TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 4: ALIEN RESURRECTION (1997)

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

It's two hundred years later and you awaken in a weird membrane-like thing to discover that you've been resurrected for the purpose of learning about ALIEN RESURRECTION's tonal clash of writer and director, the script's baked-in misogyny, and the odd direction it takes with Ripley's character.Content warning: body horror; death; ableism; misogyny; sexual imagery; spousal abuse; workplace abuse. Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remixFull references for this episode available in Zotero at https://www.zotero.org/groups/5642177/take_one/collections/7PGFQPYY

Get away from her, you bitch away from her, you bitch! Hello, and welcome back to the Xenopod, a podcast where we're watching all the alien franchise films in order, contextualizing them, and critiquing them. Today, we're up to the end of the Ripley quadrilogy with Alien Resurrection. I'm Simon Bowie. Joining me is my co-host, Jim Ross. Hi, Jim. hello how are you doing uh good in general i don't think the watching of alien resurrection is contributing

to my good mood but we'll get into that i said at the end of the last recording when we recorded alien free i said i was looking forward to alien resurrection because i remember it being quite fun like it jumps along it's got a fun french art house director and i think i might have been wrong i think i might have just been playing wrong to look forward to it to have hope to to to drew I think fortunately, I think I, um, I tweeted opacely about this after I rewatch it for this podcast and, you know, I, I have turned around on films before, you know, I changed my mind, I've grown to dislike films that I kind of liked when I was younger and I've turned around it, like the Big Lobowski is one

I can think of where I hated it the first time I watched it and I know, I love it, but there's something gratifying about thinking a film was fucking terrible and then coming back to it decades later and say, you know what, Jim, you were right. You were right. There we go. There we go. Yeah.

No, you know, we'll get into it in more detail. It's not without merit, right? But it's not good. It's definitely the weakest of the films we've covered so far on the pod. I think so, I think so. But yeah, we'll start with contextualizing Alien Resurrection a little bit. So Alien Resurrection, the fourth film in the Ripley Quadriology, comes five years after Alien Free

in 1992. This comes out in 1997. It came out in France on 12 November 1997. It came out in the US on 26th November 1997. Budget of $70 million. Box office, it made $161.4 million. Not numbers to sneeze at, but not great compared to other films that came out in 1997. Perhaps most notably, one month

well, a couple of weeks after this, actually, Titanic, James Cameron's masterpiece comes out, which I think is interesting considering how much this film is in dialogue with James Cameron's aliens. Earlier in 1997, we'd had The Lost World, Jurassic Park, Men in Black was a big summer blockbuster, Air Force One came out, so November 1997 we have Starship Troopers, we have a re-release of the Little Mermaid. the more that changes What a month The Rainmaker Francis Ford Coppola

Flubber Flubber came out the same day as Alien Resurrection Now there's a good debate for this to this pod What's better Flubber or Alien Resurrection I think Alien Resurrection

Might actually still sneak it To be perfectly honest I think in 1997 I was more interested in Flubber Oh and Goodberger came out in 1997 The Keenan and Cal movie Man I just built a box office mojo

This was a bit of a rough year actually Batman Robin came out. Yeah, I was thinking that, looking through these films. Like, I mean, there's a few LA Confidential came out. There's a few standouts, I mean, particularly Titanic. That's not out yet when Alien Resurrection comes out, but that's going to be the big, you know,

dominating force at the Oscars the next year. Oh, there we go, we have a go, boogie nights, the 78th highest grossing film of the year. There you go. So, yeah, not a particularly strong year. I don't think. But yes, Alien Resurrection came out in November of the year. So I want you to ask, what's your first experience of Alien Resurrection?

So I'm pretty sure, so this one, so I've seen this a few times, and I think quite a few to, I think most of them. So we've mentioned the DVD box set that came out. Yeah. And I definitely saw it as part of that when I kind of watched all that. But I'd definitely seen it several times before then. I'd seen it on Terrestrial television in the UK, certainly. and I'm fairly certain that around about the time this would have come out on home media. This was in the age when, you know, I was pretty young.

I mean, when this came out on home media, I would have been probably 11 years old, 12 years old, something like that. And I mean, this is in the days when Blockbuster was still a thing, right? So I'm fairly certain my first experience of this was probably watching it on VHS with my mum as part of a Blockbuster rental. but if not, I have also seen it on terrestrial TV a number of times so it was a very, you know, it was very much a pre-digital experience my first coming across of Alien Resurrection. I also wouldn't bet because of when it came out and that being the first experience.

I actually reckon this was probably the first one of these films I actually saw, to be honest. Oh, wow. You know, I really suspect that I saw Alien Resurrection. I certainly saw it before Alien and Alien 3. There is the possibility I saw aliens on television, but I don't think I did. I think this might actually have been the first one I saw.

yeah i think for me it was just the uh alien quadrology box that i think i was just working my way through that as a teenager i remember this one a lot more vividly than i do alien three so it's possible i saw this one before alien three i'll maybe have seen it more often yeah i've definitely seen it more often than certainly alien three and as i say i think that i think that's done to seeing it on terrestrial tv quite a few times as i was growing up i think it's just easier to watch as well this is a kind of mindless blockbuster in a way that alien is a bit of challenging. No, I'd agree with that for better

and for worse. Exactly. As we'll get into, I think this has a kind of teenage mentality that I might have found appealing as a teenage boy. So in terms of production, 20th Century Fox, kind of immediately wanted another alien film.

I don't think Sigoni Weaver was too happy with that. She wasn't particularly on board of Alien 3. as we discussed last month but almost straight out the gate 20th Century Fox hired Joss Whedon to write the film script

Whedon was a kind of up-and-coming filmmaker at the time he had written for Roseanne which sounds quite unfortunate now yes we're saying to know that he'd done uncredited punch-ups on speed, water world and twister he'd worked on an early draft of X-Men

Yeah, he came to this film sort of from those. He was kind of up-and-coming, there was some buzz around his name in Hollywood. I think it would be next year. No, he must have written Toy Story before this, which got him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. So Josh Whedon, up-and-coming young screenwriter, who's very trendy. Sigourney Weaver was on board with Ripley's Treatment. She enjoyed how he treated Ripley.

which we can talk about as we get into it. I'm going to have to mention it somewhere, so I'll mention it now. Jos Whedon is a controversial figure. I recommend Tansy Gardham's recent episode of Going Rogue, the whole season, really. She did an episode or a season of Going Rogue on the 2008 Writer Strike, but in particular the last episode on Weidon's Doctor Horrible sing-along blog offers a concise summary of Weidon's behaviour.

but in short Kai Cole, Weidens' ex-wife published a letter in 2017 discussing Weidens' numerous infidelities his gaslighting letter to being diagnosed with complex PTSD following this a number of actors including Amber Benson, Michelle Tractonberg

Chris McArpenter and Ray Fisher have openly discussed Whedon's abusive on-set behaviour particularly towards women Yeah, I think most people would probably be aware of a lot of the stuff that came out with his overseen the Justice League reshoot which was a bit of a mess of a film anyway

but also turns out who basically is just a dreadful human being really. It sounds particularly when he gets into directorial stuff and it sounds like he's something of a tyrant. Yeah which is ironic because I've always kind of, in a lot of cases

quite liked Whedon's writing, right? I don't think this is one of those examples, we'll get into that, right? You know, but he has written things which I think are quite strong but I have never particularly rated him as a director which is what makes it interesting that he's basically overseen

these massive superhero team-up films and I see kind of like why he's ended up that way but he's always been a much better writer than he is director for me which makes his criticisms of this film particularly ironic and arrogant in my opinion I'm sure we'll get into some of that but yes he's

well this is the point I was leading up to but I think is that this is a film of two creative forces. So on one side, there is Josh Whedon. On the other side, there is the director. So they looked at a number of directors for Josh Whedon's screenplay. Their first choice was Danny Boyle, who had just directed train spotting and was kind of a big name. So they met Danny Boyle to discuss the film.

He was not interested in pursuing the project. I couldn't find any more details on that. Peter Jackson was also approached. he said he couldn't get excited about an alien film they approached Brian Singer who was just coming off the usual suspects in 1995 Brian Singer is also a controversial figure and they eventually settled on Jean-Pierre Gine

who is a French director who the film's producers said had a unique visual style he had just finished the script to Amalie hadn't filmed it yet but he was coming off delicatessen which I think was his first film and City of Lost Children and he has this kind of

wacky, offbeat style, a lot of close-ups, fish-eye lenses, Dutch angles is an interesting director. I quite rate Jean-Pier-Geney. But he accepted, he required an interpreter he didn't speak much English when filming began.

So I'll start to run through it. I think what's most striking about Ween's script up front is how much it borrows from William Gibson's script for Alien 3, which we discussed last month, the kind of idea of this remote space station where they're doing experiments on the alien, the sense that the alien DNA has somehow affected Ripley and created this alien human hybrid. A lot of these elements from Gibson's script come into Weeden's script.

