Too postmodern for the franchise, but still quite fun

Rating: 6/10 (5 May 2015)

I suppose people should have been wary once they saw the subtitle... Alien: Resurrection hit theaters five years after Alien 3 received a mixed response and that's putting it lightly. Whereas 3, while not as tight a film as its predecessors, still had a number of things going for it (dark humor, religious themes, acting), this film is the first within the franchise to suffer from nothing less than a full-on identity crisis.
If you thought Alien 3's opening ruined Aliens' happy ending, wait until you see Resurrection's opening: Ripley—and therefore the alien inside her—are brought back from the dead through the wonders of modern science. Yep, no sacrificing herself for humanity this time à la Alien 3; Ripley's just brought back. (Technically though, she's cloned and it's only the eighth one that's a success.) What's especially bad is Ripley could have very plausibly been written out of this film. The doctors extract the alien from her stomach and the lead doctor is asked what they should do with the Ripley clone. He decides that though the alien queen is their priority, they might as well keep her alive for further research. He might as well have shrugged and said "meh, why not?" Anyway, the Ripley clone and the alien queen are alive and held in separate parts of a ship that belongs to the military. Then another ship arrives, controlled by a mercenary crew. They're there to deliver some cargo, another ship's (now unconscious) crew. The trade is done and the mercenary group's leader asks if they can stay for a few days. The general in charge of the entire thing agrees. Naturally, things start going south very quickly from here on out. Several aliens birthed by the queen escape and crew-members are quickly picked off. Ripley also escapes and teams up with the mercenaries. The ship is now on auto-pilot and returning to Earth. Realizing it'd be the end of humanity, Ripley and the others seek to simultaneously destroy the ship and escape from it.
If Alien 3 sought to replicate Alien in terms of the overall narrative and pacing, then Resurrection is trying to replicate Aliens. There's more action here and much of it is overly choreographed, the worst offender being a bullet that ricochets two times before landing in a guy's dome. And it's scenes like that make you realize you're watching a film that's afraid to be dramatic without simultaneously being self-aware. On the one hand, you've got pretty riveting scenes like the one where Ripley discovers a lab filled with her failed clones, but on the other, you've got stuff like the ricocheting bullet scene. Needless to say, the film doesn't marry these elements together as well as it should. The presence of director Jean Pierre Jeunet and writer Joss Whedon attest to that fact. While Jeunet's sense of visuals ensures the film looks mostly great and atmospheric, one has to agree that the future director of Amelie directing an Alien film isn't a scenario many would label 'ideal'. Writer Whedon has also gone on to claim his final script was adhered to, but executed in a different way than he intended. It's obvious that, despite all the talent involved, there was a lack of a singular vision for Resurrection which resulted in this walking identity crisis of a film. I find it really ironic that what makes Resurrection unique within the franchise is its identity crisis.
So what do you do as a viewer? The only way to approach Resurrection is by realizing it's an incredibly self-aware postmodern flick. In other words, lower your expectations. Maybe then you'll get a kick out of the handful of action scenes that are moderately well-executed (the underwater scene) or some of the underdeveloped ideas (the newborn and the concept of cloning). But save for scenes like that, it's as far removed from being a true 'Alien' film as can be. Oh well, at least we got Sigourney Weaver's basketball shot out of it.