07 April 2020

Once more unto the Alien abyss

T'other night, I watched Alien Resurrection, which is but a woful down-draught of the promise of Ridley Scott's 1979 introduction of the "Star Beast," and easily my least favorite of the franchise, for (to start with) the following reasons:

A. Supreme Script Stupidity # 1 soldiers check the crew of the Betty for weapons, supposedly they will not allow weapons, but they let them board the Auriga with their weapons.

B. The underwater swim through the kitchen was impossible, Vriess in particular drowned;  and those making the film should have known it was impossible from the challenges to the cast in filming the sequence.

C.  Related to that, discharging those weapons underwater had to have been one super-dumb idea.

D.  Supreme Script Stupidity # 2  As Call is a machine, I just don't believe that the gunshot to her chest rendered her "unconscious."

E.  Related to that, Call being a droid, I do not believe she needed trial-and-error when spritzing breath samples in her attempt to gain access to Ripley 8.

F. No, I don't believe the "false start" by the alien hosted inside Purvis, when the latter shrugs it off and says, "I'm okay."

G.  The ridiculously miraculous pool-shot carom gunplay by whichever member of the Betty crew that is.

H. Supreme Script Stupidity # 3 The Baby getting sucked/blown out into space through a pinhole in a window

Is there anything I like about the movie?

Although it's bad Junk Science, I do rather like Ripley 8 as a character (I'll suspend my disbelief in that case.

Related to that, although the 1-7 holding lab is another of those "looking is difficult" experiences, I really like Weaver's performance there (as 8, I mean)

The Ripley 8/Call relationship is one of the highlights of the script.


Also, Ripley's explanation to Purvis. "Any questions?"



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