Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

The first Alien (‘79) movie was directed by Ridley Scott and frightened the daylights out of everybody with a story of wicked monster with many, many razor-sharp teeth with a nasty habit of ripping out of people’s stomachs to make a grand, though messy entrance.

The only one to stand up to the alien was Sgt Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). Then in ’86, James Cameron did the unthinkable. His “Aliens” was even better than the first. The tension levels were ratcheted to unbearable levels while the introduction of the little girl, Newt, gave an emotional subtext to the proceedings. “Aliens” incidentally was aired on recently in Hindi and still has not lost its ability to scare and thrill.

Aliens 3 (’92) directed by David Fincher was a disappointment with muddled, murky screenplay that ended with Ripley leaping into a fire with an alien ripping out of her stomach on the long journey down. So then you thought that was the end of it but before you knew it Ripley and the alien are resurrected.

“Alien Resurrection” takes place 200 years after the third movie ended. While Ripley and the alien are dead, there are scientists who want to clone her to study the alien she was carrying inside of her. They obviously have not seen the earlier films. So after many trials, they finally get it right on Ripley version 8. There is also a ship, Betty, that comes to the spaceship with some frozen human beings — breeding grounds for the aliens.

So the crew of Betty made of the usual suspects including an android, a techie on a wheel chair, a space pirate in the true tradition of Han Solo, hot babe and Rasta muscle decide to chill out at the spaceship for a bit but their little break is soon wrecked by marauding aliens who still have not lost their knack of exploding out of people with a suitably satisfactory fountain of guts and gore.

The other hitch is the cloned Ripley has a bit of alien genes in her so we are not very sure how much is Ripley and how much is the alien. There is much of the stuff from the earlier movies and the surprise element is lost, but the film still makes for an entertaining experience. Winona Ryder’s character making the sign of the cross was one of the sly nudge, nudge, wink, wink jokes mentioned earlier.

There have been learned discussions of the length of Ripley’s hair in successive movies. She went from shoulder length to close crop to a shaven head in the third film. Now the cloned Ripley has shoulder length hair again — maybe to suggest going back to the beginning.

There is a whole disc of bonus features with extensive interviews with the cast and crew. French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet talks of his surprise at being offered the job. The brilliant cinematographer Darius Khondji talks of the difficulties and challenges of the shoot. There is Sigourney Weaver’s one-in-a-million basket she sinks as she walks away from hecklers and Ron Perlman’s out of character reaction. Production designer Nigel Phelps talks about how upset he was at credit going to Marc Caro.

There is also a whole section dedicated to the beautifully shot and lit underwater sequence with Winona Ryder talking about her near fatal drowning experience as a child and her absolute dread of water since. And for wannabe scriptwriters, the DVD also features the entire script.

If you don’t go to the film expecting another alien movie with fanboy fanaticism you would be pleasantly surprised.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail