--Alien Week--
Please note that all "Alien Week" film reviews may contain spoilers related to both the film that is being reviewed and other films in the series.
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, and Ron Perlman
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
The Theatrical Version was watched as the director prefers the original cut.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. After a rousing start with Alien and a terrific follow-up with Aliens, the science fiction horror franchise starring Sigourney Weaver began to falter with Alien 3 and now lands with a horrible thud thanks to Alien: Resurrection, a film that is so tonally different from its predecessors that it's jarring to viewers and almost uncomfortable to sit through.
The blame has to be placed on two people -- screenwriter Joss Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Whedon -- best known for mixing wry comedy with more dire situations in things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cabin in the Woods -- is a good writer, but I'm not quite sure he was the right pick to pen an Alien picture. Previous installments have been über-serious, but this fourth film in which Weaver's Ripley (who died in Alien 3) returns as a human clone developed by the military solely to give birth to alien life forms is too often played for laughs (and with the ludicrous aforementioned premise it's easy to see why they went for the yuks). Unlike the third film, Whedon at least attempts to create some memorable characters with distinct personalities, but he isn't always successful at crafting anything more than the standard stereotypical machismo-type folks that typically inhabit action films like this. We're given caricatures instead of "real" people.
Also needing to take a heap of the blame for the film's failure is director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the helmer behind the fantastical and visually inventive Amelie. Jeunet doesn't ever really go for scares...and what's an Alien film without scares or at least the imminent threat of scares? The aliens here are even sometimes played for a laugh and that's almost sacrilegious. He also fails to get good performances from much of the supporting players, many of whom are asked to play up the humor rather than the sheer terror that should come from killer creatures running rampant in a spaceship.
During the film's second half, the humor gets tossed aside and Jeunet attempts to create an action film (though the scares still remain nonexistent), but he isn't successful in that respect either. However, it's the combined missteps from both Jeunet and Whedon that make Alien: Resurrection the biggest disappointment thus far in the Alien franchise and an unfortunate coda to the series.
The blame has to be placed on two people -- screenwriter Joss Whedon and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Whedon -- best known for mixing wry comedy with more dire situations in things like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Cabin in the Woods -- is a good writer, but I'm not quite sure he was the right pick to pen an Alien picture. Previous installments have been über-serious, but this fourth film in which Weaver's Ripley (who died in Alien 3) returns as a human clone developed by the military solely to give birth to alien life forms is too often played for laughs (and with the ludicrous aforementioned premise it's easy to see why they went for the yuks). Unlike the third film, Whedon at least attempts to create some memorable characters with distinct personalities, but he isn't always successful at crafting anything more than the standard stereotypical machismo-type folks that typically inhabit action films like this. We're given caricatures instead of "real" people.
Also needing to take a heap of the blame for the film's failure is director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the helmer behind the fantastical and visually inventive Amelie. Jeunet doesn't ever really go for scares...and what's an Alien film without scares or at least the imminent threat of scares? The aliens here are even sometimes played for a laugh and that's almost sacrilegious. He also fails to get good performances from much of the supporting players, many of whom are asked to play up the humor rather than the sheer terror that should come from killer creatures running rampant in a spaceship.
During the film's second half, the humor gets tossed aside and Jeunet attempts to create an action film (though the scares still remain nonexistent), but he isn't successful in that respect either. However, it's the combined missteps from both Jeunet and Whedon that make Alien: Resurrection the biggest disappointment thus far in the Alien franchise and an unfortunate coda to the series.
The RyMickey Rating: D
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