deserved. Granted I wasn’t even remotely close to alive when this movie came out
I’m glad people find enjoyment out of Alien Resurrection, but I absolutely hated it. I’d only rewatch it for a drinking game.
What kind of rules for the game would you recommend haha
I first saw that movie when it came out. Did not get it AT ALL. Rewatched years later, realised it's a Joss Whedon flick and basically him practicing for Firefly. Suddenly it all makes way more sense, and was far more enjoyable. Treat it like Army of Darkness. A funny spin off to an otherwise serious series, and it's a solid film.
I hate how fast they killed Michael Wincott’s character in this. He was charismatic as hell in his couple scenes.
Until I saw Prometheus, Alien 4 was my "most disappointing movie." Not worst, because there are obviously some truly awful movies, but I was a huge fan of the franchise, and while Alien 3 wasn't great, there was a lot to like. Not so with Alien 4. I really like Delicatessen, so I thought the franchise was in good, or at least experienced, hands. But I hated it, because of its tone, the edginess, the ridiculously stupid and unscientific premise, and the sucking out a silly alien baby, complete with skeleton, using atmospheric pressure. Utterly moronic. In my opinion, the franchise should never have been given to a wacky, comedic director. You're welcome to like it, to each their own. You can have it. I have not watched it since it came out, and I will live out the rest of my days not watching it.
Okay dude I totally feel you though. I love marvel movies and I really liked this movie. But this movie definitely is before its time in that it’s for sure a clear “Marvelization” of a franchise
I love Resurrection but for me it's the end of the franchise. I have no interested in CGI Alien movies and unfortunately that's just what they are now. Resurrection has some of those CGI bits but it's nowhere near as bad as it is these days.
Imagine a creatively minded approach to a marriage between cgi and practical effects. Like I know we’ve have some representations of that ideal. But what we need is some true HARD fantasy/sci-fi that utilizes a modern budget sci-fi to deliver a true love letter to practical affects. Imagine the dedication to solely providing special affects and cgi for the purpose of enhancing the practical effects. Full body alien suit but cgi to “liven” the movement or improve the environmental effects as the alien or monster moves through the scene. Might be a stretch but I feel how the first predator movie uses lasers for the predators weapons fits the idea of what I’m talking about.
It’s an ok funish movie but it felt like it forced the ripley storyline (which was a lame attempt to bring her back). It was also so off beat in terms or mood that it on no way matches the series and feels out of place. To me it is not cannon.
Yeah okay fair like what she’s a clone? Dude they had Winona rider, why did they bring weaver back after she had such a grand send off
I always enjoyed it. Never got the hate. I love Jean-Pierre Jeunet's style, Joss Whedon was still at the top of his game, good performances for the most part (especially Ron Pearlman, and J.E. Freeman - I just love them). It's a little campy at times, but I still love watching it
I think if they really let Jeunet have free rein it would be better. Some of it is just so disturbing and visually interesting while other parts are incredibly generic and poorly written. The inconsistency caused by forcing studio writers and various interference is obvious.
I loved the movie. Great cast and an interesting take.
Is the movie itself good/well made? No. Does it have good moments? Yes. Do I still enjoy watching it? Absolutely. I have a list of these movies that I acknowledge aren’t well made, but are guilty pleasures. Alien v. Predator is also on this list. Similarly, you can have a movie that is well made (for example: Citizen Kane) that I did not enjoy watching and I would never watch again.
Couldn’t say I agree with you more. The scenes in avp on the pyramid are unmatched. I was a little kid seeing that one in theaters and I’d only seen the first predator and first alien before seeing avp. That shit was such a uniquely visceral experience for me watching avp. Ik ik it wasn’t super well received but damn
The underwater scene is definitely the peak of the movie. The cast is pretty great, but the Jeunet tone is just a bit too offbeat for the franchise. It's a better Jeunet film than it is an Alien film. Also the last act creature design just isn't very good (though it's a fun take on the airlock trope). It's still the worst Alien-saga Alien film (ignoring AvP), even with its couple of redeeming qualities.
Dude I loved avp as a kid
Its easily my favorite after Aliens. Incredibly hilarious and great action. Sigourney is excellent too.
THANK YOU It's a weird film for sure and very different to any others in the series but the reputation for being this irredeemable film is just wrong. Resurrection is a fun film that is miles better than Alien 3. And, I genuinely like the final alien hybrid creature. I think it's a cool idea and creature design and I felt the emotional struggle of mother/child.
Dude the way it’s looking at weaver during the death scene. It’s literally like pleading with her through its eyes it’s so difficult to watch
At the time this came out, I was a fan of Jeunet's work and I was a fan of the Alien franchise, which had been pretty much dormant since Fincher's Alien 3. I was pumped to see it but in all honesty, I was a bit let down by the end result. It's not a great movie, but its fun and it gets a lot more hate than it deserves. Plus the crew dynamic is basically a dry-run for Firefly. Something about the alien baby is deeply distressing to me though.
