I haven’t seen Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection since they were in theaters. But I just now rewatched them. Alien 3 at least holds up as a grim take on the Alien series, a few clunky scenes excepted. The flirty romance between Sigourney Weaver and Charles Dance feels so out of place. The convenient chestburster arrival as Ripley falls into the molten lead is rather silly. And the composite shots with the alien are really bad. But overall, Vincent Ward’s script and David Fincher’s direction are distinct entries into the Alien saga. You Aliens purists can nerdrage all you want about killing Newt and Hicks, but it was a bold choice for setting the stage to tell a different kind of story.
But Alien: Resurrection? Hoo boy, what a risible pile of awful! I remembered being disappointed, but I didn’t remember it was this bad. Dan Hedaya’s comedic turn as the wacky station chief, Brad Dourif making faces at the alien in the containment chamber, the sinister Dr. Wren all but twirling his mustache, Sigourney Weaver’s weird turn as a robot manchild/superhero, the utterly icky stuff with the boss monster at the end.
What really struck me was how out of place the crew of the Betty felt, except for the fact that this is a Joss Whedon script. He must have been working out early iterations of the Serenity crew! Michael Wincott as Mal, Ron Perlman as Jane, Winona Ryder as Summer Glau, and Sigourney Weaver also as Summer Glau. The ragtag crew concept is in full effect, complete with special abilities and equipment for different crew members. How awkward. It’s a terrible script, and it has almost made me glad I’ve never seen Firefly. The only thing worse than the script is how director Jeunet squandered what could have been some pretty cool production design.
Still, it’s not as bad as Prometheus. I’ll take a crappy Whedon script over anything Lindelof has ever written.
I’m a bit weirded out. I own the Alien Quadrology (DVD) and I was not aware of the Assembly Cut of Alien 3. O_o I simply picked the set up when it was on a sale ages ago without really looking at the content description. So, either there’s a PAL print without the extras or I simply didn’t notice. Will check immediatly when I’m back home.
Still, it’s not as bad as Prometheus.
Heh, I had the same thought when this discussion was brought up in the Edge of Tomorrow thread. Resurrection was a bizarre experience, but I don’t remember disliking the characters as much as I disliked the protagonists in Prometheus.
I appreciate the bold choice they made when they picked Jeunet as a director. I like many of his movies and they’re visually interesting. Sometimes such mix can yield good results (Sam Mendes + Bond franchise, IMO), in the case of Alien and Jeunet it was a complete mismatch.
One of the things I’ve always appreciated about the Alien franchise is how they let these very different but all very talented directors play with it. Sometimes it worked better than others, but I think the only true trainwreck was when Ridley Scott got hold of it again. (Not that Resurrection is good.)
I agree with all this (yay for Alien 3 apologists!), except I need to rewatch Prometheus. It was dumb, but production value can go a long way for me, so right now I’d say it was slightly better than Resurrection. I’d never dig up either to watch on their own, but if you made me chose, I’d turn off my brain and watch Prometheus. Maybe it’s even worse than I remember though.
I didn’t think Prometheus looked that good. It certainly didn’t have any meaningful place in the Alien universe with its newfangled 3D holographic technology and smartglass avionics. Even Resurrection, set 200 years after the Alien trilogy, has a feeling of continuity with the earlier movies. And the cast of Prometheus is so bland and forgettable, which is a terrible thing considering how talented some of those actors are. At least Resurrection has some sense of character, and characters.
Still, it’s a terrible choice to have to make. But I feel Prometheus is the far worse movie.
At least Resurrection has some sense of character, and characters.
Yeah, but it’s drenched in that Jeunet vibe. Feels like it belongs in a different movie universe. I did like the bit where Ripley sinks the basketball, though. (She actually made that shot.)
I read the Resurrection script before it was produced and before I knew who Whedon was (I came pretty late to my Buffy fandom). At the time it felt like he was trying to recapture the vibe of Aliens, of a mismatched group of people running through constrained spaces with aliens on their tail. The script didn’t read horrible, just a bit derivative, a retread.
I did think Whedon hit on a pretty clever solution for getting Ripley back into the mix.
I like that scene in Avatar where the executive is playing with his a toy made unobtanium on his table. Pondering what to do, respect ethics and people lives, and go for profit and murderage.
From Alien I have many fond memories, like the part in the begin where we only see the empy rooms with computers and the pilot chairs, and everything looks soo alien, despite being human technology. In the original alien movie, everything is non-human, even one of the “humans”.
From Aliens, I like the part where they are hidding in a room and the aliens are trying to reach them trough a tunnel, while some auto miniguns are defending the area. Is the material to make so many RTS and RPG games… and turret defense ones!. The enemies are out there, so is a movie about the Enemy,… despite this is easier to understand a enemy than a alien. The enemy may have discernible traits and objectives, conquer your land, eat your catle, rape your womens, … aliens are motives that can’t be understood.
Alien 3 did not felt “alien” to me. Far from it. Is highschool terror. Is a movie about The Others. Other people can be awnful, other people can do nasty stuff, and shit.
Alien Resurrection is about family and friends. In this movie Sigourney Weaver is made family of the aliens, she shared blood with them literally. She even had to take some terrible decisions with her “sisters” (older clones of her). She make the “bros before hoes” decision rather quick, so you must be very attent to see a blink where she would have sided with the aliens against the humans.
Alien: movie about alien motives.
Aliens: movie about enemies motives.
Alien 3: movie about other people motives.
Alien Resurrection: movie about family motives.
I don’t know what the hell the Prometheus movie was about. Maybe the Ego.
The problem of the aliens franchise is trying to change the appeal of each movie to make it less alien to people. So there are not aliens in the last ones. Only monsters that are only disfigured humans or guys inside a plastic vest.
Yeah I’m with krayzkrok on all this, however, I do prefer the Alien 2 director’s cut for Ripley’s maternal arc with Newt. The workprint cut of Alien3 is superior for all the reasons krok suggests though. Definitely check it out. Ridley’s cut of Alien just flies in the face of Cameron’s work which annoys me no end, like Prometheus.
I was always surprised by how much people disliked Alien3 personally. Agreed on killing off Newt and Hicks. What a bold and dark note to start the film off on.
My gut feeling is that I prefer Prometheus to Resurrection, but at the same time I haven’t seen Resurrection since it was released simply because I was so disappointed by it. Wow. I hadn’t (and still haven’t) seen much of Buffy so I wasn’t particularly wedded to Whedon’s writing at the time but I was familiar with Jeunet’s work. A bad match. The bit I remember severe facepalming at was the captain reaching into his skull and fishing out a bit of… something, possibly brain. I don’t know. That was just too silly. Oh! And the chest burster bursting through two people at once. Stupid stupid stupid.
The ideas in Prometheus are kind of cool though, and it was neat to get some insight into the backstory of the engineers etc.
I didn’t like it, because it felt like they jammed Von Daniken/Ancient Astronauts into a sci fi world that didn’t need them. It’s much more interesting to me if the Aliens are just some nasty creatures that evolved somewhere, rather than THE KEY TO THE ORIGIN OF ALL MANKIND
Plus, according to the screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, Tolkien had a concept called ‘distant mountains’ which appeals to me. You put distant mountains in the background of your story, but if you go and explore them close up, then you have to add more distant mountains beyond them. To me, the Space Jockey was a very effective Distant Mountain. I once thought I wanted them explained, but now I know I don’t.
This isn’t to say I think Prometheus is without merit. When you detach it from any allegiance to the Alien mythos it gets more interesting. I find myself scared to say anything complimentary about it because of the nerdrage I’ll elicit. It’s sort of like how I avoid listening to anything by Nickelback on the off chance I might actually like it…
Anyway, Prometheus and Alien 3/4 never happened, and Hicks and Ripley got married and live in a gingerbread house with Newt!!
Yeah, I hear where you’re coming from… but I still want to know more about the distant mountains. :P
The idea of the space jockey was cool, and honestly, I think they kind of failed to capitalize on his coolness in Prometheus. I want to know more about what it was that they were doing, and we never really get any answers to any of that. I mean, they kind of say that the engineers wanted to destroy humanity, but it’s not really clear, and certainly isn’t explained in terms of why.
I wanna know the answers to those questions, because it seems like it could be cool.
I liked the visual stylings of Prometheus too. Certainly, it was a departure from the gritty industrial feel that was intrinsic to the earlier alien movies, but it was still well done in my opinion.
Ridley Scott did them both, and his ability to create an awesome atmosphere is unparalleled in my opinion… I love his movies.
I own the quadrilogy and had no idea about this extended version of 3. I might give it a watch! I really like the darkness of 3 – I remember a lot of shots made me feel like someone was filming the Imperial Guard from WH40k, with those excellent cloaks.
It’s got Pete Postlethwaite in it.
After watching Resurrection I assumed it was a comic book adaption. I watched the the whole set about 5 years ago with someone who was 18, and he liked 4 the most. Which says enough really ;)
I never watched Prometheus as I assumed it sucked, like Resurrection. Does it?
I liked Prometheus and rewatched Alien IV after playing the Legendary Deckbuilding Game… that was a big mistake. I felt pain from the very first scene (squashed fly-alien) to the end scene Alien-through-hole-sucked— I feel pain just remembering Alien IV… Alien for me was all about Giger to be honest…
Unrelated, but I recently visited friends in Zurich, Switzerland… and we found out after a visit of the Giger museum in Gruyere, that he lived a few streets away from where my friends now live (Oerlikon outside Zurich). So we went and payed respect to Giger, found his house and garden.
If interested, I could post my pictures on tumblr…
Giger was a serious artist, so this travesty of Alien IV is really insulting, for me Prometheus at least hits some notes right, I don’t have bad feelings watching it. Prometheus introduced some distant mountains like the Alien/Engineers home planet… Alien IV is so empty.
A little late to the party on Alien: Resurrection but here goes.
Wheddon can come up with some great characters and the dynamics between them. He does have a problem with the Buffy power fantasy thing though. As a huge Firefly fan I think one of the saving graces of the show was that it ended before River reached her space ninja potential. The vulnerability there and in the other crew members made the show more interesting than Buffy was to me. Seeing Ripley turned into an alien/Buffy hybrid was the most jarring and horrible thing there. The attitude was all wrong. Riply isn’t a smarmy teenager she’s an incredibly competent and professional science officer.
