Alien Resurrection

[TheDharmaFox]

So with the upcoming Prometheus film, which I am very excited about, I started thinking about watching all the Alien movies again. Which somehow ended up as an argument with my dad over whether or not Resurrection was a cop-out.
I thought that Alien 4 was beating a dead horse, did anyone else get that?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, written by Joss Whedon, what did you expect?

*prepares flameshield*

Seriously, thouhg, I didn't think it was all that bad. Mindless action movie with some Aliens stuff thrown in, rather than something you'd want to be part of the universe.

Having said that, I think they peaked at Aliens, everything since was stretching the franchise.

 

[TheDharmaFox]

I'm not going to lie, I liked Alien 3, it did some things right. It created a sense of distrust between all the in mates, it changed up the alien itself, and no weapons.

 

[JoJo]

I only really liked the first two, 3 had the potential to be good but they ruined it by killing off Newt. Seriously, that pretty much negated the whole motherhood theme of Aliens. I mean, I understand that due to the years between the two films the actress who played her was too old to just use a hand-wave but they could of you know cast a new actress and/or put on her bus at the beginning of the film. Heck, all they had to do would be find some excuse why Newt gets to leave the prison colony at the beginning but Ripley has to stay a little while longer, but instead they go and mess up the previous one! Also aside from that black dude most the characters in 3 were very unmemorable, and since they were violent criminals I didn't particularly care when they inevitably got eaten /rant.

As for Resurrection, it was pretty meh especially since at that point it just seemed like they were finding excuses to string out the series even longer, generally bringing back a dead character by a excuse like cloning is a sign that a series is really stagnating. Maybe if they had followed what I suggested, then instead they could have cast an adult Newt as a replacement protagonist and actually made something good.

 

[Superbeast]

I think it very much depends on which versions of the films you see. The Director's Cut of Alien3 is, in my opinion, absolutely stunning (though they are bastards for killing Newt and Hicks).

I thought it was an excellent psychological horror that took the franchise back to its roots, particularly with the speeches to the inmates and the attempt to corral the Alien, and so on.

I quite liked Alien: Resurrection. Very, very strange that Ripley existed at all, but overall the film isn't that bad really. Yes, some bits are very contrived (such as the hybrid, but in my mind that is no worse than the Alien aboard the drop ship of Aliens), but I did like how it continued the Corporation/military obsession with the Xenomorphs, and the mercs had a lot more character than the Marines of Aliens did (mainly because they managed to exist for longer).

Alien and Aliens are awesome films, I am not disputing that, but I do not feel that the sequels are as weak as is commonly believed.

Had not heard about Prometheus, and I've still not seen Predators. Looks like I have some catching up to do!

 

[D Moness]

I'm not going to lie, I liked Alien 3, it did some things right. It created a sense of distrust between all the in mates, it changed up the alien itself, and no weapons.

The re-cut version (Fincher doesn't want to speak about a director's cut(it does not exist)) is many times better then the the theatrical release. I never really liked the theatrical release due to certain problems i have with the movie. The re-cut version is really really good.


The problem with Alien 4 is that it feels more like a black comedy then anything else. Most people didn't expect that from an alien movie. Though if most people did look good at all alien movies is that every one has a different genre.

Alien : scifi/horror
Aliens : scifi/action
Alien 3 : more of a dark thriller with horror elements
Alien resurection : Dark comedy

Also if you look at the directors of those movies and the genre they are good at you will see they are more or less the same.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I'm really looking forward to Prometheus, but in the back of my head I know there's never been a genuinely good prequel movie.

- Alien was a masterpiece.
- Aliens was... okay, eventhough they turned the Alien into a freaking bee and Newt was annoying as fuck.
- Alien 3 was crap.
- Alien Resurrection had an interesting concept here and there, but ultimately jumped the shark.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Well, I appreciated the return to the smoothskin aliens after that dog thing, and the animatronics were really good.

However, Winona Rider and Ron Perlman were completely wasted in the movie, and the CGI was terribad.

 

[HardkorSB]

The problem with Alien 4 is that it feels more like a black comedy then anything else. Most people didn't expect that from an alien movie.

That was actually (to me) a plus. Ron Perlman as the comic relief was awesome. Like in this scene right here:


It was more of an action movie but the action was decent (better than in Aliens, in my opinion, which had a lot of rapid cuts that made it hard to see what the fuck was going on) and there were some nice little creepy scenes here and there (the 1-7 room). Brad Dourif was also good as the villain but he's always good as the villain. The human-alien was meh but I guess they succeeded in making it sort of cute but dangerous.
The cloning thing was a bit of a stretch but I guess they wanted Ripley badly (because the movie goers wouldn't know that it was an Alien movie otherwise?) and they managed to make it an integral part of the story, instead of just throwing it in there.
I've seen it on the big screen (I had to argue with the ticket salesman because I was 12 and the movie was R) and a couple of times on TV and DVD and I enjoyed it each time.
All in all, a very entertaining movie.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

I'm pretty sure I've gone on record with my thoughts that the aliens franchise has become exponentially worse with each incarnation in the series.

