Alien Resurrection
This is my first time seeing it in a few years, and my first time seeing the uncut version of the film (I've only ever seen the TV edit). This film comes no where close to the first three, but then again, a lot of films don't. This is by no means a terrible movie, but its also not a great one like the past three Alien movies were. I guess I'll start off with the bad. The movie had quite a few stupid little moments in it: the breath-opening doors, the instant-alcohol cube thing, the bouncing bullet scene, and, perhaps my least favorite moment in the movie, Ripley 8 pulling off the facehugger. The fact that she was able to simply pull it off (even being the mutated clone she is) goes against everything that I found to be scary about that particular stage in the Alien life cycle. I don't even understand why it jumped on her in the first place, anyways; later in the film it was pretty obvious that the Aliens had no intention of impregnating her when they carried her into the hive. Also, keeping on the topic of Ripley 8, I could in no way bring myself to associate her with Ellen Ripley of the Alien trilogy; she was an entirely different character here, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. She is, after all, not the Ellen Ripley that we all know and love, but rather the byproduct of illegal scientific engineering. Which brings me to one of my favorite scenes in the movie, the scene where Ripley 8 encounters clones 1-7. This was a very disturbing scene, creepy in all the ways that an Alien film should be. It was one of the few scenes in the film where the emotions of the characters (Ripley 7 and 8 in particular) really hit home. Now, I know a lot of you guys are going to hate me for this, but you know what? I loved the Newborn. In fact, it was quite possibly my favorite thing in Alien Resurrection. Yes, it is disturbing and ugly and, in many ways, a disgrace to the "beauty" of the Alien. Yes, it was an abomination, one that I doubt any of us were really expecting to see, let alone excited for. But that's exactly why I loved it. The makers of the film succeeded in everything that they set out to do when they created the Newborn. It is revolting, and that's why it works so well. Continuing on with the regular Aliens, many people found them to be too animal like and too fleshy. While I agree with those statements and do not find the creatures' designs to be as well executed as in the first three films, I will say that this look worked in the film, due to all of the cloning and genetic engineering and all the other cases of science run amok.
So yeah, while I did enjoy the film, Alien Resurrection does not live up to the genius of the first three films (in a lot of ways, the second and third didn't live up to Alien as well). Rather than view it as a proper sequel I think that I, like so many other members here, will find it easier to enjoy this film when viewed more as a spin-off/side-story to the first three movies. This outlook on the film is made easier in that I found it hard to relate Ripley 8 to Ellen Ripley. That being said, the film is not terrible, and worth a watch from any fan of the Alien series. While not an amazing movie, it does offer a lot of interesting concepts and ideas that are often overlooked by the fans who dismiss the film as a whole.
In short, I'd give Alien Resurrection around a 6.5 out of 10. It had a ton of potential, and executed some of it really well, but it also fell flat in a lot of places as well. I'm glad that I finally own the movie and that I had the chance to check it out again before the release of Prometheus; now lets just hope that Prometheus delivers in some of the areas where this film didn't.