And I think Roscavenny, our old friend Roscaveney, in from Alien to the Matrix, wasn't sure if Whedon had read Gibson's screenplay, but the similarities are just too coincidental for him not to really. Yeah, there's a lot of elements that there's a lot of, you know, that we discussed in Lashard that pop up, and we talk about recurring elements in these films, but this is where quite a lot of them pop up, or at least some of the more wacky ones, anyway, and you're not sure we'll get into that, this is a, I think before you get into kind of like summarising, kind of like what happens in the opening the film, and I think basically the summary I would have of this is this is probably hands down the weirdest alien film I think in terms of tone and performance you know I mean like there's a kind of a yeah I think tone especially

yeah like I've made some notes one two three four five six my sixth note while I was watching the film is wow the tone of this is weird this character is weird and I think I'm talking about general character there because the tone feels very strange it feels like i mean i think this is my kind of central thesis for the film is that it's pulled between these two poles of whedon on the one hand and junei on the other and it comes off feeling quite um i'm going to say it's schizophrenic

that's not very something of enable this term to use but it feels very um yeah you do get tonal whiplash i think that's what i mean yes yeah like it's going it has these weird sort of these weird flourishes of, you know, particularly around I would say Sigourney Weaver's performance and you can see what she was going for I don't think it personally works at all but you can see the bits that it works with and then there are other bits that are

you know it leans into this kind of like I've seen quite a lot of write-ups to describe it as black comedy I actually don't think it is I think sometimes it's just straight up slapstick some of it and it is it's really weird it swings between those two extremes. So in that sense, I see what you're saying. It's, you know, we've spoken about the whole kind of like series of films here suffering from an identity crisis. It really kicks off with Alien 3, and Alien 3 was its own little microcosm of that.

This also is, but this is kind of almost a response to that film, and that that was generally considered, Alien 3, I mean, was generally considered to not work, right? Now, you know, I think it should be reassessed a little bit, as we said, in the last show. But it's a really response to that, and that was really thought to not work. So this is now basically kind of swinging back to another extreme. It's this ongoing identity crisis. And we'll have it again in future ones, which we'll, entries that we'll talk about. But that's the thing with this. It's both in the context of the film that immediately came before it and within itself, it's all over the shop.

It really is. So the film starts 200 years after the events of Alien Free. The film starts on the USM Auriga, which is a United Systems military ship. We zoom in on a clone of Ellen Ripley, designated as Ripley 8. Now, from these opening moments, there's a voiceover from Sigourney Weaver doing some dialogue from Newt, the character in aliens. From these opening moments, I think the film's pendulum definitely swings back towards aliens. So whereas Alien 3 was trying to do a sequel that ignored aliens, this is swinging back towards aliens.

Yeah, in fact, Ros Kavney says that this film was a doomed attempt to provide a sequel to aliens that doesn't pretend that alien never happened. But we're back with this kind of military context that was present in aliens. Like I say, there's Newt dialogue focusing on perhaps Ripley's trauma. Ripley has this surrogate mother. So they have cloned Ellen Ripley from DNA taken from question mark. We see the scientists of the United Systems Military operating on the Ripley clone and extracting an alien queen from inside her

because somehow they have managed to clone both Ellen Ripley and the embryo inside her that was growing at the end of Alien 3. They extract this xenomorph queen and the aim is to collect its eggs to make new xenomorphs, new aliens. There's some scenes of Ripley talking to the scientist and sort of coming to terms with who she is. They say she has some memories from the parallel Ripley, from the previous Ripley. She emerges from a weird bag-like thing, like a chestburster emerging from a host. This will become significant later as we talk more about the film's flaws.

They say that Ripley has emotional autism, which is used to explain why she's so taciturn and abrupt and, well, to be honest, a different character entirely. I just wanted it. I found the introduction of this Ripley clone, and I will say it's a Ripley clone, because I think one of the things that we'll probably get into as we start talking about this is one of the things that this film kind of struggles to do, I think, is really to, you know, commit to how much this is Ellen Ripley, you know?

Yeah. Because it kind of wants the iconography of the character, but obviously it's set 200 years after, and technically I think the Rose Ripley 8. and, you know, there are certain choices that are made about, you know, how the characters, this character is coming to being that, you know, alter the behaviour pretty substantially from the, you know, the previous three Sigourney Weaver performances. But I did find it very interesting the way that character was introduced where they're in that kind of sort of, where she's in that sort of membrane. And it's kind of like, it reminded me of this concept of the call, you know, C-A-U-L, like an on-call birth where basically there's an amni-a-allion. membrane still on a child as they're born, right? And it's, I did wonder if there was anything in that, because it's generally considered to be good luck. It's like, uh, yeah, it's meant to be a sign of kind of like, you know, coming prosperity or greatness or something, you know, it would often be, and it's just, I find it interesting because of where this, where this goes and

the way that character's relationship with the aliens develops and kind of the ability she has. I find that a very interest. And this is what I mean about this film. It does have its moments of interest where I think it does some new interesting stuff. And I actually think the introduction of that character visually is one of those examples. Yeah, it's essentially

symbolic of rebirth of the titular resurrection of Ripley coming back to life and tearing through this this, like you say, membrane which is supposed to represent, I guess, the gap between life and death.

coming back to life Ripley tears through this bag with her freshly manicured and painted nails yeah she appears to be born with these nails that are perfectly manicured and painted I think it's supposed to make her kind of sexy and threatening at the same time it's meant to be claw-like

be still and to sort of parallel her with the alien which will be done a lot throughout this film I found it somewhat distracting which I mean frankly you could probably put down to the entire presentation of this character

I found the whole thing very distracting and even down to the costuming and Sigourney Weaver's performance right so you're kind of touched upon kind of like the you know I suppose that's effectively part of the makeup

right but it's a weird performance and I haven't quite got down to the bottom of what it's meant to be achieving really and I think it's a big part for me why the film is intriguing, it's interesting, but it doesn't work for me. Yeah, we don't get a lot of Sigourney Weaver performing in these opening scenes. She's very quiet and tacitin.

She does attack the scientists at one point, kind of so that she's still a threat, she's still a badass. But we don't get a lot of character until the pirates come on board, the mercenaries. But it is, it is weird, and it is definitely different from how she was playing the character in the first three films. Which, given the pitch here of kind of like, you know, this mixing of it, it makes sense that the performance would be different. Yes.

I suppose it's just very hard to figure out why it needs to be different in the way that it is. And we'll, you know, we'll discuss that more, obviously, when we get into kind of like her interaction with some of the other characters, basically. Yeah. To give you an idea of what they were going for, we'd in, in, in, Charles Deloies, Los O'Orica, did a making of documentary called One Step Beyond. which, like his documentary for Alien 3, is a good deal longer than this film itself. In that documentary, Weedon says that he sees Ripley as strange and edgy in his script.

So I think edgy is the word we need to think of there. A group of mercenaries soon arrive at the Oiga on the Starship Betty. They're a kind of motley crew, similar, I guess, to the motley crew of Weedon's Firefly series, which would come a few years later. Notably there's Ron Perlman and there is Winoda Ryder. They're delivering humans who have been trafficked

in order to provide hosts for the aliens. So the scientists intend to prop up these humans in front of xenomorph eggs and have the eggs hatch and impregnate the humans, creating their race of xenomorphs. They bump into Ripley. Ripley's playing basketball

in the mess hole, and they bump into her and have an interaction that kind of, again, establishes her as a badass and threatening. There's a few hastily sketched out caricatures of various characters. There's Brad Duraff's kind of mad scientist. There's another mad scientist who's kind of a bad guy. And there's the general character, General Perez, who is frankly a weird character. he's again this kind of tonal whiplash between Whedon and Jeannes. He's played very

strangely. He's also the source of one of the one of the such a perfect tiny little example of how this film just a given moment can just appear like the goofiest shit imaginable right and I'm thinking of it and I think it might

actually be the first scene we were introduced to General Perez it basically and it's setting something up or, you know, it's kind of like, you know, Chekhov's ID system here, I suppose, to a certain extent, right? Oh, the breath system, yeah. Yeah, the way he gains access to,

I think it's Ripley's cell, right? Or certainly, it's part of the ship anyway. I can't remember that precisely scene as her cell, but the point is, the way this is done is it's done through identifying your breath. So basically, there's this awkward pause in the scene where you basically need to lead into this identifier and just breathes theatrically on it.

and it always, you know, welcome General Perez, and it opens and he goes in. And it's just the weirdest thing. You know, it's like, it's one of these things where kind of, I can imagine folks sitting in a writer's room saying, oh, could have them do that? That would be a bit weird and futurist, and so I go, nah, that's kind of like, daft, let's not do that. You know, and it's, but it's this weird thing where it's like you can't really figure out whether it's meant to be just, you know, a bit off-kilt or in a bit kind of like quirky, quirky, or if it's meant to be actively funny, or if it's, like, it's weird. and it's in the middle of this kind of like scene which which isn't heavy but like it's a very business-like scene right it's not a comedic scene and it has this awkward bit in the middle of he just stops and breathes it part of the wall and it's a good example of how this film's a bit weird and actually the Perez character later on the film's another source of this is like you say this tonal whiplash is another source of it later on but that's kind of like one of the earliest indications that this is that this film doesn't really know what he wants to do, I don't think. Yeah, it's a strange touch.

It's hard to say where this comes from. It's hard to say if that's a Junae touch or a Wiedon touch. What we can say, because we know that Jeney barely interacted with Wiedon. He basically wanted nothing to do with him once Jenae had the script. So what we do know is that there is virtually no combination of the two. like there is either Whedon's script or Jeannes' direction they didn't really collaborate particularly closely and I think that's pretty obvious in the final product to be honest

yeah but I do think I think the script has a lot of these little touches like the breath thing there's a scene with General Perez later where he has little whiskey cubes he puts a little cube in a glass and a laser makes it into whiskey the computer system is called father instead of mother like in the alien, the original alien, and later there's an e-book version of the Bible.

There's these little touches that feel like little clever sci-fi bits that are not at all necessary for the plot and feel very weed in it. Like they feel very clever for the sake of being clever. Yeah, some of these things would sit quite happily in an episode of Firefly, basically.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, speaking of General Perez, there's a scene that I think I just mentioned where General Perez sits down with the captain of the mercenaries. They have a whiskey cube or two, and the captain talks about some of his crew. Now, in this scene, he describes Winona Ryder's character as supremely fuckable,

and it's an indication of where this film will go with sexuality, in a way that is absent from the first two films, certainly. There's another scene coming up a few scenes long from this, where there's this woman moaning in ecstasy, the camera pans along her body, her kind of bare bottom, and it's this very male-gazy, very teenage boy approach to sexuality that is a lot more overt in this film than the first two films. I think we talked in the Alien episode about that film's complex relation to sexuality

and this idea of the monstrous and the biomechanical, a lot of which comes from Geiger's design. film just has a purian sense of very male-gazy views of women. Like, from that first description of a woman as supremely fuckable, it's a very teenage boy approach to sexuality that I think absolutely comes from Weedan's script. Yeah, and there are other examples of this later on, particularly, like, there's one line, you know, I'm jumping head a little bit here, but I mean, at one point, I think, the line that just stood out like a sore thumb to me was when

Sigourney Weaver delivers the line, who do I have to fuck to get off this boat? Yeah. Yeah, and it's just, it's weird on so many levels. Like, one, there's no real need for it in the script, and it's like you say, it's such a, it feels like such a non-secutor, and I think when you then combine that with the delivery, I think, is really pretty flat and wooden,

and the way that it's kind of like framed is like a, the way that Junet shoots it's almost like a hero moment right it's like ah here's our wisecracking hero and the fact that that's where all these things combine to just be bad but like

you know I mean for all of Joss Whedon's complaints about them not doing his script correctly that's in the script Joss you know like I mean there's only so many ways you can slice that and it's not it's not I don't think that's kind of like the you know quippy triumphant moment

you were aiming for Yeah. It's not just this teenage boy approach to sexuality, where all the women are sexual objects and all the men are there to lure at the women. It's also this sexuality in Ripley. Now, it is a clone of Ripley, but Ripley has never had this kind of overt sexuality before. She kind of flirts with Higgs a little in Alien, but that's on a very practical level. They kind of flirt. while they're learning how to handle weapons and stuff. She has, it's implied she has sex with the doctor character in Alien 3, but that is only implied and it's off-screen. In this one, she's like immediately flirting with the scientists, with Ron Perlman's character in the basketball scene, and with Winona Ryder's character.

When Winona Ryder's character comes to see Ripley for the first time, there is a very sexually charged scene between the two that feels very purient and misogynistic. And it's a strange direction to go in, in my view, right? Because part of this is, it's kind of implied that, or at least I inferred, I mean, it's very hard to tell what the film implies versus what you infer from it, but certainly I took that this was meant to be kind of a behavioural change bought on by the fact that this isn't genuinely Ripley.

it's a clone who's in, you know, inherited some of, some traits of the aliens, the xenoborce, right? You know, and you see various bits of this, like, she has slightly acidic blood, and, like, it's implied that she has some sort of telepathic connection to the, to the queen that they extracted from her as part of this process. But when then, when you think back to the other films, and you think back about the fact that, you know, kind of like sexuality and, you know, our relationship to it, both masculine, feminine version of, Like, it's always been there in those films, but it's been a very implicit thing, right? You can take it at surface level of what the films are presented here. You can go one layer below and kind of like look at kind of how it's looking at framing certain creatures and characters and how would they evolve and, you know, all the rest of it. It's always been there, but it's been dealt with even in Alien 3 and even aliens, actually, which, you know, did have its lack of subtlety in the script at times. it's just overall being dealt with far more intelligently.

I think it's dealt with far more subtly and intelligently in alien. I think also Alien 3 to an extent, but not on the same level, but it's going for the same thing. And then aliens, I would say, it's a lot more obvious and out there, but it's still handled more intelligently. This, to me, is kind of like more, it's more overt, but in a dumber way. I don't really know what it was wanting to say about this, apart. from basically just having everybody act horny and I don't really know to what end

like what is it saying with this and I think it's trying to say something with like Sigourney Weaver's performance doing this I don't think it really comes off but then there's other parts where it doesn't you know like the constant kind of leading from the Ron Perlman character basically at Ripley as kind of this goes on

and as you say the way call Winona Ryder's character is spoken about about there is nothing deeper there, as far as I could say. That is just pure, pure aisle, empty teenage boy leery dialogue and behaviour. It doesn't add anything. You know, in terms of establishing the characters and the fact that they're really a bit reductive in their own views or whatever, okay, fine, I take that point.

But, like, you know, you can do that in the way that it was done in aliens, right? where this is all set up very quickly and easily, and then we move on to the way these characters interact. Here, it just happens constantly to no real end, in my view. Yeah, and I think we can blame Whedon's script to some extent, but Roscaveney has the insight that Whedon's script was good enough to bring Sigoni Weaver back, but she was so impressed that she asked Whedon to make the character Edgier

even more fairly sexual. So where these earlier versions of Ripley, Ros Cavani says, were sexless to the point of androgyny, Weaver wanted this more sexual predator kind of approach to Ripley that I think speaks to, yeah, this idea that she has come back changed,

she has come back from the dead wrong, she is a different creature, she is merged with the alien, but I also think is indicative of Sigourney Weaver's approach to the character being different from those early films, being fundamentally different. And as Sigourney Weaver has gotten more power over this franchise, more kind of executive producer power,

I think she's steered the character in a way that doesn't work. So I've compared this in my notes to Patrick Stewart, who I'll go back to moaning about Star Trek for a minute. In the Star Trek Next Generation films, Patrick Stewart gets more executive producer powers. and particularly around Star Trek First Contact, Patrick Stewart leads Picard into a kind of action hero mold that doesn't work at all for the character.

The action hero should have been Jonathan Freaks Ryker, but Picard wants to be centre stage, Patrick Stewart wants to be centre stage, so he turns Picard into this action hero for the next few next generation films and into the first two disastrous seasons of Star Trek, Trek Picard. Just because he wants to be an action hero and he doesn't understand the character and what appealed about the character, I think we can say the same about Sigoni

Weaver. Yeah, and it's interesting. So I haven't watched that much of Star Trek Picard. I only watched the first season, which, you know, I wouldn't describe, I wouldn't describe myself as a Trekkie. I thought it was fine, but it did seem out of keeping with the tone of the character that I knew from, I haven't watched a lot of the films. You know, it kind of seemed at odds with the character that I knew from the next generation. It was a far more kind of like, you know, pensive, cerebral individual, and that's kind of like how

that reputation was made. But I digress. It is interesting to hear you talk about that, though, because something I spoke about the last episode is kind of like how Alien 3, and to a greater extent this film, they kind of live in this, like, the dying era of the movie star, right?

And basically, the main draw I think for this film, for audiences is there's a new alien film, and Sigourney Weaver is in it. We've got Sigourney Weaver back, right? And also, I think the marketing... The film very much positions Ripley from the start.

Like, the first shot is of Ripley. There's Ripley dialogue from the start. It is all about Ripley front and centre. Yeah, exactly, right? And, you know, the marketing focuses a little bit on Winona Ryder, who at this time was still kind of, like, you know, fairly hot property in terms of, you know, rising star power.

But... So, that's the first thing. It's still in this era of kind of like the movie star being the vehicle for getting bums and seats to watch a film. But it's also at the start, really, right? So it's at the end of that trend. But I feel it's kind of at the start of another trend, which is in the days, and this kind of like predates kind of like, you know, comic book cinema, making a big comeback, right? So we're still about three years out at this point from X-Men, right? Which a lot of people cite it's having kicked this whole thing off or, you know, Sam Raby's first spider.

man and all this sort of thing. It's kind of getting into this era where even if the character isn't a superhero, as soon as they are an iconic character, right, we reject what made them an iconic character and they just start to become superheroes. And that's what happens here, and this has done more overtly here in the form of her literally having some alien DNA as being an explanation for this, but it's basically she becomes this almost invincible superhero character. And you see this across the board in so many places, right? You see it even in, you know, the modern-day BBC Sherlock series. Sherlock Holmes is a superhero in that.

You know, like it basically, you know, he basically, you know, he comes back from the dead, you know, and it's, you know, it's, you could argue it doesn't really bear much resemblance to the Arthur Conan Doyle character. If you look at the Fast and Furious films, we're sitting on record this in 20203, those characters are now superheroes, right? I was thinking about Fast and Furious while you were saying that. Yeah. And it even goes to things like if we go back to series which started around similar times, let's think about the diehard series. By the time you get to die hard four, again, John McLean is a superhero. Some of the shit this man is surviving is ridiculous. But the time you get to die hard five, he may as well be Captain America, frankly. You know, and there is this thing where basically in the quest for bigger and better and more dramatic, the characters become superheroes. And I think this is actually probably to me anyway, this is an early example of that. And it's

still at that point where it's trying to bolt on an explanation for it, but in justifying having these movie stars come back, basically they become superheroes. And this is a pretty good example of that to me. Yeah, I think that's a great shout that really indicates where popular films and where blockbuster films are at this point in time and where they are going. So there is brief scene while we're talking about kind of the film's approach to sexuality. There is a breach scene where Brad Dureth looks at the xenomorphs that he and his scientific team have created, and there is kind of a quasi-sexual moment where Brad Dureth kisses the glass as if he is kissing one of the xenomorphs. And this kind of approach to sexuality I can get on board with.

