One of the worst films I've ever seen

Rating: 1/10 (31 January 2005)

Alien Resurrection is more than just a bad installment to the Alien franchise. It is a horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE film from top to bottom. The script, the effects, the cast, and especially the acting are all unbelievably bad.
The script: The whole concept is contrived, disjointed, and completely 'deux ex machina'. Bringing Ripley back from the dead via cloning, even 350 years in the future, is ridiculous. She wouldn't retain any memories of her past life, and the alien parasite inside her at the time of her death could not have 'inserted' itself into her DNA allowing it to be cloned with her. Bringing her back any of the other ways, making it her grand daughter, making her an android, even making all of Alien3 having been a hypersleep hallucination, any of those would have been better.
The effects: Not only were they not used to the advantage of the story in any way, in some ways, they were downright bad. Everyone always goes on about how 'cool' the swimming aliens were. Number one, it was little more than a neat little gimmick. And two, it was poorly executed. The CGI aliens looked, well, like CGI aliens. In other words, they looked fake. They weren't quite photo-realistic in their appearance & movements. And they were on screen for all of about 3 seconds. Also the final scene reentering Earth's atmosphere was awful. It looked like they ran out of money and hoped no one would notice. And most of all the, ahem, newborn. The achieved something here alright. They found a way to make H.R.Giger's alien, the scariest movie monster ever, look like something out of a Lucy skit. When that thing appeared I sunk in my seat in embarrassment.
The cast: I really like Winona Ryder, but she never was & never will be an action heroine. It should have been obvious from the start that she was a completely wrong choice. And Sigourney, well, she got her 10 million dollar check and sleepwalked thru the role, if not deliberately sabotaging the film because she's sick of her association with them. As far as the rest of the cast, they were all completely forgettable. So I've completely forgotten them. Other than Dan Hedaya and Ron Perlman, who serve as nothing more than comedy relief.
The performances: I can sum them up thusly- The director didn't speak or understand English. And it shows. Didn't it occur to anyone that that might be a bad idea?! In all seriousness, I've watched lots of MST3K and Roger Coreman has made better movies than this.
Alien Vs. Predator, a seemingly more derided film, just came out on DVD and while not up to the standard of either Alien or Aliens it was about a million times better than this one.