Twenty-five years ago, 20th Century Fox released the fourth Alien film, and with it brought its once-lucrative franchise to a screeching halt. Yet, despite the fact that Alien Resurrection is maybe the worst of the four original Alien films, it’s probably the one I’ve seen the most times. I keep coming back to it, over and over, as a fascinating mismatch between writer and director that, on paper, should have been legitimately amazing. I keep wanting to understand it. Every time, I fail. But I still come away fascinated by the sheer fact of its existence.
Resurrection features the fourth (and to date final) appearance of Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, who we originally met as a humble space trucker in the first Alien, before she became one of the galaxy’s sole living experts on the terrifying alien race known colloquially as xenomorphs. In the third Alien film, the character was killed off in a moment of heroic self-sacrifice, but the studio decided they wanted to bring the character back, and writer Joss Whedon delivered a script that catapulted Ripley even further into the future, replicated as a clone by a military operation hoping to create their own xenomorphs for fun and profit.
Jean-Pierre Jeunet was then hired to direct Whedon’s script, and from the cheap seats it still seems like a smart team-up. While his English might have been shaky at the time, Jeunet at that point in his career was a hot foreign director whose previous films, Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, were critically acclaimed for their singular visual appeal. Jeunet’s work in particular showcased a true talent for grotesquerie — arguably should be the one official requirement for any director taking on an Alien movie, a series built on exploring the outer limits of body horror.
Whedon, at that point in the 1990s, was in his Hollywood script doctor phase, which included stints working on the screenplays for films as disparate as Waterworld, Toy Story, and The Quick and the Dead. His reputation was based on a sharp knack for characters and dialogue that most notably led to him writing many of the most memorable lines for Speed (though the Writers’ Guild arbitration ultimately led to him not getting credited for the work.)
Take a script filled with great dialogue and pair it with a director with just the right aesthetic for this franchise, and it feels like it should be a slam dunk. But in this case, it led to a complete trainwreck. Saying Resurrection is worse than Alien 3 may not sit well with some people, but David Fincher’s incredibly bleak take on the franchise, while certainly not a fun movie, was arguably a great deal more coherent thematically. To watch Resurrection, meanwhile, feels like listening to two divorced parents scream at each other about what to order for dinner.
It probably doesn’t help that Jeunet didn’t have much respect for Whedon’s script from the beginning. “The script is not so good… it’s a little bit stupid!” he told The Independent in a recent interview, noting with glee that he made many changes before going into production: “Too bad, Joss Whedon!”
At least one element of the film remains so quintessentially Whedon it’s officially a trope: Looking at his work from this time period reveals how deeply obsessed he was with telling stories about ragtag crews of space pirates. Resurrection is the first produced instance of him incorporating said ragtag crew into a film, but it would be followed by two animated features — Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Titan A.E. — before he finally got the clout he needed to make the short-lived but long-living Firefly for Fox.
While the space pirates remain space pirate-y, so much of their dialogue feels clunky and off. Whedon, for his part, blamed Jeunet for making changes and failing to make sure the actors delivered the lines correctly. “I listened to half the dialogue in Alien 4, and I’m like, ‘That’s idiotic,’ because of the way it was said. And nobody knows that. Nobody ever gets that,” he told The AV Club in 2001.
Whedon might not be wrong about that — Winona Ryder, as space pirate/secret android Call, probably suffers the most with lines of dialogue she simply has no idea how to say. And was it Jeunet and his team who decided to add completely inexplicable touches, like freshly cloned Ripley’s freshly painted bronze manicure? Not to mention the strangely sexist undercurrent, whether it be repeated talk about characters fucking Call in ways that don’t sound very consensual or this actual line, said out loud by an adult character in the year 1997: “Must be a chick thing.”
Whoever was ultimately responsible for these issues doesn’t really matter — the film remains messy. But it’s a fascinating mess that’s quite fun to watch at points, with some great scenes in the mix. Ripley’s electric basketball confrontation with the space pirates comes immediately to mind, as well as countless touches of invention, like the camera zooming down the throat of poor doomed Purvis (Leland Orser) to reveal the hatching baby alien within, or the still-thrilling underwater chase sequence featuring full-body CGI aliens swimming gracefully towards their prey.
And while some cast members struggle, others thrive. Weaver really gives the role her all, playing this new version of Ripley as far more alien than human, and watching her transform her entire presence to capture this new dimension is a bracing reminder of just how damn talented an actress she remains. It’s not just the edge of glee she finds in lines like “I’m the monster’s mother” — they don’t give out Oscars for things like fully committing to the idea that you’re horrified, grief-stricken, and also a little turned on by your part-xenomorph-part-human grandchild that just burst out of an alien queen. But maybe they should?
On perhaps the less nuanced side of things, whatever Dan Hedaya is doing in this movie, the movie is lesser for him not getting to do more of it. His ample body hair springing out from beneath his military-issue tank top! His oh-so-sincere salute after tossing a live grenade into an escape pod filled with soldiers and one (1) xenomorph! And Brad Dourif spends the entire film pushing the limits of his already considerable creepy charms; by the time he’s cocooned in the alien queen’s den, bearing witness to the birth of Ripley’s part-alien-part-human grandchild, he almost feels like the only sane one left among us — because he has fully surrendered to the madness.
Both Whedon and Jeunet would go on to do their very best work following Resurrection: Production on the film wrapped in February 1997, and a month later Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on The WB. The cult supernatural drama quickly became a cultural force that led to Whedon’s anointment as a nerd king, paving the way for decades of future success (followed by a big speed bump or two). Jeunet, meanwhile, retreated to France to make what is now his most acclaimed film to date, the charming romance Amélie, which earned five Oscar nominations, including one for Best Foreign Language Film.
No careers, really, were ruined by Resurrection — in fact, many cast members were also on the ascent, from future C.S.I. star Gary Dourdan to future Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul star Raymond Cruz to future Hellboy Ron Perlman. Ryder’s career did dip a little in prestige afterwards, but she was still leading films like 1999’s Girl, Interrupted and 2000’s Autumn in New York up until her notorious 2001 arrest for shoplifting. And Weaver remains Weaver to this day — which is to say, an icon.
Watching a movie like Alien: Resurrection makes me want to reject the entire concept of the auteur system, because it does shine as an example of how filmmaking is ultimately a collaborative art — the emphasis being on the word “collaborative.” Because when there’s no actual collaboration, you get a movie like this.
There’s no one person to blame for its flaws, and no one person to celebrate for its strengths. Perhaps that’s why the only element of the film tarnished by Resurrection’s legacy is the Alien franchise itself; Ridley Scott’s prequel films have yet to regain the heights hit by his original masterpiece and James Cameron’s follow-up. An upcoming Noah Hawley series for FX is supposed to start filming in 2023, and it could recapture the original magic of horror in space.
But before then, I’ll probably end up rewatching Resurrection yet again, unable to stop staring into the abyss it represents. Must be a chick thing.