This is a kind of weird attraction to the monstrous that works really well. I was so interested in this scene that I looked up Wiedon's original screenplay to see if it was in there. And it is not. There is a scene between Brad Durf and the aliens, but instead of kind of kissing the alien and having this kind of sexual attraction, he makes a kind of teenage boy quip. He said, he says,

the character says, is that a distended externous lingua, or are you just happy to see me? Which I think is a dumb line. And so I much prefer, what I assume is Jeunet's approach to the character, bringing in this, this sexual, idea of the scientist's monstrous attraction to these creatures, which kind of brings us back to

like ash and ash in the first film regarding this as a perfect creature, a perfect organism. Yeah, and I'm pleased you brought this up because this is one of these scenes where, you know, Brad Dura's performance, like, it's a little bit, it's a little bit too much for me, right? I think he's doing, he's doing his Brad Dura thing. Like, there's not much more you can say about that he's doing his kind of worm tongue thinking that Brad Doerth does I liked it I think I don't think the character gets enough to do

but I like Brad Durf enough that I wanted him to hang around yeah but that's the thing I think I like this seeded even though I find the exact pitch of the performance movie a bit too much that scene and that character I would have liked to have seen more of that right? It's like you say that

that interaction and then when you also kind of like think in terms of like what the power of dynamic are between him and these creatures that he's effectively created, you know, so like he's effectively created them, but also they're kind of more powerful, you know, there's an interesting thing there. And I think this battyness I would have liked to have seen more of, right? This is, this is the, this feels a little bit more like taking this kind of iconic sci-fi property and just kind of like pushing it in a strange direction, right, which says something interesting

and might kind of like jive and blend with what the series has looked at before in a slightly different way. So in that sense, I would have actually liked to see more of this. I think I agree with you that character is not really given much to do. I find this aspect of how it deals with kind of this weird gross sexual tension it develops. I find this a more interesting expression of that than anything that happens with the mercenary crew or the Ripley clone character, basically. Yeah, and I think that kind of approach could turn into a kind of commentary on the films themselves and the audience. Like, you are part of this voyeuristic desire to see these monstrous creatures. That's why you keep coming to the cinema.

That's why we're on the fourth of these films. An interesting approach that the film does not take. No. Absolutely not. So what happens next is, as you'd expect, the alien's... escape. They are in confinement in the same cell. They sort of communicate with one another. I'll talk about this in the xenobiology section at the end, but they sort of communicate with one another and kill off one of their own to use its acidic blood to burn through their cell

and escape. In the process, they damage part of the Eurega, and the Erega's kind of emergency backup kicks in and sets it on a course back to Earth. Ripley and the Pirates sort of team up to escape the ship. Yeah, kind of encounter the xenomorphs in a number of situations. There's kind of, you know, I'm just referring to all these action set pieces as situations that are happening. Because there is kind of, this is Rosse Cavanney's final essay on aliens in this book from Alien to the Matrix that I've been referencing. and there's kind of an implicit sense of exhaustion

at this point in Kevin's recaps and summaries and analyses I'd say I'm surprised she said at one point we know because it's become part of the formula that the orego will be set for self-destruction the betty will be delayed getting off it the Ripley will only just make it onto the Betty

blah blah blah so there is a sense that yeah now the aliens have escaped they're going to run around and escape the aliens, the aliens will kill some people and blah blah blah. I think there are some in setting this whole thing up though

like it does have, there's a couple of things that up to this point in the film stand out to be just as kind of like visual things that I quite like. We'll touch on it more as we get towards the conclusion of the film right? Because I think some of the things I think really work later on but like

some of the flourishes that Jeune has work quite well like the shot that reveals the queen, right? Which kind of happens around about this point in time, maybe a bit earlier. Like, I think that's really good. It kind of, like, you know, it kind of tracks back over that kind of like the massive skull plate. Like, it's, to me, it's a good, it's a really nice way to do that.

It's dramatic. It's, it's quite tense in a way. It's revealing the extent of the creature. And what I find interesting about it is, again, this identity crisis within the film. That, I think, would work, even if you're unaware of the concept of an alien. Queen, right? If you've come into this film having never seen aliens, let's say, right? It works as kind of a dramatic reveal of, oh my God, this thing, God. But there are other bits, which really don't work in it, and it leans, and I'm not going to go on about this right now,

because I'll talk about it more later on, but where it's leaning very heavily on the iconography of previous films. Like, there's a scene where kind of, you know, the eggs open up in front of the, you know, the people who have been traffic to be host for them. And it cuts away, right, just as it's happening. I think there's another scene where this happens later on where to come across amazing. It cuts away, like, as this thing opens up. Now, I realize this is the fourth film in the alien franchise. Like, to what extent are you meant to be watching this on its own?

But that's a fundamentally obfuscating thing to do, right? it is relying on the audience knowing of the life cycle of its creature and how that works and why that's horrific otherwise it's just kind of like it's just vaguely creepy and again it's another example of the film's kind of weird

you know is this a standalone thing that's trying to say its own thing or is it not and it never really makes that decision it's another kind of like mini example of that where I don't think it can really decide but within that it does have some quite good visual flourishes like the Queen

is one of them. I also think the way that Zain and Morse is shot here is actually quite interested. It speaks to what was some of the strengths of the film are. These things look gross. I don't think they've ever looked grosser across this franchise than they do in this film. You know, like dripping with liquid steam rising often and like how much that works for you, I think, is kind of a bit of a preference thing. But I think for what the film is trying to do, particularly once you get to the final act and we'll deal that when we come to it, this kind of like more overtly kind of like gross presentation of them is really well done. I think you can debate whether it should do that.

But I think in light of it, them trying to do it, I think it is. Those aspects are quite well executed for me. I agree. I think Jeunay has an interesting visual style, particularly in the action sequences, which I'll get to, and particularly in, like you say, the presentation of the aliens. So as we said, it's kind of a shame that there's. not more focus on the aliens, and this kind of voyeuristic idea that this is what the audience want to see, these monsters.

Jeannes said the aliens were going to be less surprising for being more visible, so he's clearly trying to make them more visible in the film than they have been, and particularly of alien where you barely see the alien. Speaking of the kind of sliminess of them, there's a scene in one step beyond, this making of documentary where I think it's one of the special effects supervisors says that the slime is

one of the most important parts of the xenomorph in this film and there's just behind the scenes footage of them slavering slime all over this puppet costume xenomorphing yeah I think it's interesting how the aliens

look in this film H.R. Giger disagreed so he said that throughout the creature's evolution, what they've done is change it from something aesthetic to something that looks like shit. I mean, literally, looks like a turd. And I think that kind of gets into what you were saying

about this kind of disgusting nature of the xenomorph in this film. Because this is from the alien evolution documentary presented by Mark Kermode. And when Geiger is saying this, it goes from the kind of aesthetic look of the alien in the original film to the alien queen in the final scene

with the alien queen in this film where she's kind of got the distended belly and is birthing the newborn and yeah it does kind of look

brown and turd-like yeah it's interesting it's in a way it's um I say it's interesting it does it I don't know how well it works

I think it's very well done for what they want to achieve with it there is a question about whether you could look at one of these things and imagine Ash in the first film saying it was a perfect organism it does seem slightly incongruent

with that. It's when it gets to this point where I think they're running out of ideas for how to present these creatures to be honest. I think there is one particularly interesting shot. Later in the film, Ripley decides she has this, you've said,

telepathic link to the alien queen. She decides she has to go find the queen and she sinks into this kind of pit of the alien tendrils, what the alien has built it's very, they refer to it as the viper pit in

behind the scenes footage but it's all kind of moving tendrils they had a lot of puppeteers making it I think that shot looks great that looks really cool it's a shot that the studio actually wanted cut but Jeunay

fought for which is interesting it looks great. Yeah, which is interesting because that shot that you're referring to what follows from it, that's another one of these things where the way it's expressing sexuality and the connection between Ripley and Aliens.

That's another case where I think it's done, I don't know if you'd necessarily describe it as subtle, but I think its intention is more subtle, right? Yeah, I think it works in the kind of Brad Doerff way that we've just discussed. Yes, exactly. She's wriving about in this kind of sexual ecstasy on this alien thing

and it worked great you know it reminded me of possession yeah that's a good that's a very good that's a very good comparison actually

and I think that's part of why that particular segment it works right but again it kind of it sits at odds with in particular you know

Weiden's kind of like very space cowboy type script right yeah I feel like it's a it's a sequence which if you take the same broad strokes of the plot, right? It's a sequence that would fit far better with an Alien 3 type of tone, right?

Or an original alien type of tone. It doesn't sit well with this proto-firefly, you know, wannabe post-modern ironic Star Wars-y type tone that he's clearly gone for in the script. Basically what it comes down to, we'll probably say this come in the end, I think Whedon script It's problems not withstanding But I think with a little few tweaks

And a different director It could work as a film I don't know if it works as an alien film But I could imagine a sci-fi film That worked with that script Equally I think June's approach As daft as it is at points

And there are points where I really have issues with it But I think his overall approach Could have worked with a much A script that was much better tailored For that approach And had these ideas The ideas that he's putting out there visually it had them in the text as well.

