Oh Ridley, where art thou? (or even David Fincher?)

Rating: 1/10 (14 July 2001)

Why? I'll ask that question again. WHY? Why was this film ever made? The original Alien is a masterpiece. No doubt. Aliens is the perfect sequel. Alien 3 is flawed, but visually inventive and it makes some interesting developments from the first two films in terms of drama and character. Alien Resurrection is a cash-in. Of course, most sequels are, but this one doesn't even attempt to hide the fact that it is one. It feels, lazy, hackneyed, tired and lethargic. There is no tension, not even in the underwater sequence that everyone raved about (simply because it was too difficult for the fans to believe that an Alien film could be utterly devoid of merit, suspense or interest). The Ripley character looks bored, and is now so outrageously arrogant as to become a cheap parody of her strong female status. Now she is so overwhelmingly macho it just looks stupid. The other characters are pitifully written. The first two Alien films had characters you cared about, and even the third film managed to make some of the victims (tough job considering they were all murderers) sympathetic. But here, all they do is make bad jokes and totally dispel any possible tension by spouting ridiculous dialogue. And for a film in which all the characters do is run away, there is no atmosphere of tension or sense of danger. This is
due to a lame script and uninvolved direction. The special effects are mostly poor, especially in the end, and is a further testament to the overall badness of CGI.
There is only one mildly diverting sequence, when Ripley sees all of her clones in the laboratory and burns them down in a moment of grief. Some attempts of character development, but in retrospect, the sequence just feels throwaway, just a bit of filler in between the next inevitable death. It is also doesn't help that the emotion of the scene is ruined by the line "Women..." by the stereotypically mysognist bonehead played by that moron out of Beauty and the Beast.
Finally. Winona Ryder. She is terrible in this! Of course (SPOILER), she's a robot, but that's just something defenders of her unexplainable star status say to avoid admitting the fact that she is bad in this. Very bad.
If Alien 3 was a pale imitation of Alien (albeit not a bad one), then this is a TV movie copy of Aliens. It looks rubbish, has no reason to exist, and completely destroys the credibility of one of the most interesting SF film series ever. For what once was a classic trilogy, has now become a franchise.
As stupid as Alien Versus Predator seems, it can't be as bad as this.