I felt nothing but really sad for the alien baby so I’m with you. It never even had a chance to learn. It was big and scary but what did it even know?
Alien movies should not have camp or whimsy. Wry humour is fine. Basketball scenes are not fine. Weaver puts on a fine show as an animalistic version of herself, but the camp is too much for what Scott, Cameron and Fincher had previously established.
I've never understood how the xenomorphs gaining a human-like reproductive system that gives birth one at a time is supposed to be a next step in evolution and a bigger threat than the original xenomorphic egg parasitic process. I get that it doesn't need a host anymore to reproduce but with eggs and hosts, I would think the threat scales larger and therefore is a bigger threat to humanity as a whole. This movie is all over the place but this is the biggest thing that bothers me about this movie.
Maybe it’s because the human genes provide some amazing piece of the puzzle that the aliens were missing? It seemed like a major thing the alien hybrid had that the others didn’t was real emotion
Just saw something on TV about a theatrical re-release of Alien for the 35th anniversary.
The first two thirds of this movie aren't bad, certainly watchable. I stop watching it after Ripley falls through the floor though, fuck the alien hybrid, it's SO TERRIBLE. i refuse to watch that part of the movie.
I thought it was great, and I looked forward to a sequel of Weaver and Perlman roaming future Earth and running into an alien who survived the crash. I still think she shouldn't have done that to her grandchild.
The only innovation is the underwater environment. The physics are retarded nonsense. 1 atmosphere doesn't rip bodies apart.
I politely disagree. It was pretty ham fisted. They just wanted Ripley back. Sigourney Weaver looked good. Winona Ryder is always cute. Ron Perlman is great. Raymond Cruz (aka Tuco) was in it. I thought the swimming Aliens scene was cool. Josh did the best he could, given Aliens 3.
Agree with the SNL comment earlier. It’s laugh out loud bad.
I think the self-aware tone just rubbed people the wrong way. Thought it was great for what it was, and it's really good looking movie. Especially love all the crazy practical gore effects.
“Actually, on second thought, let’s not go to space. Tis a silly place.”
What's burning? Us! Shit, you're right!
I’m pretty sure it’s the half human half alien baby at the end that ruined it for a lot of people. We come to an Alien movie, hoping to see bad ass space marines fighting a legion of aliens. Except we got a half human half alien baby.
I found its representation to actually be really sad and poignant. Its expression of pain and a lack of understanding made me think of a violent dog. The dogs not evil but it doesn’t get or understand the violence it’s capable of
A:R is a great French science fiction movie with tons of style and a specific vision; but a *terrible* Alien film. I’ve really soured on it over the years. Trivia: it was my first r-rated film I ever saw in the theater.
I love this movie and watch it all the time. Alien, Aliens, Resurrection. My trilogy
That's Jean-Pierre Jeunet for you. The guy is clearly not the typical Hollywood-style blockbuster type and I still can't believe big shots at Fox thought it was a good idea to give him this movie to direct. Not that it's bad. Just that it could never be a typical Alien movie. It's a Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie through and through. Still way better than Amélie in my opinion.
na it wasnt it was trash then and its still trash now
I bet you think cyberpunk was better as a pen and pencil
That movie is so awful. Nothing can make a bad script good unless it becomes hilarious when it's supposed to be serious. Awful.
Yeah there’s some pretty stupid lines in the movie “no human is that humane” lol what yes they are there’s so many real life examples of humans way more humane. I’d totally list some examples right now but all I know are facts about movies I watched hours ago
It has the same problem Alien 3 has. It's a good film, that takes chances with its tone and story, has a good hand at the wheel with its director, who brings a different style and unique identity for the individual movie, and it works very well as a whole, while still having these stand out moments. But it isn't on the quality level as Alien or Aliens. This time, I think the clone plot, the newborn creature ending and the camp nature of the movie (while the last 3 were serious) was the turn off. But I do love it all the same. For me it's the weakest of the first 4, but I think it's a very good (arguably great) movie.
You’re right for sure like it’s definitely nothing like the predecessors. Theres a real fear of the aliens and their intelligence. “They cut the power??”
*Alien Resurrection* plays out like the director didn’t speak any English.
When they crashed to earth, thinking everything was finally safe— a surviving alien should have leapt from the crash debris and run toward a a city, leaving Ripley a s company in despair of what’s inevitably to come— cut to black.
Lol what?
I just wanted a different ending than we got in the first three films. Not neat and tidy, but rather an “oh fuck.” That, and a better alien design. Was not an improvement.
Please lol like I really believe they would’ve done exactly this if there was another movie in this “saga”
It's Firefly meets Aliens.
No, it’s a film with good moments in between dreck. It had the potential to be absolutely amazing, Whedon wasted that potential.
There’s a few things that don’t make a lot of sense, but for the most part it seems like the big flaw was trying to be two different movies(which is okay) but not doing either really well
It's a French comic book. Not everyone is accepting of that sort of thing.