director
Jean-Pierre Jeunet
screenwriter
Joss Whedon
based
on characters created by
Dan O'Bannon
Ronald Shusett
producers
Bill Badalato
Gordon Carroll
David Giler
Walter Hill
cinematographer
Darius Khondji
music
John Frizzell
editor
Hervé Schneid
cast
Sigourney Weaver (Lt. Ellen Ripley)
Winona Ryder (Annalee Call)
Dominique Pinon (Vriess)
Ron Perlman (Johner)
Gary Dourdan (Christian)
Michael Wincott (Elgyn)
Kim Flowers (Hillard)
Dan Hedaya (General Perez)
J.E. Freeman (Dr. Wren)
Brad Dourif (Dr. Gediman)
Raymond Cruz (Distephano)
Leland Orser (Purvis)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 109m
u.s.
release: 11/26/97
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
see also:
- getting alienated
|
The
Alien series, for my money, is the most provocative franchise
Hollywood has ever spawned. What began as a sci-fi splatter-film
concept has developed, over four films and eighteen years, into
an ongoing meditation on women's issues. The Alien films
aren't really about the eponymous monsters; they're about Ellen
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the real alien of the series -- a
woman fighting for her life in hostile male environments. This
is Hollywood's only feminist franchise, and is of considerable
value as such.
Pregnancy, abortion, rape, motherhood, the death of a child,
her own death -- Ripley has been through it all, at least
symbolically. Two centuries after her Nestea plunge into molten
metal in Alien 3, Ripley is resurrected when scientists
clone DNA from her blood; the military extracts the alien Queen
inside her, hoping to study and train it. Business as usual:
the patriarchy always does idiotic, suicidal things in the Alien
movies.
Ripley, it turns out, still has a bit of alien DNA in her. Weaver's
freshly cloned Ripley is cynical and oddly childlike; death has
left her both jaded and liberated. She's already died once --
what more can you do to her? Weaver's performances have gotten
stronger with each sequel, and this is her most complex work
yet. The script, by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer),
endows Ripley with a dark, fatalistic wit. "She'll breed,"
Ripley shrugs, referring to the captive Queen. "You'll die."
No big thing. Slime happens.
A lot of slime happens in Alien Resurrection, directed
with baroque flair by the traditional young visionary -- this
time it's Jean-Pierre Jeunet, of Delicatessen and The
City of Lost Children. The action unfolds, as in Alien,
aboard a junky space vessel, where aliens can hide and humans
can't escape. A band of space pirates, including the waiflike
Annalee Call (Winona Ryder), board the ship occupied by Ripley
and her brood of aliens. Jeunet and Whedon deliver the alien-attack
scenes with a spin and a wink.
There are also two powerfully upsetting moments that will stay
with me for a while. One takes place in a lab full of botched
cloning experiments. The implications of what Ripley finds there
are chilling. The other comes near the end, when we meet a new
breed of alien -- a grotesque humanoid who seems to be Ripley's
twisted mirror image. If Ripley is a human with a touch of alien,
this thing is an alien with a touch of humanity, and the climax
-- an inspired quote from the end of Alien -- is both
tense and saddening.
If Alien was about rape, Aliens about motherhood,
and Alien 3 about unwanted pregnancy, what is Alien
Resurrection about? The intrusion of science and government
into women's bodies, I'd say. It imagines a techno-religious
future, ruled by a cyber-crucifix called Father (remember Mother,
the computer in Alien?) and enforced by the military.
Alien Resurrection continues the series' message that
women -- even women who aren't quite human -- must assert their
humanity in the face of inhumanity. That doesn't necessarily
mean aliens: Nothing they do is nearly as inhuman as what humans
do to each other in the name of science, God, and country. |