Fear of Genetics Meets Cellophane and Custard

Good question!

Because of money, I guess, for starters. Also, because it's the coolest space monster ever. Because of visual stylist Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Delicatessen fame. Because of whole ship mama Sigourney Weaver. Because of genetics and the human attachment to willful mediocrity. Because we've never seen an alien underwater (where you also can't scream). Because bounty hunters watch the TV shopping network. Because of Dominique Pinon's forehead. Because aliens bleed acid, and androids bleed semen. Because alien-human hybrids have pixie noses. And, always, because of the deeper issues.

Yes, the deeper issues. Alien Resurrection isn't appreciably better than the movie after which no sequels need have been made, and necessarily worse. By itself, it's an average to good action movie starring more than the usual number of people who maybe saw the word "acting" in a book once (Sigourney Weaver's rather good, Pinon's on leave from the stage). But as always, it's the deeper issues, the pressing questions, the intriguing half-truths tussling with the universal in the dust--it's these things that lead us back. Accordingly, please find attached a primer of issues to discuss should the ride home be draped in fat and fed silence. None of them are brilliant; they're just a happy list.

Sigourney the Ur-Mother. There are times you expect Weaver to put her head to the ground to listen to the earth spirit (come to think of it, she does, once). She comes to life only to give life, via a secondary birth canal of sorts, in the form of a slit on her chest. She glares predatorily at everyone, a stern mother who has had it with you kids since she's got the biggest problem child of all, who moves rapidly from the terrible two's to higher body counts in the blink of an eye. Even the space ship feels cowed enough to be called "Father," knowing not to upstage Weaver inadvertently with silly space ship name conventions.

The Role of Humor in Action Movies. The progression is easy: take your run-of-the-mill put-down, one-liner or joke--preferably old enough to seem fresh now--and slap it into a situation where the only other people in the room are the joke-hearer and someone with acid for blood and a bad case of extraterrestrial colic. Rewording may be necessary. Example: "Who do I have to fuck around here to get off this ship?" or the old-school misogynistic refrain recontextualized "Must be a chick thing." File under sub-heading The Role of the Quotidian, such as someone chased by a fanged wacko but getting horribly frightened...by a spider web.

Visualizing the Future: The Familiar Made Strange. Jeunet (or his ordinary partner, Marc Caro) has never been a director to bore you with his images, working with whimsy and choosing the spherical or the slimy in quest of audience discomfiture. In an ideal world, this would create bountiful sci-fi by merging with the everyday fear of being alone in a creepy apartment with the feeling that someone's watching or something's awry: (Alien as Repulsion?). Jeunet's possible mis-step in this parade of the pods? Presaging that many scientists of the future would wear the tied back pony tail of aging, disgruntled hippies.

Genitalia. Penis-lipped egg pods, alien ad hoc vaginas--this could get tiresome. Please move on.

The Role of Humor in Action Movies, Part II. There is a script imperative to sequels, it seems, to burlesque or mock the story's campier elements. Comedy pulls the rug out from under horror. Pretty soon, though, you have nothing: who has all the breath to laugh and gasp simultaneously?

Genetics and the Three Me's Generation. In the future, sinister corporate hucksters will cheat us out of our lives and our very identities as "clone" replaces the hopelessly insufficient "poser" as an epithet. The streets will run with clones and genius oligarchy of the rich will prevail. Barring that, people will balk at, yet secretly desire, the ability to control serendipitous mediocrity or excellence in their offspring. Also in the future: it will somehow be profitable and useful to graft our deepest mortal enemy's genes onto human ones, so as to further the self-destruction of the human soul.

Q: What Is Frightening? A: No Longer Senorita Alien. When alien infighting occurs in the cage of pain constructed by pony-tailed hippies, all you see is a whir of cellophane and custard. When the camera slides down the back of the alien like Fred Flintstone leaving the quarry at quitting time, we can only think of Spielberg's T. Rex--a death blow to the spit-and-steel horror of the original alien beast. Which brings us to...

The End of Violence. Fat chance. In an attempt to compensate for Q&A above, Alien Resurrection dies on the way to being reborn and we have to see the placental remains: super space goop gore, custard again and a man picking and looking at a piece of his brain from his blown-out-like-JFK skull before dying. The thrill of Alien was in the mutual hunt: nothing happens, for good reason.

Winona Ryder. Did we want to see the character development of Beetle-juice's sulky protogoth grafted on to an android? "I'm disgusting," pouts a self-image-obsessed Ryder, unsuccessfully pointing at the reason for her being in this movie (there is none).

Fish Drown In Mainstream. Cf. The Rainmaker. Alien was all about space's anti-style, the work of the master sci-fi craftsman Ridley Scott--a victory. Jeunet tries valiantly--exploiting Hedaya's body hair, letting bounty hunters give foot massages, thrilling to the goofy jive of outer space--but there's little definitive indication he directed the second half of the movie.

Miscellaneous Hooey: Inherited memories, whiskey sours in cube form, Dan Hedaya as your neighborhood movie teamster, Videodroming Ripley's chest...

The sensibility that led to making the ordinary, world-running-down feel of a ship maintaining its emergency lighting and water release a key shock point of Alien--this is missing. I don't want to see a bunch of ragtag ruffians conducting a Goonies-like escape through creepy funhouse ship, or to witness the most beautiful and most horrific outer space being being Salad-Shot through a window.

O, fair alien, we hardly knew ye...