Hacker Cinema
Alien Resurrection
1997 · Film · 109 min
Part of Alien Collection
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Two hundred years after Lt. Ripley died, a group of scientists clone her, hoping to breed the ultimate weapon. But the new Ripley is full of surprises … as are the new aliens. Ripley must team with a band of smugglers to keep the creatures from reaching Earth.
6 negativefrom 6 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
7 comments on Hacker News
As something of an Alien fangirl 3 and 4 are more failures from a production standpoint than from a creative one. If you look at all the rejected pitches for Alien 3 there's a lot of interesting ideas which were never explored and a lot of studio fuckery in the final cut. I don't think the Fincher cut is amazing but I think it proves that there could be another excellent Alien movie.
Alien: Resurrection is plotted terribly and has all the shitty Joss Whedonisms you expect, but there's something undeniable about Winona, Sigourney and Ron Perlman in the grungy space aesthetic. The idea of Ripley as an Alien hybrid who is simultaneously attached to and repulsed by the Xenomorphs is interesting. Unfortunately they saddled the movie with a French director who couldn't speak English (and Joss Whedon, who arguably shouldn't speak at all).
The Terminator franchise is definitely more boxed-in: there's a core narrative about an important person who changes the world. Everyone else lives in contemporary LA, and the post-apocalyptic future is pretty boring.
The Animatrix anthology shows you can do lots in the Matrix world without needing the core characters. The themes and world-building could support a show like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners which is only tangentially related to the movies.
Maybe I'm making too much of it, perhaps it's just the modern style to use hyperbolic rhetoric in movie reviews.
But for new movies to make old movies worse used to be an uncommon attitude I think. I remember in the 90s and 00s, lots of movies had really shitty sequels, often straight to DVD, but nobody talked about these cash grabs ruining the original movie. For instance Aliens 3, Alien Resurrection and then all the AvP crap... some people like these (I think Aliens 3 is defensible FWIW) but a lot of people really don't. Still, nobody talks about Alien or Aliens (e.g. 1 & 2) being ruined by the later movies. Aliens 3 is frequently criticized for the way it killed well-liked characters from Aliens, but that doesn't stop people from still enjoying Aliens. People just choose to ignore Aliens 3. And why shouldn't they, because Aliens 3 is canon? That's just a legal IP relationship, that doesn't matter.
And Disney has dozens of straight-to-vhs/dvd cashgrab sequels of their classic animated movies, people who don't care for them just ignore them and they aren't said to ruin the originals. There used to be a general understanding that sequels are very rarely good, people were pleasantly surprised when it was otherwise and nobody said their life was ruined by a bad sequel. Because who cares about cannon in animated disney movies?
I've seen Lucas's Clone Wars, but if I watch the original Star Wars I'm not compelled to relate it to the Clone Wars movie. By simply choosing to ignore it because I don't like it, I free myself to imagine my own clone wars.
I think new movies ruining the originals is some relatively recent cultural phenomena that was brought on by internet culture's obsession with canon. The existence of popular sites like wookiepedia both evidence it and drive it. If I'm wrong and it's not an overabundance of respect for IP laws that is the root of this, then why isn't bad fanfic also said to ruin the original?
I'm with you. I think most of the star wars movies are pretty bad, but some of them are pretty good. And the bad ones don't make me feel worse about the good ones.
I think there has been a serious cultural shift in this regard sometime during the 00s. Most people used to understand that sequels are generally shitty and didn't make a big deal of this. S-tier classics from the likes of Disney used to get shitty straight-to-DVD sequels (e.g. Lion King 2) and nobody even thought to whine about it. Even movies that had very well received sequels would sometimes receive further sequels that were stinkers, and nobody started ranting about how the original was ruined because of it.
Alien and Aliens were great, then you got Alien 3, AvP, etc.. a bunch of mediocre slop to put it nicely (actually I like 3, but I admit it's deeply flawed). But when did you ever hear somebody say that AvP or Alien Resurrection ruined how they felt about Alien or Aliens? Terminator and T2; great movies that got a bunch of shitty spinoffs and sequels, but nobody said at the time that their enjoyment of the first two was ruined by what followed. James Bond has been a rollercoaster of quality for decades but it keeps going and fans enjoy calm respectful debates about which are their favorites. The Godzilla franchise has lots of quality interspersed with lots of crap, I don't hear many people saying that the horrible Minilla retroactively ruined King Kong vs. Godzilla, or for that matter, that King Kong vs. Godzilla ruined Godzilla (1954). The first Jurassic Park wasn't said to be ruined by the cashgrab sequels. The Land Before Time is still warmly remembered, despite 13(!) direct-to-dvd sequels.
Even in the early 2000s, I heard a lot of people saying they didn't like the Star Wars prequels, but I didn't hear many people saying the first three movies were ruined. Not until a few years later did this attitude start to find traction.
> the fact that Whedon wrote the screenplay for "Alien: Resurrection" tells me that Whedon is not world-class
I think that's a bit unfair. Joss wrote the original screenplay, but it was butchered en route to the screen. He's still pretty narked about having a story credit: "There is always going to be a shitty Alien movie out there. A shitty Alien movie with my name on it."
I liked the original Avengers, and I think it did a great job handling a sprawling and convoluted brief (there's a 17-part breakdown out there if you're really keen [1]), but TV was his natural medium. Firefly, obviously, but there are moments in Buffy that I'd honestly defend as the best TV ever made.
Not going to argue about JJ Abrams, though. Possibly the most overrated director ever, with a perfect reverse-Midas track record when it comes to franchises.
[1] http://www.toddalcott.com/the-avengers-part-1.html
I always watch Alien and Aliens back to back. From time to time, if I have more time to kill, I watch Alien 3 ( the extended director's cut ). I watched Alien: Resurrection once and have never watched it again and have no desire to. Terrible movie.
I will never be able to forgive Alien 3 for killing off hicks and newt so unceremoniously ( off screen ). That was so lazy and cowardly, it ruins what is a fun movie to watch.
> Alien: Resurrection.
That was a really, really bad movie. Jeunet had absolutely no idea what he was doing directing that movie.
Neill Blomkamp, director of "District 9," is going to direct an "Aliens" sequel! It seems that first he said he'd ignore "Alien 3" and "Alien: Resurrection," but it seems like he's taken that back.
[1] http://www.avclub.com/article/neill-blomkamps-alien-movie-will-ignore-alien-3-an-215808
[2] http://www.avclub.com/article/actually-blomkamps-alien-movie-wont-ignore-alien-3-215905