ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

alien: resurrection (1997) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   MA 15+

Running time   |   109 minutes

Released         |   26 November 1997 

cast

Sigourney Weaver ... Ripley
Winona Ryder ... Call
Dominique Pinon ... Vriess
Ron Perlman ... Johner
​Gary Dourdan ... Christie
Michael Wincott ... Elgyn
Kim Flowers ... Hillard
Dan Hedaya ... General Perez
J.E. Freeman ... Dr. Wren
Brad Dourif ... Gediman
Raymond Cruz ... Distephano
​Leland Orser ... Purvis

director

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

writer

​Dan O'Bannon ... (characters) and
Ronald Shusett ... (characters)
 
Joss Whedon ... (written by)

cinematographer

Darius Khondji ​

music

​John Frizzell

film editor

​Hervé Schneid ... (as Herve Schneid)

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box office result

Worldwide             $​​​​​​​​161,376,069

Australia                 $​​​​​​​3,832,598

North America       $​​​​​​​​​​​47,795,658

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movie minutiae

​The script and promotional material reveal that the orbit of Auriga was beyond Pluto. The project was not approved by the Congress, possibly due to its hazardous nature. According to the script the USS military cultivated vast quantities of cannabis to fund the cloning program since they could not rely on the goverment for an official subsidization. The goverment could not observe the military beyond the boundaries of the solar system. Although this subplot was dropped from the film there are still hints of this backstory when Elgyn remarks that the operation was not authorized by the Congress and that Auriga is located in unregulated space. This also explains the assertion of Call that Dr Wren is conducting illegal experiments.

​In the original script and the novelization of Alien Resurrection, it is mentioned that the Queen's secondary reproductive cycle was introduced as a result of tampering with her genetic code by Dr. Wren's team in an attempt to stop her laying an endless number of Eggs; according to a cocooned Dr. Gediman, "We thought we could alter its reproductive system. Obviate the egg-laying cycles. But the beast doesn't trade. It just added a second cycle."

In the Special Edition, Ripley mentions her experience with Newt in ALIENS (1986), before saying that now she can't even remember her name. This is a reference to the Aliens (1986) sequels published by Dark Horse Comics and Bantam Books, which featured Newt and Hicks prominently.

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related movies

ALIENS (1986)

ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997) MOVIE IMAGES

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ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Ripley 8, a human-alien hybrid clone, is aboard a vessel, Auriga, along with space pirates. However, when aliens invade Auriga, Ripley does her best to prevent them from reaching and destroying Earth.

ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 26 November 2015

​​Pop Movee Rating

After an absence of five years, in 1997 Sigourney Weaver returned to cinema screens as Ellen Ripley (albeit a cloned version) in ALIEN: RESURRECTION. French film maker Jean-Pierre Jeunet brought Joss Whedon’s story to the screen but much of what made previous franchise entries unique is lost in RESURRECTION.

Events in the film are set some two hundred years after ALIEN 3 with scientists aboard the United Military Systems ship the USS Auriga conducting cloning experiments on Ripley’s DNA that was collected, presumably, from her time on Fiorana 161 in the previous film.

A group of mercenaries, including Winona Ryder as Call and Ron Perlman as Johner, arrive at the Auriga with a group of kidnapped humans who have been placed in stasis in order to be used as hosts to breed the xenomorphs.

Events take a turn for the more-than-expected as the quickly-maturing aliens break free of their prison cells by sacrificing one of their own. Anyone left alive on the ship realise that Ripley is their only hope of getting off the Auriga, which has to be destroyed because it has set an automatic return to Earth and will unleash the aliens upon the planet if it’s not. 

RESURRECTION, quite predictably, ticks the boxes that fans of the series expect, but does so with little energy or originality.

The fleeing humans are picked off in a series of set pieces that lack suspense and are deliberately contrived to back them into a corner just for the thrill of the alien kill!
Then there’s the ending … Ripley has to, once again, face off against a Queen (who through its gestation in Ripley has miraculously developed a human womb), but, this time, she’s killed by her own offspring. The “child” is a hybrid xenomorph-human that has eyes and a mouth and actually thinks that Ripley is its mother. Whatever was written in the script is completely lost in translation, as a peculiar transference takes place, making Ripley the "Queen", as it were, as her "child" defends her "mother" from the alien Queen.

There’s a pall of weirdness that rests upon ALIEN: RESURRECTION starting with the strange story that tries to mine the maternal instinct themes of ALIENS (1986) in reverse, but comes across as just plain creepy.

There’s Brad Dourif’s kooky turn as Gediman, the scientist who “likes” the aliens just a little too much. Dan Hedaya as Perez looks like he’s just got out of bed in every single scene he’s in. Winona Ryder as Call struggles to make any impact acting up against Weaver, who like her character battles on through it all perhaps wondering at some stage why she signed-on for a fourth outing.

ALIEN: RESURRECTION has atmosphere, it has xenomorphs, it has a bunch of working class grunts and its has a version of Ellen Ripley. All of the elements are up on the screen, but the movie just never comes together in the manner that either those making it or those watching would have hoped for.

The lack of cohesion was reflected in the box office performance of the film upon its release and hopes of any further films were dashed, as RESURRECTION bombed at the US Box Office. It finished its domestic run with a paltry $48 million, but was saved by its international performance, generating a further $113 million. With an estimated budget of $70 million plus its marketing costs, Alien Resurrection didn’t lose money, but its lack of originality and formulaic approach didn’t win the franchise any new fans.

Perhaps it’s best left to Joss Whedon, the film’s writer, to have the final word about Alien Resurrection:

"It wasn't a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending; it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. They said the lines...mostly...but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do. There's actually a fascinating lesson in filmmaking, because everything that they did reflects back to the script or looks like something from the script, and people assume that, if I hated it, then they’d changed the script...but it wasn’t so much that they’d changed the script; it’s that they just executed it in such a ghastly fashion as to render it almost unwatchable."

ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997) USEFUL LINKS

Alien Resurrection - Wikipedia​
Alien: Resurrection (1997) - IMDb​
​Alien Resurrection (1997) - Rotten Tomatoes

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