Alien Resurrection - Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The guy who gave us Amélie also brought us aliens with feelings and sexual desire. After a while, all movie franchises die, and when they do, it’s usally in a very bad way: Rambo was this close to fight with the Taliban for the freedom of Afghanistan….

The biggest virtue of the first three Alien movies was the idea that nature has no morals, even if it comes from the outer space: after the optimism of Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien explored the idea that aliens could be ruthless predators looking for living-nests for their offspring: pure survival instinct, nothing else. Jeunet killed that central tenet of the saga.

One big problem of Alien Resurrection is its abuse of gore. Gore is usually used a substitute for plots: if you don't know how to close a sequence, just show the brains of a random guy. There should be a metric regarding how many guts and brains can be shown before a movie is considered bad. Whatever the metric is, I’m sure Alien Resurrection surely surpassed it. The directors of the previous three movies were smart and creative enough to keep a right balance between horror, action, suspense, and the right amount of blood on screen.

The other problem with this movie is that it opens too many fronts that are left unexplored throughout the picture: corporate fascism; the moral dilemmas of cloning; Ripley’s ideas as a half-alien half-human; the aliens’ seemingly newly acquired rationality; outer-space piracy, among others.

In defense of Alien Resurrection, it must be said that it was one of the first movies to talk about the moral dilemmas of cloning (one more topic that is left unaddressed). The movie was released right after the announcement of the successful cloning of Dolly.

I recommend the alternate version of Alien Resurrection, which actually closes the saga (the original version has an open ending). But even then, XXX couldn’t avoid the temptation of showing his French credentials, which was totally unnecessary.

Alien3 - David Fincher

Alien3's filming process was extremely tortuous. And since its release, it has received mostly negative critiques, including David Fincher, who has said that nobody hates the movie more than himself. Fincher publicly disowned the movie immediately after its completion and refused to be involved in Fox's 2003 "Assembly Cut".

But I actually think it's the best movie of the saga: for one thing, it takes back the terrifying and omni-present characteristics of the first Alien without losing the relentlessness and beehive-like behavior of  the second installment. Alien3 is a great combination of suspense with action. The movie also shows that the character that evolves the most in the saga is the alien itself; Sigourney Weaver is always the same...

Alien3 is also the installment that takes the anti-corporatist spirit of the saga to its ultimate consequences. The anti-religion tone that some critics perceived at the time of its release must also be seen in the context of its release: after three presidential periods with a Republican presidents, the United States was getting ready for Bill Clinton.

Special effects are quite lame for today's standards but received a nomination for an Academy Award in 1992.

Aliens - James Cameron

Commando movies were very popular in the U.S. in the late 70's and throughout the 80's. Movies were the main way the U.S. dealt with the Vietnam War trauma. When you really think about it, making entertainment movies is a very weird catharsis, but I guess different peoples deal with their tragedies in different ways.

Aliens is, among other things, a metaphore about Vietnam: a group of elite soldiers with sophisticated technology enter a hostile territory thinking they will wipe out the enemy in less than 5 minutes, just to discover that their rival is infinitely superior to them.

So, according to that, and contrary to its predecesor, Aliens is an action movie, though the horror component is still there. Aliens has rightfully been praised as a 2-hours shot of action, and is actually one of the best movies of the genre. The negative side is that Aliens banalized the omnipresent and ruthless monster of the first part. In the first part, one alien killed seven people in less than 24 hours; in this part, an entire army of aliens were not able to enter a compound defended by 5 people, one of which was a little girl.

Aliens (and its behind-the-scenes) is a movie worth watching mostly for prospective movie-makers. In light of the special effects available today, modern audiences may not feel as thrilled about its action scenes, and the gore scenes, though impacting back in the day, would make it to a PG-13 movie today.

Alien - Ridley Scott

There are at least two reasons why it's worth watching Alien today, almost 35 years after its original release:

• It offers a very sand view of the future. Humankind is finally able to travel across the Universe, but social inequalities are still there: the movie is nothing else but the story of a group of miners who have to risk their lives at the orders of their employer.
• It reminds us that a good horror movie is the one where you barely see the threat. At one point in time, directors of horror movies got the idea that their job was to do fancy stuff with special effects. They're wrong, and they should watch Alien over and over until they understand why.

Alien vs. Predator - Paul W. S. Anderson

"And they use us like cattle"

-Sebastian de Rosa (Raoul Bova)

Alien vs Predator (AVP) was one of the most expected movies in the History of the sci-fi genre but it was disappointing. I mean, the movie is just a bunch of dark against dark on darkness, and scenes with humans take a lot of time. People would have liked to see the monsters fighting against each other. Alas, action scenes are actually scarce. The structural problem with the Alien and Predator movies in general is that they have to be shot with little light; otherwise, it would be obvious that the characters are just people in disguises. But then, the question arises: why are we still doing movies like this in the traditional way? Would not it be more effective to computerize everything, get rid of humans, and  have more action sequences?

Here is the trailer of DC Universe Online, a recently released video game. The game itself is really bad, but the trailer could be the basis for a good movie. And with better voices, nobody would miss human actors. 







Quite honestly, AVP could have been worse. The sequel, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem goes over the top with the gore scenes. The directors tried to use blood and guts as a substitute for action. I will not talk about it, in case you wonder...


Here is the trailer of AVP.