Alien Franchise

"Archie Renaux - Tyler"

"This is the cryo-log for the mining holo Corbelan. I set course for the Yvaga system without knowing if I'll ever reach it, or what fate is to find me. But, whatever comes, I'll face it. This is Rain Carradine, last survivor of the Corbelan, signing off."

"Tyler: Right, take a good look outside the window 'cause, the way I see it, we're never coming back."

"Aileen Wu - Navarro"

"Forgive me. I've been nothing but a burden to you. Today, I can finally help. And you won't see me as a child anymore."

"Die, motherfucker!"

"I'm an ND-255 Weyland-Yutani synthetic, originally bought for mining and safety tasks. You guys call me Andy!"

"I can't lie to you about your chances, but...you have my sympathies."

"Spike Fearn - Bjorn"

"Daniel Betts & Ian Holm - Rook"

"Navarro: Please don't let me die."

"You will be free to continue to Yvaga together, and I'll return to Jackson. And stay in Jackson. That is, assuming we make it out of here alive."

"Andy... are you there?"

"Is it as easy as you're making it sound, this plan of yours?"

"Listen to me -- you'll die in here. That's not in the best interests of the Company. Or mine."

"Did you hear about the claustrophobic astronaut? He needed space."

"Get away from her. You bitch!"

"This is a much-needed and well overdue upgrade for humanity. We simply cannot wait for evolution anymore."

"Cailee Spaeny - Rain"

"Isabela Merced - Kay"

"Trevor Newlin - The Xenomorph"

"Robert Bobroczkyi - The Offspring"

"David Jonsson - Andy"

"Tyler: Is that all you got?! Is that all you got?!"

"Mankind was never truly suited for space colonization, it's simply-- It's simply too fragile. They're too weak. The work of this station aimed to change that. The perfect organism, that's how we should refer to human beings!"

"Listen to me -- humans go through too many emotional stages before accepting the cold, yet rational, sometimes hardest path. You must help them. You must help them!"

"As Hollywood movies go, it's a reasonably involving divertissement about genetics and Philip K. Dick-borrowed themes exploring what it means to be human. It satisfactorily recycles the great surprises that made the first movie so powerful. And most significantly, it makes a big hoot of the whole business. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who co-directed the otherworldly "Delicatessen" and the Terry Gilliam-like "The City of Lost Children," indulges his taste for dark, bizarre humor and surrealistic sets. And his vision gets the full-throttled boost of Darius Khondji, the brilliant cinematographer behind "Seven" and both Jeunet movies; and visual effects geniuses Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis, who are responsible for the visual wonders in "Death Becomes Her," "Jumanji" and "Starship Troopers." "In space," went the original "Alien" advertisement in 1979, "no one can hear you scream." But in "Alien Resurrection," that slogan has evolved: In space, no one can hear you laugh."

"What’s still jarring about Alien: Resurrection is its tone, which departs entirely from the other movies in the series. Perhaps meant as a reaction to the unremitting gloom of Alien 3, Resurrection is shot and acted like a black comedy. Dan Hedaya offers up one of the most scenery chewing performances in any Alien movie as General Perez, and when he’s finally silenced by an alien’s extending inner jaws, he expires with crossed eyes."

