Alien: Resurrection
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. This article has been tagged since February 2007. |
- For the video game, see Alien: Resurrection (video game).
| Alien: Resurrection | |
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| Directed by | Jean-Pierre Jeunet |
| Produced by | Bill Badalato Gordon Carroll David Giler Walter Hill |
| Written by | Characters: Dan O'Bannon Ronald Shusett Screenplay: Joss Whedon |
| Starring | Sigourney Weaver Winona Ryder Dominique Pinon Ron Perlman Gary Dourdan Michael Wincott Brad Dourif Leland Orser Dan Hedaya J.E. Freeman Kim Flowers Raymond Cruz |
| Music by | John Frizzell |
| Cinematography | Darius Khondji |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | November 26, 1997 |
| Running time | Theatrical: 109 min. 2003 Special Edition: 116 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $70,000,000 |
| Preceded by | Alien³ |
| Followed by | Alien vs. Predator |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Alien: Resurrection (1997) is a science fiction / thriller film directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. It opened on November 26, 1997. It is the fourth in the Alien series of films.
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[edit] Plot
The events of Alien: Resurrection take place two centuries after the events of Alien³. Ellen Ripley has been cloned on the outer space military science vessel Auriga using "blood samples from 'Fiori 16', on ice" so that the United Systems Military can extract the alien queen embryo that she was impregnated with preceding her death in Alien³. After successful extraction of the queen embryo, the scientists decide to keep the Ripley clone alive for further study. They raise the alien queen to adult size and collect its eggs for further use. As a result of the cloning process, where Ripley's DNA was mixed with the alien's, she has developed several new abilities including enhanced strength and reflexes, acidic blood, and an empathic link with the aliens.
The Betty, a ship full of freelance mercenaries, arrives delivering several kidnapped humans in hypersleep. The miltary scientists use them as hosts for the alien facehuggers, raising several adult aliens for study. The mercenaries soon encounter Ripley, and their youngest member Call (Winona Ryder) recognizes her name. She attempts to kill Ripley, believing she may be used to create more aliens. Call is too late; the adult aliens have already been created and quickly escape their confinement, damaging the ship and killing most of its crew. Dr. Mason Wren, one of the ship's scientists, reveals that the Auriga's default command in an emergency situation is to return to Earth. Realizing that this will unleash the aliens on Earth, Ripley, the mercenaries, Wren, and a surviving alien host, Purvis, set out to escape on the Betty and then destroy the Auriga.
As the group makes their way through the damaged ship several of them are killed off by the aliens. Call is revealed to be an android after Wren betrays the group. Using her abilities to interface with the damaged ship's systems they set it on a collision course with Earth, hoping that the remaining aliens will be destroyed in the crash. The alien queen has also gained an ability from Ripley's DNA; she can now give birth to live offspring directly without the need for eggs and human hosts. The resulting offspring, which appears more humanoid, recognizes Ripley as its "mother" and kills the alien queen.
Ripley and the surviving mercenaries arrive at the Betty, and as they prepare to launch the human/alien hybrid attacks Ripley and Call. Ripley kills it by using her own acidic blood to burn a hole through a viewing pane, causing the creature to be sucked through the small hole and into the vacuum of space. The survivors escape in the Betty as the Auriga crashes through the atmosphere and down towards Earth.
[edit] Responses
Despite positive reviews for Sigourney Weaver's and Winona Ryder's performance, the film is considered the least successful in the series, having been lukewarmly received by critics.[1] It grossed $47.8 million at the U.S. box office and a total of $161.3 million worldwide. However, Winona Ryder won the Blockbuster Entertainment Award for her role in the film. [1]
[edit] Controversies
Screenwriter Joss Whedon was extremely unhappy with the final product. In a 2005 interview, when asked how the film differed from the script he had written, Whedon responded, "It wasn’t a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending; it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. They said the lines...mostly...but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do. There’s actually a fascinating lesson in filmmaking, because everything that they did reflects back to the script or looks like something from the script, and people assume that, if I hated it, then they’d changed the script...but it wasn’t so much that they’d changed the script; it’s that they just executed it in such a ghastly fashion as to render it almost unwatchable."[2]
There was also controversy surrounding proper credit for the alien design. H.R. Giger, the artist famous for creating the original alien design, was openly displeased that Aliens[3] did not give him a credit for this and sent letters to the studio complaining about this fact.
[edit] Alternate version
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Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. This article has been tagged since January 2007. |
In the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set, Jeunet included an alternative version of the film with alternate opening and closing scenes, references to the character Newt from Aliens and extended dialogue between Call and Ripley's clone in the chapel scene.
In the introduction on the DVD released in 2003, he claims that the additional cut was put there for fun, and that he classes the theatrical version as his director's cut.
[edit] References
- ^ Overview of Alien: Resurrection reviews. Metacritic. Retrieved on February 4, 2007.
- ^ Joss Whedon on Alien Resurrection. Bullz-eye.com. Retrieved on December 15, 2006.
- ^ Letter from James Cameron to Giger's representative.
[edit] External link
Delicatessen (with Marc Caro 1991) • The City of Lost Children (with Marc Caro, 1995) • Alien: Resurrection (1997) • Amélie (2001) • A Very Long Engagement (2004)
