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Alien: Resurrection [Region 2] | ![Alien: Resurrection [Region 2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41XZ9FYRFDL._SL500_.jpg)
| Director: Jean-pierre Jeunet
Actors: Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan
Category: DVD
This item is no longer available
Rating:  345 reviews
Sales Rank: 264488
Format: Anamorphic, Full Screen, Ntsc
Languages: French (Unknown), English (Unknown), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Greek (Subtitled), Dutch (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 2
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 109 Minutes
EAN: 3344420325457
ASIN: B00004VXRY
Theatrical Release Date: November 26, 1997
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Amazon.com
Perhaps these films are like the Star Trek movies: The even-numbered episodes are the best ones. Certainly this film (directed by French stylist Jean-Pierre Jeunet) is an improvement over Alien 3, with a script that breathes exciting new life into the franchise. This chapter is set even further in the future, where scientists on a space colony have cloned both the alien and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who died in Alien 3; in doing so, however, they've mixed alien DNA with Ripley's human chromosomes, which gives Ripley surprising power (and a bad attitude). A band of smugglers comes aboard only to discover the new race of aliens--and when the multi-mouthed melonheads get loose, no place is safe. But, on the plus side, they have Ripley as a guide to help them get out. Winona Ryder is on hand as the smugglers' most unlikely crew member (with a secret of her own), but this one is Sigourney's all the way. --Marshall Fine
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| Customer Reviews: Read 340 more reviews...
 Strange and provocative vision of a post-human future June 24, 2009
Nathan Andersen (Florida)
What people forget when they respond to this film is that Alien 3 shut down the series, very deliberately and very conclusively. Not only did Ripley die, but the driving concerns of the series that were set up in the first film had been addressed. So there was nowhere to go but in a radically new direction, and that's what Jean-Pierre Jeunet did. While the first films used the aliens and the technological context in which they appeared to address the question what makes us specifically human, this new contribution to the series is more interested in the question of a possible "post-human" future.
In Alien the enemy was not really the monster. The monster's unique method of reproduction merely served to highlight the "human condition": that we are vulnerable, that our bodies are ill-equipped for survival except in the most congenial of circumstances, that they are subject to violation by organic and inorganic forces outside of us. The idea of being "violated" through the mouth and "impregnated" by a monster is horrible, but that possibility serves to highlight our dependency upon science and technology in order to stay alive (even her on Earth), and our increasing "alienation" through technology from the natural world and from the evolutionary struggle for survival. Ash (the robot scientist) and Mother (the artificially intelligent computer that kept them alive and gave instructions) and the Company (that treats human life as expendible) were the real enemies of Alien. Ripley was a hero because she didn't think scientific fact and material gain trump human empathy (her concern for a cat) and human interests.
Aliens takes the same ideas and the same basic storyline and expands it: more military, more weapons, a girl and a sensitive soldier instead of a cat, but ends on a familiar note. Ripley ejects the threat out of the airlock and is able to escape with her body and her principles intact. This relatively optimistic resolution of both the first and the second film is what Fincher's third film rejected, by impregnating Ripley and killing off the girl and the boyfriend during the opening credits. This time the issue is raised onto a theological plane and the question is whether we can find meaning in a universe where not only are their alien forces beyond our control that can destroy us but that, as a general rule even if there are exceptions, we humans either can't seem to help ourselves or don't much care as we harm others for our own gain. Ripley seems to find meaning in her final act of destroying the alien and herself, thus saving humanity from the careless greed that would use such a monster without regard to the human consequences. With that act, while not all questions the series raises are completely resolved, the series seems to reach a logical end, having adressed gender, reproduction, humanity, science, technology, war, all in the context of defining the human over and against those alien forces that threaten constantly to overwhelm humanity.
With Alien Resurrection, the series starts again, but in a new direction. Sigourney Weaver is no longer playing Ripley, but an Alien/Human cloned hybrid who somehow remembers something of her former incarnation but no longer possesses the same kind of horror of the alien. In fact what horrifies her most are images of her own creation, visions of the technological process that brought her into being. Whereas the first three films aimed for a certain kind of realism, Alien Resurrection verges on the surrealistic nightmare landscape of Jeunet's The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen. What we see may seem silly or strange or skewed, but I think that is because we are intended to get a skewed, or post-human, vision of the human attempt to control the monster, that would seem strange and absurd through the eyes of the no-longer quite human Ripley and the android Call (Winona Rider).