Alien is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Aliens is a great film but I think it does a disservice to the original by changing the tone from a Horror film to an action movie.

Alien 3 is mediocre but not terrible. It's major contribution being the introduction of the horizontal gene transfer with the Xenomorph host. (Resulting in the "Dog Alien")

Alien Resurrection was the tipping point for me.
It might as well have been a Sci-Fi channel original production for all the time and effort that went into making it. Most of the characters have no well established motivation and exist only as fodder for violent Alien deaths. Worse still is that all of the previously established world building is just ignored in favor of cool looking stuff, most of which doesn't make any sense.

After that we get into the two AvP movies which are hands down some of the most incompetently made movies I've ever seen in my life.

 

[Teh Jammah]

Well, from what I remember 3 and 4 both suffered from varying degrees of executive meddling, which definitely both shows in and hurts the finished product. They also both had some interesting ideas that weren't fully/adequately explored (3 going back to the more standard horror formula, 4's Aliens being a lot more human/intelligent than the ones previously shown - setting fairly elaborate traps/operating the nitrogen machine/etc).

I don't think 4's the worst film evar or that it ruins the series beyond repair (that's an AvP privilege), but it could have been so much better and Ripley felt way too shoe-horned in and sueified.

 

[GrandmaFunk]

I found Resurrection's tone to be very close to the Dark Horse comics..so if you enjoyed those, you probably enjoyed Resurrection..and vice-versa

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

I love Alien and Aliens. Two of my favorite films.

Alien 3 I feel had the potential to be just as good as the first two, but was ruined by constant re-writes. The final product ends up having some great ideas, but terrible execution. Although I admit that I think the one thing that hurts it most, more than anything else, was its characters. Most of them were completely forgettable. I love the series, I've seen them all a dozen times each, and I still couldn't tell you any of the prisoners' names. I couldn't even give you any of their personality traits beyond 'prisoner' and 'attempted rapists.' When they die on screen, I feel absolutely nothing for them, because I don't even know who they are, and in some cases, if they had even been in the movie prior to their death scenes. That, and I feel nothing for them because they're violent prisoners who attempted to rape Ripley.

Alien: Resurrection... I dunno. It feels like a bit of a black sheep in the series. I don't particularly hate it, but I don't particularly like it either. I always thought it was fairly bullshit that they were able to clone Ripley from tissues recovered from the lead works. I'm really not an expert on the subject, but I somehow find it hard to believe there'd be much left of her after the way she died... not to mention that it'd have to survive all the years between movies. That and it really doesn't make sense to me that by cloning Ripley they'd also clone the chestburster inside of her. I don't think that's quite how cloning works.

 

[Right Hook]

It could have been a hell of a lot better, I almost feel like they went for something safe after Alien 3 sucked so bad. I enjoyed the action, I enjoyed Ron Perlman, could it have used a better script? Definitely.

 

[zombie goat fetish]

I didn't mind Resurrection I always thought of it as a Sci-Fi Action Movie and that's what it was a action Movie.

 

[DirtyJunkieScum]

Resurrection was just a throwaway movie to me, didn't feel like an alien film at all, at least 3 had the right atmosphere. The characters all felt a bit too larger than life, kind of like it was a comic book or something (funnily enough I felt a lot of the actual aliens comics provided characters that felt much more real), like they were there to look cool and the aliens were just to provide some sort of antagonist for them to overcome.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I quite liked Alien: Resurrection. Very, very strange that Ripley existed at all, but overall the film isn't that bad really. Yes, some bits are very contrived (such as the hybrid, but in my mind that is no worse than the Alien aboard the drop ship of Aliens), but I did like how it continued the Corporation/military obsession with the Xenomorphs, and the mercs had a lot more character than the Marines of Aliens did (mainly because they managed to exist for longer).

Pretty much this. I enjoyed the fourth film - better than I liked the third, anyway.

I found Resurrection's tone to be very close to the Dark Horse comics..so if you enjoyed those, you probably enjoyed Resurrection..and vice-versa

Ah, yes. Perhaps that explains it. I didn't actually read the Dark Horse comics directly, but I loved the S. Perry (and later S Perry and S Perry) novelizations thereof.

I don't think I could ever forgive Alien 3 for killing Newt - not when I'd already read how awesome she was grown up in the Dark Horse universe.

 

[D Moness]

I don't think I could ever forgive Alien 3 for killing Newt - not when I'd already read how awesome she was grown up in the Dark Horse universe.

To bad they changed the name in the reprints after alien 3 came it to keep it fit with canon.
I wouldn't have minded if the comic books took their own timeline/canon. I mean i know several series that have several timelines due to the many conflicting elements.