"The much-maligned last part in the Alien quadrilogy should be approached as the comic-book actioner that it is (only Slate’s David Edelstein seemed to recognize the film’s ridiculous allure at the time of its release). Jean-Pierre Jeunet was brought on board by the suits at Fox to give Alien: Resurrection the look and feel of his overrated The City of Lost Children. That he did, but with a lot more laughs. Two-hundred years after Fincher’s Alien³, some company has resuscitated Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) as a human/alien hybrid that combines the best and worst attributes of the old model. The new and not-so-improved Ripley has the same touching mother instinct and sex drive of her predecessor, but she’s also considerably more jaded. Weaver gets to deliver one humdinger after another, evoking Tallulah Bankhead in a sci-fi version of Lifeboat when she wails, “Who do I have to fuck to get off this boat?” Not much has been written about the similarities between the film and Romero’s Day of the Dead, but they’re impossible to ignore: the nature/nurture debate (Ripley versus the docile zombie Bud) and the ego of a military operation under attack. Of course, Alien: Resurrection is nowhere near as sophisticated and profound as Romero’s classic, but it’s still every bit as fun. As General Perez, Dan Hedaya spearheads a human retreat from the film’s military compound that’s remarkably orchestrated and ends with his goofy demise. If the film doesn’t bullshit around, the same can’t be said about Winona Ryder. As a closeted robot sent to destroy Ripley, the perpetually constipated actress declares at one point: “I can’t make critical mass.” How touching."

"Were you intent on making your mark on the Alien franchise?"

"The sheer contempt bred by familiarity has reduced what was, in its original incarnation, an intelligent, ground-breaking and thought-provoking film to a James Bond-style franchise. You pay your money and you know what you'll get and how you'll feel. Alienated."

"It's no secret, but if you've never seen the end of Alien³, look away now because here comes the spoiler - Ripley dies at the end of it. You can almost see her muttering "Thank God" under her breath as she falls back into a molten lead sea. But! Using her DNA, she's cloned and brought back to life, now with some rather scary alien attributes. Stick her in a ship full of aliens and off we run once again."

"The result is a brisk action comedy that functions like a sci-fi reworking of The Poseidon Adventure, as the film’s survivors make their way across the damaged Auriga to the safety of the mercenaries’ ship. There are several set-pieces that are high on visual impact, but low on tension, including an underwater scene with swimming aliens, and sequence involving two characters dangling from a ladder. If it wasn’t an Alien movie, Resurrection could easily be regarded as a piece of light, disposable genre entertainment. Its direction is sure-footed, and Darius (Seven) Khondji’s cinematography produces some occasionally beguiling images. But taken as a fourth chapter in the Alien canon, Resurrection seems horribly out of place, its tone at odds with the other three films. That it’s entirely without shocks is forgivable. Neither aliens nor Alien 3 replicated the palpable sense of horror present in the first film, but the lack of tension is a far greater problem."

"It’s almost as if the pic is afraid to enter the darkened rooms whose doors it keeps opening, though if it had, a truly original movie could have resulted. As it is, the finished film shows many signs of creative push and pull — Whedon’s original script was extensively changed during production — from unexplained ellipses in the plot’s early stages, through dialogue that is surprisingly jokey and unelevated (considering the themes at play), to a storyline that seems unwilling to stray far from the action. In addition, the key relationship in the picture, between femmes Ripley and Call, has little chance to realize its potential and provide a badly needed emotional hook for the audience. In every respect, this is a cold movie that, even at the very end, fails to provide the sense of emotional release that the others in the series all managed to deliver."

"As a series of action set pieces, the movie is frequently gripping and always highly watchable. In one extended section — geographically reminiscent of “The Poseidon Adventure” with its underwater swim and vertical climb — there’s a real sense of claustrophobia as the beasties pursue their human lunch underwater, and the “Goldfinger”-like demise of the final alien is a typically imaginative tour de force. Editing by Jeunet regular Herve Schneid is especially tight (pic is the shortest of the quartet). Darius Khondji’s lensing, aided by the silver-added ENR printing process, emphasizes deep blacks and soft ochers, with flashes of electric blue supplying visual relief. Nigel Phelps’ production design crosses geometrical sets and clangy brute iron with the Victorian-industrialized look of Jeunet’s own “Lost Children.” Whedon’s script injects some of the rough, testosterone humor of “Aliens” into a story that tries to build on the cross-species subtext of “Alien3.” However, when the movie strays into weirder territory — where, one feels, Jeunet’s heart really lies — there’s a growing feeling of inadequacy. Pic’s interest in Ripley’s split, half-human personality and her maternal bond with the Queen leads to some of the most intriguing — and cheesiest — stuff in the picture, but overall come off more as exotic inserts than fully assimilated sequences. Upside moments include the discovery of a horrific lab (straight out of “Lost Children”) and Ripley’s late-on “embrace” of her fearsome offspring; downside is a laughable Newborn that all but blows the pic’s finale."