Admittedly, this is a brief and undeveloped defense of the film - and in this brief form it is probably guilty of over-intellectualizing the films, and "forgetting" that the primary appeal of these films is not "intellectual" but visceral -- but I hope it suggests another perspective: that rather than think Alien Resurrection is a failure because it doesn't live up to the terms of the series as Ridley Scott set them up, we should consider the possibility that a "resurrection" of the series may require a reworking of its basic assumptions and style. I admit to being heavily influenced in my opinions about this film by Stephen Mulhall's excellent little book On Film - while I disagree with some details of his account, I think his general approach to thinking about the Alien series as a whole is quite intelligent and compelling.)
Nearly Below Average June 3, 2009
Untitled (nowhere)
Sequels can kill a franchise, put it on life-support, and history has shown so. It has happened to Batman (though that one got a revival with the Dark Knight), Star Wars, Star Trek, and it just might happen to Saw (with nine movies coming, I'm not quite sure if the movie can save it's ingeniuty for nine films). Alien could have fallen into that trap, and this movie shows that, if the Alien would have gone on much longer, there's no telling where the series would have gone.
As with some movies that get a C, the plot is what makes the grade. To me, the real Ellen Ripley is dead, and as far as I'm concered, the story of her, the protagonist, came to a conclusion with the last film. The clone is just a clone of Ripley, and not the character Like one other reviewer said, the clone just makes it feel like a spin-off of a series, despite being. Spin-offs aren't always bad, though, but that's not entirely the case with this. IT just makes it hard to care about the character, and the plot itself is just, more or a less, rehashes the plot of the other movies. Basically, the Alien has broken out, yet again.
It doesn't help that the characters, besides Ripley, boring as heck. Throughout the whole film, I did not seem to care one bit about any of the characters, not even Ripley. Ripley wasn't boring, but that doesn't mean I cared for her. And I find the ending extremely cheesy as well, and it doesn't seem like a very fitting conclusion for the Ripley clone. IT's the real Ripley that was in space for so long, so it would mean a lot more for the people who stuck by her if she was, y-know the character that went through the first three movies.
Still though, it has it's saving graces from getting that insulting D (not good considering the art of filmmaking is a bit more complex than music). Aside from the staples (decent acting, they obviously worked hard on it, etc), the Alien in this movie is great. It's perhaps the first movie where you see the Alien in the screen like you do a human character, and the Alien is designed great, too. Very slimy like it should be.The human alien is a cool twist, it's a totally intiguing beast, and maybe the best hybird there is (though The Predalien certainly gives it some competition). There are some brilliant scenes, as this movie, as described by one of the editorial reviewers, is mostly a mess with lot's of brilliant scenes. The mess as a whole isn't terrible, but it's still a mess.
Alien Resurrection is not the worst movie I've ever seen, and it also helps that this is an Alien Movie. But Alien Resurrection is the worst in the series, maybe even slightly overrated, but thankfully, there are no more Alien movies to further screw up the great series. Reccomended only for Alien fans.
C-
 Like resurrecting a man who died peacefully, only to then stab him to death with a serrated knife May 14, 2009
Deirdre T. Allen
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Resurrection? Why, what's the point?, what's the logic? what's the reason?, what's the meaning? Why?
These are questions that should have been asked before Fox greenlighted Joss Whedon's piece of work, "Alien Resurrection". This film is a failure on so many levels it's almost unbelievable.
After the troubled production (and obnoxious, studio-meddling) of Alien 3, you would think that someone would just have enough brains to leave it be. Just let it end on a relatively good film (who's only flaw was the studio's editing after Fincher's walkout). But no, they just couldn't leave it alone, the resurrection of this franchise has absolutely no logic behind it. How could this film possibly succeed? Someone should have said.
Let me begin my walkthrough of this horrible injustice. The beginning problem was Joss Whedon's script. Who on earth said "Hey! let's have the buffy the vampire guy write our new Alien movie!", And then the next big question is: Who agreed to it? The funny thing about it is that Joss has apparently escaped all retribution for this movie by stating that they filmed his perfectly good script wrong. But this argument doesn't hold up when you know the contents of the actual script, in fact, the resulting film did the original script justice (maybe even improvement).
The film starts off with no setting, and no backround. Where are we now? Why is this ship here? Who are these people? What is the universe's current conidition? Are questions that are never fully or satisfactorily answered. In fact the film is so restricted by it's limited scope that it doesn't even seem to know the answers to these questions. It just makes a large amount of excuses to get both weapons and aliens into the picture, and let me tell you their excuses involve, cloning, evil governments and pirates or "mercenaries" or whatever they called them (they seemed like pirates to me). Where these people came from, and why are they pirates are questions that no attempt was ever made to answer.
