Alien: Resurrection

It's not a popular statement, but in my opinion the only thing that doesn't fit the whole concept from the original Alien series is the second installment, which resigns itself to one of the most important assets of the Alien universe, which is to set the whole story on the periphery of a future human society. While the first installment is set on a filthy mining ship, and the third installment is on a forgotten prison planet, and the fourth installment is on the outskirts of the galaxy on a decommissioned military ship where semi-legal experiments are being conducted, the second installment makes the mistake of introducing us to the society of that time in a more expansive way. In fact, with this franchise I've always been more intrigued with the second plan, which suggests that whatever the future of humanity turns out to be (the apparently unstoppable Weyland-Yutani hegemony of the first three movies is replaced with the presumably all-powerful United Systems Military in the fourth, which Weyland-Yutani mocks simply because it was bought by Walmart years ago), the result is always the same – any system trying to encompass such a monumental space for its activities will logically scatter its forces to such an extent that giant, forgotten, crumbling peripheries and their attached social classes will emerge. Visits to these bleak places have always been more interesting to me than the actual fight with the aliens, so I was pleased to see that the fourth installment rides in this style as well. _____ Alien: Resurrection is an interesting example of having a very American screenwriter (Joss Whedon) team up with a very European director (Jeunet), offering a very shaky combination from which no collaboration could emerge, only a winner. Thankfully, it was Jeunet, who was surprisingly given quite a lot of creative freedom (as opposed to Fox's gestapo-like oversight of the making of the third installment), which has made him pretty happy with the film and Whedon unable to stand it. This is despite the fact that his script has been largely kept intact, including the dialogue. But he said it was all acted differently than it should have been, with different intonation than he wanted, and the camera did different things than he imagined, not to mention the music. As an argument about the dominance of a director's distinctive visual sensibility over the overall cinematic vision, even in such an established brand, it says plenty. Unfortunately, Whedon's hand is still the weakest part of the entire film, which unfortunately drops the chain after Ripley actively inserts herself into the story and starts to macho and overact unbearably, though the idea that she actually represents that Alien fan here, who knows the previous installments and mocks how everyone around her is repeating the same mistakes, isn't entirely a bad one. _____ I'd like someone to explain to me why girls in the 90s had posters of DiCaprio, Harnett, and Damon plastered in their bedrooms instead of posters of Michael Wincott. Whenever this god appears in the shot, I wet my seat, no matter the gender. (04/08/2020) (less) (more)