I think at the moment they don't jive, and I think you would end up with a better film either way with something that matched up a little better. So we're well into the action scenes at this point. I like, like I said, I like the dynamism of Jene's direction of these action scenes, particularly the one where the mercenaries reveal all their guns in the mess hall. They've had their guns taken off them when they came off the ship,

but it turns out that every single one of them has guns secretly secreted about their person and the way they're revealed is very dynamic it's very cool and I like the kind of quick shot the quick cuts the camera movements as they're moving through the ship there is a big set piece involving a flooded kitchen

they have to swim through a flooded kitchen to get to the next part of the ship and this was a huge set piece for the filmmakers 23 days of shooting in an underwater tank without scuba gear. The studio, I watched a behind the scenes, kind of studio-approved fluff, you know, that comes out just before a movie, where they're talking about how they made it, you know, you don't

get any great insight particularly. But the studio were clearly positioning this scene where the aliens swim through the water in the kitchen as the big set piece of the movie. The interesting thing is that when I was watching the behind-the-scenes footage, it is producer Bill Badalato who is clearly directing the scene like Jeunay is not doesn't even appear to be there

maybe it's because Badalato was translating for Jeannay because his English wasn't very good at this point but he does seem to be acting as a director for this huge action set piece the scene right because it's hard to

you're right it's positioned as the big set piece right and I think it is very well done, but it is the very fact that it's happening really highlights another problem with this film, which is basically things happen at the complete convenience of the

plot, right? Absolutely the convenience of... I'm glad we getting into this, because I have a lot to say about this. Yeah, and the entire extended sequence around this, right, in terms like before they get into the water and when they emerge out with the water at the other end,

this particular sequence is just full of them, right? And I'm not surprised this was maybe positioned as the, you know, the big set piece that we're going to put forward in, you know, marketing or whatever, because it feels, it's very well executed in and of itself, but the machinations we go through to get to this and out of this set piece are basically really pretty indicative of some of the problems this film has, just at a basic level. I mean, we've spoken about tone, we've spoken about the acting performances

and how it's, it's dialoguing, but not really with the other film. and all the rest of it, and these are all kind of like, you know, the grand excuse fairly high fluton criticisms. This entire sequence is basically kind of an example of how there are some much more basic issues with this film, to be honest. Yeah, I like the idea of the Floddy Kitchen. I like the visual

of the xenomorphs moving through water. I think it's the best action scene in the film and it looks good. In the next scene they're on a ladder, they have to climb from the water up into the rest of the ship to try and find the bridge and I think this ladder scene is where I particularly felt what you just described

where there's lots of scenes that move the plot along but have no emotional or thematic resonance so it's very plot focused and these thin characters only exist to move along the plot Kavney mentions this if I can just find I think while you're looking at that scene this is where the film I was already reminded of the fact that I didn't particularly like this film

but at this point this is where it really started to lose me because that's the ladder scene you mentioned at the tail end of this apparently Xenomorce can dodge bullets now like that is something that happens in this scene like the Zenoir dodges bullets like one of the agents in the Matrix basically right and it has shown no ability to do this before in fact these things have been shot before the entire point of aliens was

that you could shoot them to bits and like it would be fine but because they need to have the epic end to the set piece where people are being pursued up a ladder by a xenomorph and they're not quite ready for it to be over yet this thing needs to be able to dodge bullets so it does

yeah so I think there is a lot in this scene where things happen just because it is time for them to happen it is time for them to happen in the script so one of the scientists has been with the group the whole time, he suddenly shoots Winona Ryder and she falls backwards and is apparently dead. Why does he do this? Other than it because it's a villainous thing to do and he's a villain. Not sure. I'm not sure what his motivation is at this point

for abandoning the rest of the group. There's a character who has another character to strap to his back. There's a tense scene of him hanging on. Why doesn't the other character to just grab the ladder rather than plunging to his death, other than because it's time in the script for a heroic sacrifice. And this scene ultimately culminates, culminates with Renoda Ryder seemingly resurrected again, opening the door just when it's blocked and they're about to get eaten by an alien. How did Winona Ryder get from the pool at the base of the ladder to the other side of the door that they couldn't get to?

It's unclear, other than because the plot requires there to be someone opening the door dramatically. Well, and the plot requires basically it to be her opening the door dramatically so that we find out her secret that she's actually a synthetic. Because it's time in the plot for that to be revealed. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, Ros Cavani mentions this as one of Reiden's big shortcomings, that he has, and displays at various crucial moments in Buffet, Buffet, the Vampire Slayer. He has a real knack for plot moments that make poetic rather than literal sense. So Ros Cavani refers to the climax of season five, where Buffy decides that she can die in the place of her sister because their blood is mystically the same. And emotionally it works because there needs to be a sacrifice at the end of the season.

But Cavani says it makes no literal sense. And the same happens in Alien Resurrection, where a lot of things happen that make sense in terms of a screenplay, but he doesn't take the time to tie them together. and Roscaveni thinks that's fine for a fantasy series like Buffy but not for a science fiction franchise like Alien I mean this idea of conveniences and I'm not I've watched Buffy the Vampire story but not all of it but I mean this is a pretty common thing

in Sweden's work right I mean in particular a film that I actually quite like his his first Marvel film like The Avengers right which is a film I enjoy a lot I mean it has its issue but, you know, it's a fun film, right? Yeah, I like the Avengers. But it's, it's full of these, you know, like, I mean, like, you know, how does Thor get

to Earth? How, what did this, where did Loki come from when he's meant to be in print? You know, like, there's all these things where basically they happen because they need to happen, right? Thor gets to Earth because he's, he's one of the Avengers, so he needs to be in the Avengers film. You know, it, this is something that is a common feature of his his work, I think, and it's something that happens here a lot, and I think around about this point, the script,

it's happening because we're now into the final act, and it starts to break, I mean, what little there was, in my view, starts to break down. I mean, basically, we kind of descend into, basically the characters that are left now running around, like, Scooby-Doo

characters through the same two or three corridors. Yeah. You know, stop it, and then, you know, Ripley will stop to look at something while tense music rises, right? That's basically what happens in a lot of the rest of the film. But I think the bigger underlying problem here is kind of the thing that you alluded to when we're talking about the end of the set pieces. It's very unclear what anybody's motivations are.

So the scientist is with them. Like, you know, why at that point? You know, why? Why? It's not very clear. And this goes back to way earlier in the film, right? Because there's a scene where Ripley 8, right? the clone Ripley 8

finds the lab where they clearly have Ripley's 1 to 7, right? And there are these weird, grotesque thing and it's meant to kind of like emphasise kind of like the horror of what they've been doing, right? Yeah. And she has a very emotional response to this and it's a lot more

like that part of the performance so some of this is in Weaver's performance as well as the script right, but she plays that a lot more like the original Ripley, right? That feels a lot more like the original Ripley to me, but that's completely at odds with the way that this role has been done in this film before this point.

Combined with the fact that, again, this is another plot, and this is where it comes from the script. It's another plot convenience. This clone, this clone lab, where she finds them, it's parachuted in out of nowhere. They happen to walk past the door. You know, there's no, you know, there's no kind of, like, thematic or emotional need for them to go there, or for them to, there's not even a mcuffin that requires them to go to that lab or something, right? There's not even a plot device.

It just appears, you know, magically, because that's the corridor they happen to be running through at that moment and time. I'd speculate that Ripley feels like the original Ripley in that scene, because the scene is just taken whole cloth from a deleted scene

from Alien. Well, yeah. And another scene that wasn't deleted in aliens. like we've already seen people begging for their lives and someone having to kill them like this is a recurrent thing in this franchise at this point that yeah so so Cavany

likens this this tendency for having the mythic plot beats and fudging the logic she says that Whedon has this in common with James Cameron now I think it's present in Whedon to a much greater extent than Cameron but I can sort of see what she means We know the writer's character has come back from the dead in another allusion to the films to the film's themes of death and resurrection.