The biggest of the script's issues are the mind-numbingly wide plot holes that cause the entire film's premise to crumble. The excuses used to drag our battle-wearly Ripley out from the grave is so clearly ridiculous they really can't fool even the most unsrutinizing audience.
The foolishly ignorant use of science is used repeteadly throughout the film, most evident in the arrival of the "Newborn" (highly original name, aint it). Apparently, (SPOILERS) Since a group of scientists removed an Alien queen out of a cloned Ripley (not like that even makes sense to begin with), the queen apparently takes on human traits, such as a human reproductive system, resulting in the birth of an alien-human hybrid. The hybrid kills the queen and then identifies with Ripley as her mother (which also, doesn't make any sense). The original Whedon-design of the newborn was so ridiculous that it had to be redesigned into a better (but still awful) combination which is somewhere between the hunchback of notre-dame and casper the friendly ghost. (NOTE: All this info is thrown at you within a 4 to 5 minute period towards the end of the movie).
(SPOILERS END)
So at about this point I was asking, why? what kind of plot device is this. Randomly thrown in, it doesn't help or move the story along just simply makes it more inconceivable than it was to begin with.
So aside from Whedon's completely non-plausible script, the entire air of the story itself was a major problem. It successfully rips all terror and dark intensity from itself, only to replace it with what can best be described as swashbuckling campiness. Scenes with humorous intent were thrown here and there with no particular meaning, although the ending result was not humorous at all. There is no substance, not even one original piece worth noting, the entire film reeks of the staleness of it's own concept.
None of the acting was really worth mentioning, almost all of the performances felt weak and contrived, none of the characters had any depth or soul to them. Even Ripley has been leached of all her relatability, replaced with weird alien-hybrid version of herself that really leaves no character relatibilty in the film at all, they all just seem like disconnected people that we just don't know or care about.
As I wrap up here, I will say this, if you are dying for some alien action, this will not satisfy you no matter HOW desperate you are. In fact you would be better off watching AVP, which, regardless of how weak a film it was, was WAY better than this crap.
3/10 stars
Looking for a replacement May 14, 2009
K. Sawyer
Im looking for a dvd to replace my Alien resurrection disc from the quadrology wich came defective and i need to know if anyone can help by telling me if this Two disc collectors edition set has the same two versions of the film as the quadrology has!....PLEASE HELP!!!!
Less serious and more hokey this time around May 11, 2009
R. Pepper (Los Angeles)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm glad not everyone listens to the Amazon reviewers like Marshall Fine's recap of how the best Alien films are the even numbered ones. Anyone who thinks this is the best shouldn't be writing a review. I on the other hand enjoy the odd numbered films because it focused less on action and more on characters. Don't get me wrong, I love Aliens as much as any other fan and the mother/daughter relationship between Ripley and Newt was beautiful. But let's face it, Aliens directed by James Cameron was more about the action and the aliens, but it still had a great story unlike AR. And after the troubled production of Alien 3, it's obvious that they were trying to make Aliens 2 with Resurrection. With Alien and Alien 3, they focused on one sole alien but even more on the characters in the film, and how they interacted with each other and the dilemma they were facing. Alien 3 went even further with its religious theme and an awesome soundtrack. As I wrote in my Alien 3 review, the Ripley character was much more layered and interesting because there had been so much disappointment and turmoil in her life at that point. Plus finding out the truth that an Alien had been impregnated in her forced her to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save mankind, her own life. Alien Resurrection is watchable for mindless entertainment but don't expect anything that packs an emotional punch or that will leave a lasting impression. It gets more silly here and the characters are nothing great like in the previous films. It's 200 years later and Ripley is a caricature of her former self, now half human, half alien after being cloned from some of her DNA mixed with alien DNA. She even makes love with an Alien Queen and produces a new form of alien. Winona Ryder who has always irritated me with her acting does not enhance the film any as an android. Some high-tech scientists are now trying to control the Aliens and their behavioral patterns, and are using human prisoners as hosts to breed more Aliens. The aliens escape of course and wreak havoc on the spaceship as a group of smugglers try to fight their way out with Ripley leading the way. It's hard to take anything in this film seriously and it leaves something to be desired like a better script for one. Only the most devout Alien fan will want this in their collection. It's worth seeing for Sigourney Weaver but nothing else really matters. Stick with the first 3 as a trilogy.
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