One thing I did enjoy was the whiskey-in-a-cube that Dan Hedaya opened. Neat idea, that.
Yeah, and if the vacuum was powerful enough to cuisinart a big boney tough alien through the window, it certainly would have pulled the two women away from whatever they were holding onto.
I did see a bit of the cloning chamber sequence, but didn’t realize that the lump of flesh was another Ripley clone. I thought they were all just various examples of cloning gone south. I guess that’s why the heroine was Ripley 8.
I completely disavow 3 and 4 of the Aleins series. I’d very much prefer the Dark Horse version of things. I watch Aliens over and over again, it’s just good stuff. At my old job in Vermont a coworker and I would quote that movie when things went horribly awry:
“What the fuck are we gonna do now, man? What the fuck are we gonna do? We’re in some pretty deep shit now, man!!”
And other fun filled quotes besides that.
I do have a favorite line from Aliens: Resurrection. When the survivors hop into that rust bucket to fly away from the station and Ripley is piloting it:
“You can fly this?”
“Are you kidding? This piece of shit is older that I am.”
Of course, how on earth Ripley’s piloting knowledge got genetically transferred is beyond me, but hey, it’s fiction, if I wanted reality I’d watch the news.
Yes, I am going to try and defend it. Oh, I mean, I would, if anything was said here that requires a defence.
“This movie sucked balls because it was stupid and the monster looked like shit(why? because it was dumb and stupid and shitty-looking and not un-ridiculous) and because, um, it’s shit, and it sucks, and uhhhh…it had some plot holes, but some of it was cool, but there was some scientific inaccuracy.”
I enjoyed the film, actually. I’ll try to give a less negative summary:
Alien: Ressurection had Winona Ryder running around being angsty, and there were, um, aliens? Oh, yeah, and Ron Perelman ran around butched out and talking like Tom Waits. Sigourney Weaver ran around even butcher than him.
Plot? Well, see, the evil millitary-industrial complex still has their hearts set on using the aliens for millitary-industrial applications, and they’re real real sure that they can control the motherfuckers this time, no problem. Only the aliens were wiped out, see? So they had to back-breed them from a small sample of alien DNA that had combined with the human DNA of Ripley way back in another picture. In doing so, they managed to create a new Ripley who still kind of remembers being the old Ripley, though they don’t really explain why.
Suprisingly, something goes terribly wrong.
The aliens escape and start moidelizing people in a messy fashion. This is not as tense as it was in Aliens, but there just happens to be a motley crew of swarthy rogues on this big millitary space station, because they were there to deliver what they swear they didn’t know was a bunch of live humans to be used as xenochow. Winona Ryder turns out to be one of those milky-blooded androids, and she’s bent on saving the human race. She’s my hero, and yours, too. So, all these rogues and the robot and the Ripley clone run and shoot and finally get off of the ship.
Suprisingly, there turns out to be one more alien to deal with.
I skipped some stuff about the hybrid alien with a womb that gives birth to an alien with human skin, which is most unsightly. Well, that guy shows up at the last minute, and they end up having to use computer effects to get him sucked out into space through a tiny hole in the side of the ship, which was, again, most unsightly.
Anyway, that’s not the point. This isn’t one of those plot movies. The characters were fun and the dialogue sparkles frequently throughout, not suprising given that Joss Whedon had a hand in it. There was just a little two much pasty-white alien hybrid and not nearly enough Winona Ryder, but other than that it was a fun movie. Go on, rent it.
I’m glad to see someone appreciate Bava’s influence. PoV suffered from a low budget and bad fx, but it still had a lot going for it. I hope more of his work comes out on DVD.
Am I the only one on the planet who didn’t flat out hate the Alien/human hybrid? Yes, I think the idea is stupid and I hate every single other aspect of the movie, but I didn’t think the thing really looked that bad. Kinda creepy.
The part where he gets sucked out the crack in the window is one of the few parts of the movie I actually like.
No, it was dumb because it violated the First Rule of Monster Movies: NEVER change the monster in the middle of the movie.
Beyond that… the birthing scene was ludicrous. They spent oodles of money on detailed costumes, sets, props, special effects… but when it comes down to the “womb”, they pretty much built a little cauldron and put some cloth flaps on top. The eggs from the original Alien were more complicated and believable.
The thing looked like the hunchback of Notre Dame, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why it was scary. It didn’t act scary… the other xenomorphs were frightening because they were stealthy, quiet, and cliambered through the ceiling and floor ducts. They managed to creep all over the place. The Hybrid? It was a hulking brute with all the finesse of a boulder… yet somehow it managed to outmaneuver the heroes? The scene where it “whacked” the xeno-mother - and the queen’s face broke in a near-perfectly-straight line - belied the cheap construction of the costumes and animatronics, the “brain-bite” on the strung-up scientist made me think of ambling ghouls moaning “Bra-a-a-a-ains”, and the “Hybrid loves Ripley” thing was a gimmick that they already used in Alien 3 (actually, the “alien that behaves different from the others” was also used in 3).
Which leads me to my next criticism: Namely, that this movie tried to be the previous three all at the same time. It had the unnecessarily gigantic and nearly-deserted ship from the first film, the attempt at gun-totin’ action, colorful Hudson-like characters, and badassery from the second film, and the dilapidated (for no reason), depressed, can’t-trust-anyone decor of the third film. Not a SINGLE thing about it was original (except, of course, the underwater-ladder scene).
Another criticism: TERRIBLE writing. Suddenly, EVERYONE in the universe is a foul-mouthed, tough-talkin’, street-smart, bitter, cynical, sarcastic, violent thug? “Who do I have to FUCK (ooh, look, audience, I said ‘fuck’) to get off this boat?” TERRIBLE line! Another that stood out… 'round the middle of the film, Ron Pearlman’s character walks up to Ripley and says, “Hey, Ripley… I heard that you’ve seen these things before…” NO YOU DIDN’T!!! NOTHING IN THE MOVIE UP TO THAT POINT THAT THE CHARACTER HAD SEEN HAD INDICATED ANYTHING OF THE SORT!!
A shoddy, poorly-constructed script.
The aliens themselves were poorly understood by the director, writer, and FX guys. If they didn’t want to use the xenomorph aliens that we’d seen from the first three films, why the flying fuck did they change 'em? For instance… the scene where Ripley falls down a shaft and lands on a pile of the “secreted resin” that the aliens coat their surroundings in. We had already seen from the second (and first, if you examine the deleted scenes) film that the stuff is inert… it’s kind of a plastic-y substance that sticks to walls. But, suddenly, the alien nest is ALIVE! Ooh, it PULSATES and MOVES!! Isn’t that CREEPY!!! A MOVING FLOOR!!! Wet your pants!!!
The director shoulda just made a Starcraft film if he wanted to make a movie about the Zerg.