And immediately after this, we're going to be batted over the head with those themes because she is an android, a synthetic. Ripley takes her into the ship's chapel to interface with father. I mean, we're beating over the head with it at this point. There's a huge crucifix reminding us of Jesus' death and resurrection. Call is literally interfacing with father in a chapel. It's all very overt Christian iconography. At one point, Ripley places her fingers in the side of

Renona Ryder's character, where she's been wounded, which is a reference to Thomas the Doubter and the resurrected Christ. The other important thing I mean that that wound is also placed in the exact same position that, you know, the wound that a lot of, you know, if you look at any work depicting the crucifixion, the wound is basically always in that position as the other part of this. Yeah, because Jesus got spared through the tummy at one point, putting his fingers in the wounds. So at this point, yeah, we're very much beaten over the head with the films' themes of death and resurrection. and particularly with the idea that Ripley came back wrong which is something that Whedon loves to do he loves to bring back women characters wrong

and pretty sure that happens to Buffet in one of the seasons of Buffet the Vampire Slayer at this point Ripley leaves to find the alien queen like you say she has this kind of telepathic link with the alien queen and falls into what I've mentioned before is the Viper Pit

Great shot, but she eventually finds the alien queen and Brad Duraff's scientist cocooned near the queen, who reveals that this queen, like the alien, has had an effect on Ripley's DNA. Ripley's DNA has had an effect on the queen, producing a queen with a human reproductive system. So this queen has a uterus, a womb, and is about to give birth. I guess not only has the queen got a human reproductive system she has also spontaneously reproduced

on her own What is the thing is But the thing is though You talked about the religious Like you know The religious self before this I find it weird that there wasn't more of a You know a blending with this part of it

Right? Because you know Apparently it's a human reproductive system Right And we're talking about the newborn Right And basically we have it We have a debaculate conception

of sorts here and it's just it's strange to me that there isn't more of a there isn't more of a dialogue within the film about those parts of it because i don't think there i don't think there really is right there is something there is something there is something there but it doesn't really bite on to it that much really yeah yeah i hadn't thought of that but this idea of the virgin birth could very much be applied here it's just uh not yeah so my confusion is as well as this queen with the human reproductive system presumably the queen also was able to produce eggs because there were eggs earlier in the film

and that was the entire point of bringing the queen back from Ripley's DNA so it has two reproductive systems unclear well you see we've already covered this these two reproductive systems because if it can't produce eggs and how do we get our iconics and eggs opening yeah

uh-huh So the Xenomoth Queen gives birth to something else. It's called The Newborn, and it's kind of a blend of human and alien that looks kind of like the human-alian hybrids in the comic book version of William Gibson's script for Alien 3, which I mentioned last month. I'm not sure why it looks so human since if this is an alien without a host wouldn't this be a purer alien? But I guess it's got human DNA from Ripley.

Ripley is kind of a mother to this creature. I think the film is very confused at this point. Yeah, I think the film is very confused at this point. I mean, you can see that confusion present in the design. of the newborn, frankly, right? So it is, you know, it's very much, you would look at it and if you didn't know the plot of so

and you'd look at it and go, what is this? Is this a weird version of the alien from alien? Because that's effectively what it is, right? But you can see how they're attempting to engage with the overall themes of the franchise so far and just not managing it, right? So it's basically, there's a kernel of an idea

and then the execution is not there. Because this thing is gross, right? I mean, as a creature, it kind of, like, stuck in my head for a long time, right? And you can decide for yourself whether it's an example of something good, or if it's kind of wanting to have your cake and eat it. Because one of the main, the main way in which it appears in any way human, right? It's first of all of, it's a lot paler, obviously, right? So it has kind of like more of a, it has a skin tone that's closer to Sigourney Weaver than, you know,

the kind of like more kind of bug-like exterior that, um, you know, the original, the original creatures of, but the main way it shows up, being like, uh, a melted milky way. Yes, actually. Yeah, exactly. That's not, it's very good, very good way to put it. But the main way that it kind of shows up as more human is in the face, right? And there are certain things that the film does, which is just very well, right? I mean, later, slightly, like, later on, like, that, the, were shown in quite bright light, right? And that really brings out kind of like these sunken eye sockets with actual expressive eyes in them, and that works. But it doesn't really know what it wants

to say with this thing, other than presenting a kind of like formidable, big, bad to end the film on, right? So when this thing is born, the first thing it does is it identifies with Ripley as its mother, and it then basically violently kills the queen. It swipes their face off in like, you know, one go or something. Well, I've said it's like the old screenwriting trick

of you establish this new creature as a threat by having it kill the threat from the old films. So they do this in Jurassic Park 3, where a spinosaurus appears and immediately kills the T-Rex. But the thing is, again, it's another one of these conveniences, right? Why? Why? Why?

Why? Other than to establish any bigger threat? And the thing is, it's this weird thing where they can't figure out what they want to do with it. Because if you look at the original designs of this creature, and you know, you think about what we've been saying about kind of like monstrous feminine and all the rest of it, there was originally a version of this where they had, where it basically appeared to have both male and female genitalia. Right. In the end, I think the design you went with, it's basically, basically female. But it clearly wants to engage a little bit with stuff that has gone before. in the franchise and it's kind of alluded to in this film but it doesn't I mean

so first of all there's that decision that they took around kind of the appearance of it I would also argue I'm pretty sure in the final film they only really see this thing from behind and from the waist up generally you only see it from the waist up because yeah you can see a picture of the original design for the newborn

with the kind of mixed male and female genitalia on Wikipedia and it's kind of from the mid-torso down. So I think in removing it, maybe they just didn't take that much time. So you don't really see that bottom half anyway. But yeah, so the creature, again, it's an example of muddled motivations here. So the human characters have all had muddled motivations up to this point. And in the film series up to this point, the motivation of the xenomorphs has been

fairly clear, right, in the sense that they don't really have one. and that's particularly a pan in the first film and it starts to kind of disappear a little bit as the film's going it kind of re-establishes it in Alien 3 a little bit but the point is there isn't really right it's they are intelligent but they are animalistic

this now throws that out the window completely but as a result of making this thing more human both in kind of concept and in appearance you need something else to hang this on it's not really sure, I'm not really sure what what they're actually

looking to achieve here. And that's the whole thing with this film. I just, I do not understand what they're looking to achieve. And as a result, they come out with some cool imagery at points. You know, the underwater, the underwater set piece, the shot revealing the Queen,

the Brad Durif interaction, the general design of this is very interesting. This is a very hard thing to conceive of, but they've come up with something which huds that sort of, you know, know, grotesqueness about it, which, you know, is very arresting, but I don't know what's trying to do with any of it. No, I think the aliens are very, are quite different in this film, so Cavanney points out

that in aliens, Ripley had said, you don't see them screwing each over to get a percentage. But here they do. You do. They deliberately kill one of their own. in order to get out of the cell. They are strategising, they are thinking. And I think Kavanee is generous

in saying that this is because the human DNA of Ripley has infected the Queen and that therefore these aliens are a little more human. I think it's just weed and script writing, like what we discuss, getting to me. I mean, she's not wrong, I mean, it could be,

but I think that's very extra textual. You know, that's... Yeah. I don't think the film says really even implies that at any point to be honest. Exactly, yeah. I think that's generous. I think it is just

Whedon's plot-focused scripting that this has to happen. The aliens have to be like this, because that is what the plot demands. Yeah, the production design of the newborn, you've talked about it. It's vaguely human, vaguely dog-like. It's not a Geiger design.

I'm not a fan of it. And yet, it sticks in my mind. I think it's one of the most memorable images from this film. So I think there's something to it, but they have made it more human, like you say. It's kind of got big puppy eyes, sunken puppy eyes, that are vaguely human, and now particularly coming to play in the last scene.

Yeah, it's, it, I think what you see there about it's stuck in my mind but I'm not necessarily a big fan of it. It's probably, probably correct. It's striking, right? It is. And I think, in terms of the context, concept is meant to get across of, you know, being part of human. It achieves that. I think it's less, um, it feels less artful in a way. And I mean, there's an unfortunate choice of words, but I'll

stick with it for the moment than the original xenomorph designs. You know, I think you're, you're less like, I find myself lingering less on images of it, kind of thinking, you know, wondering kind of like some of the attention to detail and kind of like, you know, wait, it, it, And part of this is really just because it frankly does look less alien, you know, like, and it's meant to. Of course, it's meant to. But like, it does remove some of the terror from it, you know, and given that this is meant to be established as a new threat. And part, that's because they can't, you know, we're three films in now. So you can't really kind of establish the final threat in this kind of like ever upping of the stakes that were engaged in with these type of films at this point, right? You can't really make it a xenomorph. on its own, because alien did that, right? You can't really be, and it did Alien 3. You can't really make it multiple aliens, because aliens did that, right? You can't really make it multiple aliens, even within this film, because you've already done that.

We've heard the thing where they've established how many of them are. You can't make it Alien Queen, because that's been often unsaid, you know, so basically, again, it's another convenience. This thing needs to be the final thing, because that's, everything else is off the table, you know? And does it work? Again, I think it comes up with some striking imagery, in particular. We'll get into the kind of like the very end of the film here in particular, kind of like how we get to the ultimate triumph over it, right? They're all kind of like quite striking images.

But again, how much it actually blends together to actually give something that's really truly memorable? I don't know. Yeah. So the newborn is born. Ripley escapes while it's distracted, killing the alien. Queen and rendezvous with the rest of the crew on board the Betty, the pirate ship, and they're prepared to escape the OREGA, just as it's going down into Earth's atmosphere. Yes, while we're here, I'll mention this idea of Earth being involved as a way of raising the stakes.

I don't like it. I don't think Earth needs to be involved. like Earth wasn't involved in Nostro on the Nostromo in Alien. It feels like a lazy way to raise the stakes because we automatically care about Earth. That's where we live. But it doesn't actually make us care about the characters on the ship. Bill Badalato, the producer, said the great part of the script is that we get them out of space and we're moving towards Earth.

I don't think that's a great part of the script. I don't think that has any... I don't say that cool. before and frankly, I think it's a little bit of an idiotic statement for a fact that for a franchise where the first film's tagline is in space, no one can hear you scream. Exactly. I don't care about

in this franchise. I've never wondered about it. Space is its whole thing. Yeah, this whole thing about returning to Earth, particularly in this third act. Some fucking stupid thing to say. I haven't seen that before. Good God.