"Weaver, admittedly, is excellent in the latest Alien outing and remains probably the only credible female action lead. The film also puts an interesting twist on the steely bonds of motherhood and makes some rather obvious comments about the perils of genetic engineering (when will those dratted mad scientist types ever learn?). But about half-way through a film I desperately wanted to like, I found I had become bored. And that is the one crime against film-making I can-not forgive. Here we were, once again, on a gloomy spaceship, with a rag-tag band of stock characters being picked off one by one by creatures that once were terrifying but now are mere caricatures. There are only so many times you can be scared by grasping claws dragging people through metal-grille floors, those tell-tale patches of slime (gasp, an alien was here!), those snapping, ratchet choppers embedding themselves in yet more flesh. How often are we supposed to cheer as the heroes narrowly escape, or the chief nasty gets sucked into the void? For most of the film, I was more scared of the sheer size of Sigourney (I'd give her a 9.5 on the buff-o-meter, compared to, say, a measly six or seven for Demi Moore in GI Jane) than her multi-toothed nemeses."

"Of course in the latest chapter it's not the same old Ripley who reappears. The resurrection in the title refers to the cloning by which she is involuntarily brought back to life 200 years (or 4 years in Hollywood time) after she hurled herself into an inferno in Alien 3 rather than let a ferocious monster gestating inside her live. The twist is that the reconstituted Ripley has strands of the alien species woven into her DNA, enhancing her powers and infusing her with a dark, sardonic ambivalence about clashing again with probably the slimiest monsters Hollywood ever devised, now vaguely her kin. Ms. Weaver says it was the reinvention of the Ripley character -- this spirit of nihilism, as she calls it -- that persuaded her to do a fourth Alien film after she had all but decided that three were enough."

"Whedon, whose "Buffy" TV scripts and whose dialogue for "Toy Story" evidenced some keen wit, shows none of it here, save for a couple of funny one-liners. His characterizations are similarly stilted. None of the heroes is sympathetic, which makes it hard to care whether they survive the inevitable attacks (Ron Perlman, as a chauvinistic space pirate, is particularly irritating)."

"Tiptoeing into weird Freudian areas and moments of grotesquerie new even to this series, "Alien Resurrection," the fourth entry in Fox's almost 20-year-old franchise, is a generally cold, though sometimes wildly imaginative and surprisingly jokey, $70 million scarefest that may prove too mixed a meal to scare up monstrous business among mass auds. French helmer Jean-Pierre Jeunet — the more directorial half of the duo behind “Delicatessen” and “The City of Lost Children” — has breathed new life into the series on several fronts, and proves no slouch in delivering the action set pieces. But the movie is held back by a lack of emotional engagement at its center and a pottage of half-assimilated, European-flavored quirks."

"From the instant those green-tinged posters were plastered about the winding corridors of MTR stations announcing the fourth instalment in the Alien series, each sighting sparked a flutter of excitement in my gut. Ever since those unforgettable scenes in the original film - the spidery creature erupting from the egg to force its deadly spore down an unsuspecting throat; the baby alien bursting through its victim's ribcage and scurrying slimily away with a malevolent shriek - I was hooked. It was an irresistible combination of suspense, space - where no one can hear you scream - and artist H.R. Geiger's twisted vision of a monster which combined phallic imagery, insect savagery and a concept from the wilder shores of Freud's psychological armoury, vagina dentata (a deep-seated fear of female sexual organs armed with razor-sharp fangs). The anticipation of Alien Resurrection, however, proved to be more thrilling than the event. Granted, we live in an age of cinematic cynicism, ruled by the multiplex and the multiple sequel. And I admit to having done my bit to contribute. If they keep churning them out until an 80-year-old Sigourney Weaver is blasting away at goo-oozing arthropods in Aliens 15, or a geriatric Mel Gibson is dislocating his shoulder in Lethal Weapon 22, I'll probably still be forking over my money to watch. Because art (and sequels) mirror life; occasional epiphanies, followed by frequent and generally doomed attempts to recapture them."

