Not bad, but it can't hold a candle to the trilogy

Rating: Null/10 (31 March 2000)

Now, don't get me wrong. This is a decent movie. I enjoyed watching it. But at the same I writhed and twitched in pain as I saw everything that gave the Alien saga its unique, wonderfully appealing luster sucked away in two hours of gore and weird "art" directing.
***Warning...I reveal some plot elements here so if you haven't seen it, don't read on unless you want to know about the movie***
First off, there are some definite flaws in the underlying principal of the movie. Cloning is obviously OK, but somehow cloning Ripley and having the Alien be cloned along with her seems just a tad fetched. Perhaps this is why it took 200 years; such incredible cloning techniques had to be developed! But we can let this slide.
Next up is the bizarre entourage of characters. The officer in charge of the station, General Perez, is overacted to an extreme. He seems to try to capture some of the style of the drill sergeant from "Full Metal Jacket" but just comes off as being a poor actor and character. (And this makes no mention of his final scene, with the piece of his brain...oohh...gore for 14 year olds, never seen that before). We have the terrible one-liners that Ron Perlman, an actor that I actually like quite well, delivers with little enthusiasm. But who would really want to say "Earth, man...what a ****hole?" What kind of a line is that? It just astounds me to hear that as a line that's actually meant to be taken seriously. And then there's Winona Ryder. I cannot think of a movie that has had an actor or actress so poorly cast. Not only does Ryder not seem to fit the image of an android space pirate, her lines are both not written well and she does little to correct it. "You're a construct...they grew you in a ****ing lab." I hate to continue making the same complaint, but that is an awful, awful line that is out-of-place.
Throughout the whole movie, Sigourney Weaver usually is able to salvage most of the scenes, but then she goes and ruins this by over-acting her part as well, with one-liners almost as bad as Perlman's. Cole:"I can't believe you did that, its like killing one of your own kind." (Another example of Ryder's brilliant lines and reading) Ripley:"It was in my way." Ha ha, that's funny Ripley.
OK, again, we can put up with this. We're movie fans. We're tough.
Then, to shatter this, there's the Newborn Alien. From a storyline standpoint, its not well done. From a visual effects standpoint, well, lets just say it wasn't done as well as it *should* have been. It exists for a short, very gory time on screen and seems to have been added as just another thing for Ripley to fight as an ending to the movie, just to make the running time fit the box office minimum.

But wait! Perhaps it's a nod to the previous two installments.
*cough*
OK, well in the Director's Cut of Aliens we learn that Ripley did indeed have a daughter, that died in part because of the Alien (Ripley was lost for 57 years...you know the story). Then, in Alien3, Ripley loses her surrogate daughter, Newt, to the Alien (the facehugger burns a hole in the cryotube...). Then, in the third one, her second surrogate daughter is killed because it's a menace to society. Unfortunately though, most people don't see the correlation (not that I blame them) because they can't get past that ugly Alien Newborn.
Unfortunately, Alien:Resurrection falls short of the other movies; even the Alien from this movie has little relation to the original from the other three. The Alien changes in all four movies, but the only thing that this Alien seems to have in common with the other three is summed up by Superintendent Chalmers' words from Alien3: "So its an 8 foot creature, some kind with acid for blood, and is generally unpleasant." Its mannerisms and behaviors are completely different from those in the other three; it lays an "ambush," attacks in the open, and can be held off by seemingly simple weapons. Only one civilian could escape the one from Alien. Only one space marine could escape it the one from Aliens. Only one prisoner could escape it in Alien3. But somehow three (count them, Vriess, Cole, and Johner plus Ripley) space pirates can survive not just the Queen but also the Newborn?

Oh well. Its actually a good movie if you aren't obsessed with the other three and can see the failings in the movie. But its not comparable to the previous three, all prime examples of their age and genre. The trilogy seems to be gauged more at adults, while the latest installment seems somewhat teenage-ish, with lots of unnecessary gore and cursing.