But I don't get this focus on Earth. They've never talked to our earth before. There's no indication that Ripley's even been to Earth, let alone was born there. But anyway, they're about to crash on Earth. The newborn has snuck aboard the betty in a kind of echo of the end of aliens. Ripley confronts the creature in a kind of mother slash sexual way where she is kind of caressing the newborn and

getting ready to kiss it and kind of getting very close to it. Cavanney says that this points to the themes of motherhood throughout the film, particularly with Ripley as the, at one point she says explicitly she is the mother of the monsters.

And the creatures uttering half-articulate sounds indicating that it's referring to Ripley as its mother. Cavanee doesn't particularly like this. She says that Whedon has allowed his vision to be contaminated by Fincher and Hills, sour take on Cameron's

over-idealized picture of Ripley as mother-slash-savier. So she's saying that this idea of Ripley as a mother figure has come from Cameron, been distorted through Finch's cynical take, and Weiden has picked it up in a way that combines the wooded worst parts of all those and adds Whedon's own

frankly weirdness around sexuality. The final scene involves Ripley cutting herself I think on the newborn cutting herself on the newborn and using her acidic blood she throws it at the porthole on the ship and since they're going through the upper atmosphere

of Earth at this point the pressure from outside sucks the newborn against the window and basically turns it inside out as it is sucked with pressure through this tiny tiny hole in kind of a visual scene that I quite liked I like this final scene of the grotesquery of the newborn being sucked inside out

I think it's a pretty cool image I think it's worth a shout out to the sound design in this as well Right, because I think something that really adds to kind of like the intensity and horror of this whole process is the screaming by the newborn, and that is pretty nasty stuff. So I think visually it's great, but I think the sound design here deserves a bit of a shout out here as also. Yeah, totally. And like I just quoted from Cavana, it's doing half-articulate sounds, so it's almost human. it's almost making English words

but it's yeah sucked inside out it is suitably grotesque I like the image Kavanee does not she says again it's Whedon's plot contrivances

and that wouldn't happen I'm a bit more generous about it I mean the actual the actual process of being sucked out of the window yeah I mean okay it probably is a plot contrived but that's a fairly you know the concept of kind of you know explosive decompression whatever like that's pretty well established

in, you know, sci-fi cinema at this point. Like, yes, that's not really how it would work, but, like, let's not get all Neil deGrasse Tyson about it, right? Exactly. I think where there is a plot convenience, I'm surprised this is not the thing that's mentioned about it, is we probably have the first and only example of check-off's acidic blood here, you know, because basically it's established way early on in the film that this is something that Ripley has picked up as part of this genetic splicing, and I think

it's during the basketball scene, like, very early on. She gets a cut or whatever, some blood drips on the floor, and it fizzes through the floor like the original Alien's blood in Alien. Yeah, so, I mean, if there is any contrivance in the scene, it's that, right? Because, basically... Well, Kevany also points to this earlier in her analysis.

Just as a weird thing, it does not make any sense that she has acidic blood going through her human circulatory system. Well, no, but I mean, you know, the entire... It's a sci-fi film. well it's more a case of none of this makes sense right yeah so I'm not going to take issue with that

even the way that the cloning works in this idea of genetics basically this speaks it like the place to film in its in its time right and also I'm kind of post rationalising here a little bit because I was only you know like what 11 years old at the oldest when this came out but like this is around

about the time of Dolly the sheep and all that right so clothing yeah medical marvel dolly the sheep yeah right so this is a bit where cloning is kind of like a bit of a hot topic and it's like you know it's like you know it's it going to lead to science gone mad and this sort of thing and unintended consequences and all the same way that we kind of like we're doing with AI and surveillance technology now it would be kind of like you know the predominant thing that would would pop up a lot back then so in terms of like taking that and extrapolating it out to kind of ridiculous contrive sci-fi scenarios you know I'm okay with that like that you know it's that That's fine. Is that really how it works? No. But it's not the sort of thing where I think it's one of the few areas of the film where it doesn't over-explain things. And I think it's probably better for it. I don't think it really matters. I think where the convenience comes in there is that particular thing leading. As soon as it happens, right, it becomes thuddingly obvious that the only reason that they introduce that concept at all is so. this could happen. It's for this moment, you know? And basically the fact that it doesn't

make sense has been overlooked to allow this to happen, right? If it was just kind of like one of these kind of like weird little aside things to kind of like paint a picture of how this is not Ripley and it's this weird, you know, irresponsible cloning process that leads to unintended content, fine.

You know, fine. It doesn't have any real impact. It's more kind of like creating the general tone and attitude to the process that has created these creatures. But the fact that it's been introduced to in order to set it it's just

it's another one of these things where it's just so thuddingly contrived that's the problem with it not necessarily

the actual mechanics of would this actually work in a scientific context it only works because they need it to work

in a plot context exactly yes so the newborn is sucked out the window and the crew

Ron Perlman and the other guy managed to get control of the Betty to keep it from crashing into the Earth. I believe there's a shot of the Erega crashing into the Earth with presumably devastating

consequences. It sounds like it. With the force of several nuclear bombs, but let's not worry about that. Because the film ends with Winona Ryder's character and Ripley standing on the cargo bay of the Betty, looking out on the clouds of Earth,

a pink sunset. They've done it, they've saved the Earth, That's supposed to be symbolically important, but like I say, there's no indication that Ripley's ever even been to Earth or cares about it. And in fact, the last line of the film is Ripley saying, I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm a stranger here myself. And the film closes on those lines. There's a deleted scene for the special edition that Junet put together, not his director's cut because he says he prefers the theatrical release. But there's a deleted scene where they go to land on Earth. and look out over a ruined apocalyptic wasteland with the Eiffel Tower kind of ruined in the

background and it's a bit Planet of the Apes and I don't see that it adds anything to the film thematically so I can see why they cut it yeah no they wouldn't and as I wrote my um my final note on the film as the film was closing with those lines from Ripley and my note just says I alluded to this on Twitter around the bit of the time I watch this. My final note on this is just good God, what a lot of shite. Which basically some do it. Look, you know, there's, you know, films, as I keep banging on about it all the time, social media, they don't exist in good, bad binaries. There are things this film does well. There are things this film does, which are interesting. Overall, I do think it's a lot of shite, to be honest.

Yeah, I don't think it works. And we've talked about the combination of Whedon as scriptwriter and Junae as director coming into conflict. I think an awful lot of why this doesn't work has to be laid on the script. Because I did look back at the original screenplay. And, well, Whedon sort of disavows criticism of his work on this. There is an AV club interview that Tansy Gardham, very kindly sent me where Weeden talks about

his role on Alien Resurrection and his script and he's specifically talking around some of the lines in X-Men that he wrote that he didn't like how the actors delivered them and his excuse for why this film is the way it is because of the direction

and because of the way the actors said his lines he thinks that his script was fine but it was delivered badly. Which is quite the... I mean, what I will say is, I don't think either of these things... We spoke about it earlier, right? It's one doesn't jive with the other. What I will see, right, is neither of these things independently,

and I'm talking about Junet's direction or Weeden script, neither of these things really work as an alien film, right? They could theoretically work as a sci-fi film, sci-fi series. And, like, Whedon has done sci-fi work, which works. I'd rather like Firefly, right? I think that's a, I think that's a good series. But, you know, you think about things that, like, we're saying, you know, they didn't deliver the lines correctly, right? And they did it wrong. They did this wrong. They did it all wrong. And the actual thing I've got here is, what is it? They executed it in such ghastly fashion as to render it almost unwatchable.

Well, my question to him would be, the line, who do I need to fuck to get off this ship or boat? I can't where it was, like, who do I need to fuck? What were you looking to achieve with that exactly, Josh? Like, you know, in what way was that meant to be delivered that actually added to the film? Yeah, I think that's proper, you know, Harrison Ford to George Lucas. You can write this shit, but you can't say it. Yeah, exactly, right? So there's that thing, and it's just, in his defense, to an extent, I do think there's ways in which Junet approaches certain things that doesn't work, right? I mean, I think so. Like, a lot of the things, like, Zena Morse popping up, like, jacks in the box to, like, pull people away. That, like, that doesn't work to me. It's too, it's too goofy, right? And that doesn't, you know, that wouldn't, or at least the way in which it's done, that would not really come from the script, the way it's presented, right? So it's not independent, you know, it's a, but the idea. And I think before, before kind of like all this stuff about Josh Whedon being an asshole was basically fully confirmed and out there in the public domain, I think there was a certain, you know, tendency to excuse his scripts, to be honest, right? Because he's written very successful films. And

frankly, there are parts of it, you know, in terms of like his writing approach, when it works for the film. I have quite liked it over time, right? But I think there has been a tendency to excuse him. So kind of like people will look at the things that he's, you know, given uncredited rewrites on, being asked to punch out and say, oh, you know, Jill Sweden, you know, like, you know, quippy, you know, writing genius, right? So I think there has been the tendency to actually look at it and think, oh, well, it must have been this, because Joss Whedon wrote it, it was like, no, it's a shit script, I'm sorry.