"In the beginning, it was supposed to be Dan Hedaya who got sucked out into space. His character, General Martin Perez, was originally set to exit Alien: Resurrection in spectacularly bloody fashion – his entire body ejected, limb by limb, through a tennis ball-sized hole in the space ship, Auriga. Effects company Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc, spent several weeks in 1996 solving the problem of having a body pulled apart realistically by the vacuum of space. Test footage released by ADI shows the painstaking process of researching and testing practical means of creating Hedaya’s death scene, which would have concluded with his character’s screaming head stripped of its skin until only a gaping skull remained. The results were almost comically grotesque and almost mesmerising to watch – so mesmerising, in fact, that Alien: Resurrection director Jean-Pierre Jeunet eventually decided that such a violent demise was more fitting for his movie’s most formidably villain, the Newborn, and not a relatively minor character. And so it was that the process of designing and testing began once again – this time on the practicalities of having a giant alien’s stomach rip open and its guts spill out on the floor before its skull shatters into countless tiny pieces."

"We are not alone."

"Pray you die first."

"Hell gives birth."

"It's been more than 200 years...The beginning has just started."

"Witness the resurrection."

"In the fourth film, Alien: Resurrection, we arrive at a world where moral values are erased. The only thing that matters for the characters in Jeunet's film is acquiring power over others. Set on a military research station, it's about a group of scientists who undo Ripley's death by cloning her so that they can extract the alien inside her. Their experiments include impregnating human test subjects with the creature, a singularly unhealthy procedure for the hapless civilians conscripted for that purpose. The scientists and their military taskmasters care about only one thing: having the alien's power. They speak about its beauty. Its purity. Ironically, the only character who has a sense of human decency and compassion is an android (Winona Ryder)."

"To be blunt, the "Alien" movie franchise should have died along with its lead character, Lt. Ellen Ripley, in 1992's "Alien3." Instead, greed has struck again, as producers have drafted a hip director (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, of "Delicatessen" fame) and an even hipper writer (Joss Whedon, creator of TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer") in hopes of reviving the film series. But neither man has come up with anything particularly original and instead fall prey to dumb horror conventions with this splattery sequel, which actually gives "Starship Troopers" a run for its money in the gore department."

"Jeunet — who is without his collaborator, French comic book artist Marc Caro — seems intent on conveying a weird, creepy atmosphere, but fails to keep the action moving, and he photographs things at perspectives that make it hard to see what's going on. And without a strong director, the actors are all over the place. Dan Hedaya plays things for camp as the station commander, while Weaver is even colder here than she is in "The Ice Storm.""

"[A]t least part of Alien Resurrection’s failure to win over even existing fans of the franchise can be attributed to the movie’s failure to nail down a definite, specific tone. The movie is too quippy and action-oriented (thanks to screenwriter Joss Whedon’s contributions) to be as authentically scary as Ridley Scott’s critically acclaimed original movie. 1979’s Alien was pitched as a “haunted house movie in space” for good reason, as it begins dark and only grows more brutal throughout its duration. James Cameron’s sequel Aliens, meanwhile, is a less grim affair, with the cast well-armed and better prepared to take on the titular threat. In contrast, in Alien Resurrection, the characters never seem to be in mortal peril; they’re toughened mercenaries and scientists developing bio-weapons, neither of whom seem ill-equipped to take on a threat."