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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alien Resurrection, 26 Dec 2010
When Ripley is cloned to gain access to the alien queen inside of her, her genetic material became bonded with that of the alien. Giving her fast healing capabilities and super-human strength the Ripley of before is now supercharged and a formidable adversary to any alien she may encounter.
`Alien Resurrection' is set 200 years after `Alien 3', but not much has changed. The company (in a new guise) wants the alien for military purposes and Ripley wants to stop that from happening, only this time she as split loyalties dues to her genetic mutation. Winona Rider is a member of a smuggling crew caught up in the melee and whilst she is ok in this film, her elfin image doesn't really sit with a hardened sci-fi action film.
The direction is pretty good and Weaver is as good as she has ever been. She has a darker streak in this film and it suits her. The alien effects are also still good and in this film we see the aliens swim, as well as meeting a new incarnation that I won't say more about here to maintain the surprise.
All in all this is a decent sequel in the series and I enjoy it at least as much as `Alien 3' but, like that film, it never matches the creepiness of `Alien' or the action of `Aliens'. Still, this is well worth watching if you have seen the rest and makes for a fairly decent sci-fi film.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Clone Alone, 9 Feb 2012
Actually a very mixed bag but overall an enjoyable film, while not touching on the first 2's uber-greatness. There are a million things wrong with this but also so much else that is right. The humour is part of the director's milieu but is misplaced in most scenes where it is attempted. Also, the script has some terribly forced one-liners. But the cast are all great and the new 'nasty' Ripley works well against the xenomorph-fodder that arrives. Winona Ryder's Call (?) is ok but she uses some very hammy acting in parts, and it's a little too much to expect the audience to be surprised by another droid; it seems to be slowly part of an overall franchise motif. The CGI is poor in places but the model work is beyond reproach. The aliens have not looked better, but also have not looked worse either. The plot is basically a retread of all of the past movies. It is a base-under-siege movie; the Auriga being the lonely outpost this time instead of the prison facility on a dead planet from 3, the terraforming plant from 2 and the Nostromo from the original. But it does have some differences such as the amount of survivors at the end of the film being greatly more. And the twist of the aliens being slightly more cerebral gives the franchise a much needed boost freshness. Also the bond between the alien queen and Ripley comes full circle and their bodies merge; however this almost makes Weaver's character impervious to peril as she is so well equipped to live. But it is interesting for the queen as now she can 'give birth' instead of laying eggs. Still, is this the franchise we know and love? We've come to get a kick out of the eggs hatching and the face-huggers are iconic in film lore. Thankfully it seems that that idea stopped here. 2 more aspects struck me as combative to a viewer. The underwater scene was great but implausible. Ripley could be believed to have the ability to hold her breath and even fight for a few minutes but most of the rest of the survivors should have perished by drowning. Saying that, it is a film about killer aliens set in a space station hundreds of years in the future, starring the universe's first alien/human hybrid clone, so.... The last good/bad thing was the 'birthed' alien. I wasn't sure whether it was scary or laughable. Sometimes it's both. It depends on the mood. However, it was a brave move. I'm all for pushing the boundaries and forcing franchises to expand and evolve but you do have to be careful. Audiences like their franchises as they have always known them. Food for thought. All that said, it has more good stuff than bad stuff. Some of the deaths are brilliantly realised and heroically over the top. This is proper bubblegum Alien; not too cerebral, not too dumb, the right amount of scares, lots of action, lots of explosions and plenty of flat one-liners. Yee-Haw!
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12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The (misunderstood) black sheep, 17 April 2002
By A Customer
There was a time when nobody seemed to like Alien 3. Then they made Resurrection and now nobody seems to like this - but love Alien 3. What it really amounts to is that Aliens is everyone's favourite, and both Alien 3 and Resurrection are very, very different. But that, of course, is what makes the Alien saga so great - the different approach taken each time - and this one is no exception. Resurrection is misunderstood. Not that it isn't simplistic. It is the simplest to understand. This, in essence, is the very Hollywood film (made by a Frenchman who spoke no English prior to filming) for all the people who hated Alien 3 for being just a little too avant garde. The plot is basic, the characters sketchy and the special effects very standard. This isn't the mould-breaker Alien (and even Aliens was). But it IS a worthy edition to the Alien canon. Like Alien 3, you watch Resurrection for Sigourney Weaver. In Alien 3, the character was at the end of the road. Here she is taken to a new level. She could go anywhere. She seems fresh. Weaver almost appeared younger here than she did in Alien 3. Some people don't appear to appreciate her almost autistic attitudes, but hey, this is Ripley, she's been through a lot, and this time she can't escape it, because it's inside her. Wouldn't you be traumatised? Somewhere in the middle of this film is an excellent action sequence, where the characters have to swim through a flooded kitchen and climb a ladder through a boobytrapped nest of alien eggs. This scene is perfect. So much is going on, but Jean Pierre Jeunet directs with aplomb and makes a visceral scene that matches anything Aliens had to offer in its intensity. The film's weakness (apart from the virtually empty DVD in this case) is the script. It was written by Joss Whedon, who writes vacuous teen shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was the wrong person. His one-liners are never less than funny, but they're out of place. Alien 3 may well have been overly po-faced in places, but Resurrection sometimes can't take itself seriously enough in places due to the script, so if it can't, we start to wonder if we can. This is not Jeunet's bad egg. He made Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children and Amelie. They all have a lot in common, but because the other three were in French, people seem to think they are any more artistic. I wonder had this film been in French, would its detractors be waxing so lyrical about it as well? I suspect they would. Oh, and I always loved the look of this film, and if the DVD is worth it for anything, it is the sheer richness of the deep colours.
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