Like, you know, did the direction prove it? No, was the direction the right approach for that script? No, I don't think it was. But if, like, I think, if you'd given Danny Boyle this script, it would still have been a shit film. You know, like,

any of these other various directors that, like, were attached to at any point in time, with that script, it still would have been at best, a weird, confused film. So no, it's not about, you know, that quote, it was just, it drips with arrogance that just rubs me up the wrong way, because it's not, I don't think, I think, in particular,

and I'm thinking about the things that we've said during this episode, if you're criticising this in good faith, right, there are problems with both, and Whedon's script is one of them, right? And I think, you know, in the position we're are in terms of, like, his public perception. It would be very easy to lay everything on his script, right? And I don't think it, you know, I think it does some things okay. I think it's, you know, it's not terrible, but it's not good. It's not good. And it has, you know, it has deeper problems that you've alluded to in terms of how it actually kind of like engages with its female characters and things like that, which I think

are deeper rooted things in some of his work, really, right? But it's just a case of, it's not a good script. You could give this script to any of the talented directors who have made good alien films and it still would not be good. Yes, I agree. I think

there's a lot in that conflict between the writing and direction, but I don't think it's a good script. I think it's a misogynistic script. That simply does not work. So the last point I wanted to raise that I haven't managed to slot in anywhere else, because it's not present in this film, is the franchise's recurrent themes of capitalist

hegemony, which have been present throughout aliens and alien free. And I just want to note that they are completely absent in this film. The company has been replaced by a fairly generic government body called the United Systems government. It's 200 years since Alien Free. The script specifically states, it's not in the actual film, but the script specifically states that Wayland-Eutani went under. And the screenplay says, it went under decades ago, bought out by Walmart. And it's a very weed and touch, a very weed and joke that Walmart still exists all this time in the future, that I hate, I just hate it. Trying to be clever, it doesn't work, I don't like it. But yeah, all the ideas of capital

hegemony are not in this film anymore. I think to move on to our next film, I think maybe they get picked up in Alien versus Predator. I don't really remember. The funny thing is though, I mean, I think if they'd wanted

to keep that going, they could have done it in interesting ways whilst maintaining the military aspect, right? So the concept of needing it of breeding creatures or bioweapons division, that has been mentioned in these films before. Well, yeah, it's from Gibson's script, essentially. And that involved the company.

And the thing is, I think you could have possibly had an interesting thread running in the background here about kind of like the relationship between the military and private enterprise and kind of like, you know, exploitation. And the point is you could have, there is actually the nucleus of an idea where you can take that theme of the films and push it in a different direction, right? one which kind of like still connect and make sense with the previous ones but it is actually doing something new because like or not I think at this point if you did a fourth film

where once again it's kind of like you know this company exploiting its workers it's like yes fine but we've done this in this franchise before we've done this before we've done this with three different films at this point effectively right so I think it probably would have needed a new direction but I think the thing's annoying is rather

doing this kind of like faceless pointless thing where it's just like generic oh yes military, baddie blah blah blah they could have actually introduced something there and I don't think it would have required you know heavy emphasis in the script but I think it would have been

an interesting route to go down but I think it's really just another example of how in this film it's not really given a whole lot of thought right and this is the whole thing where I have problems with Joe Sweden's writing right

it can often be so light as to float away, right? And it's far more focused on quips, one-liners, and sometimes that works, right? In particular, I'm thinking, final, like, the way it kind of establishes characters and the way they react to things. And I think this is maybe why, for my money, his better work has been television, right, because that's given time to develop. But here, and like, your comment about kind of like, you know, Whalen Dutani being bought out by Walmart and that, like, throw awayness of that, that's a real example of how. I don't think he has engaged, certainly not in his writing. He is not engaged with the things that are being said with that kind of entity in the scripts. It's very casually tossed away in favour of a joke, right? And is it a funny joke? I don't know, maybe in passing, right? Is it sort of like, frankly, maybe he's a Twitter post, right? But as something to hang a film on, no, it's not. And I think, I think in doing that, you remove a lot from your,

film, a lot of the things that you could potentially look at with that. Yeah, it's a quippiness that shows he hasn't engaged with the actual threat of this kind of corporate hegemony, that he hasn't considered corporations as this kind of existential threat in the same way that they are in alien and aliens. Yeah, he's not engaging with the idea of the kind of like the monster as almost a metaphor for the monstrous techniques of employers and private industry, right? The things that they will deploy in order to get more out of their resources and human resources, right? He's not engaged with that.

It's just purely about the cool sci-finess of the creature and how that's a threat. It doesn't really go deeper than that. On that, anyway, I mean, you could argue, kind of like, there are things he deals with and kind of, like, you know, femininity and all the rest of it. you tries to. I don't think he does very well, but you could argue you try to engage with that, but this, like, slightly more depersonalised concepts around, you know, capitalism and exploitation. No interest in it. No interest in it whatsoever. So we have reached the furthest point in the timeline of the Alien franchise.

Like, this is the latest point for the quote-unquote canon films. But it's worth noting that the kind of extended universe of alien accepts this as canon and also completely undermines it. It says that Whelan Dutani secretly went under and was actually just in hibernation planning secret things

under the auspices of this government and so after Alien Resurrection in the comic books or novels or whatever they get into Whelan Dutani just is back. There's also something quite, having reached it kind of like the furthest point in chronological time with the series. There's a certain irony in this

when we're then get onto the next film, right? Because the entire point of the final act of this film is we can't allow these things to get to Earth, they'll destroy Earth, right? We can't allow them to get to Earth. And the very next film, right? I don't think it's a spoiler

because it's very obvious from the set up of the film Alien versus Redditor, which of course is not really considered canon, but it's set on Earth. They're just there on Earth, right? So actually, in reality, these things have been on Earth for hundreds of years, basically. Turned out.

Just a fantastic example of this series of films just facially undermining itself every single turn. So I just want to do a quick round of xenobiology before we wrap up. And I think there's quite a lot that we learn about the aliens in this film, not because I think they wanted to explore xenomorphillite physiology, but because the writing carelessly just has a xenomorphic. do whatever the plot requires of them.

So we learn that xenomorphs have inherited memories, passed down through the host, which kind of explains why young aliens are just able to crack on with their lives. Alien human hybrids, Ripley becomes a clone with acid blood, there's a lot of mingling of human and alien DNA. We learn that xenomorph soldiers can literally communicate and strategize. At one point they appear to be talking to one another. Xenomovs can swim. Xenomovs can set traps. Xenomovs can climb.

ladders. Then there's a whole thing with the alien queen with the human reproductive system that I'm not going to get into. I also find there's a lot of steam rising off the xenomorphs in this. There's more steam. I think there's more slime

like we discussed earlier. But there is a lot of steam. So of course it leads to a question are these xenomorphs are particularly hot or is it particularly hot environment and they're sweating? It's very It's very unclear, I think. It's very cold on the ship so they can see their breath.

We come to the end of this episode, and we come to the end of the Ripley quadrilogy. Sadly, we're coming to the end of Ros Cavanee's analysis, which have been so useful in understanding these films. At the end of the Alien Resurrection analysis, Roscaveney says, there's still talk of renewing the franchise, with both Cameron and Ridley Scott expressing interest

in making a film that would explain where the aliens came from and what created them. It's clear that Scott at least favours the idea that they are in some sense artefacts. Even more likely, says Cabinet, is a film of Alien versus Predator, which would combine these two franchises. It remains to be seen what new variations, screenwriters and directors will find to add to the subject matter and look created by the original movie. And that's where we're going into the Alien versus Predator sub-franchise. Which, as I think we mentioned on the intro episode contains the only, at the time of recording anyway, obviously, it contains the only film in this franchise that I've not seen, which is the second Alien versus Predator film. Same, same.

I think one other thing to just finish off on is I think this film is also one of the first ones where I feel like Hollywood gets into unintentional ironic titling of films, you know? So you've got Alien Resurrection, which kills this franchise Stone bit as dead as anything. a resurrection. And I think the biggest offender in this is another James Cameron associated franchise is Terminator, right? Once you get past the second one. So Terminator 3, rise of the machines. It was not a rise. This also killed at Stone Dead that they went to a different direction. Terminator

Salvation, which was also so terrible, it was anything but then they followed that up with Terminator Genesis, which again was a further death of the franchise. So this is a beautiful early example of ironic Holly would titling, basically. Yes. Yeah.

Again, the Alien franchise setting the template for blogbuster films to come. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I think it is interesting where it goes from here, right, just to kind of like set the scene for our next episode. So I'd mentioned kind of like at the end of this, this is kind of like, it's still at the tail end of this kind of era

of the film starred. And basically the main marketing point for this really is that, you know, Sigourney Weaver's back on board. And we're still in that, you know, that era where that's the draw. we now start to move in to this era, right? And there's quite a time jump now between this film and kind of like the next one that we'll talk about Alien vs.

Predder, where we start to get into this idea of like studios really looking to look at what, the age of the IP, right? When they look at what IP they have and start mixing it and rejigging it and rebooting it and doing different things with it in this desperate attempt to just have something which is recognisable, right? Because this idea of the movie star is kind of going out, And we're now into the idea of kind of, you know, just some sort of thing that you can latch on to is familiar.

And that becomes the draw. And I think that is the next one, which we'll talk about more when we get to it, is a good example of that new year we're moving into this concept of mashing things up and reusing IP and using these things to create something, which is both unique but also incredibly repetitious. Indeed, so next month we will be discussing 2004's Alien vs Predator directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, the first of the Alien versus Predator films. You can find it on Disney Plus in the UK, where I believe all the alien films are, presumably somewhere else in the US and elsewhere. Please follow us on Twitter at the Xenopod. Give us a retweet. Subscribe to the Xenapod on all your podcast platforms.

There's more show notes and content warnings and stuff on take1 cinema.net. And we'll leave it there. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. We'll end by saying if they sent anyone out, it'll be here where the meat is. Game over, man. It's game over. You know,