PAUL: I’ve Been Waiting for This Since Mac and Me

Paul (2011) – Directed by Greg Mottola – Starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth Rogen, Jason Bateman, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Blythe Danner, Joe Lo Truglio, John Carroll Lynch, Jane Lynch, David Koechner, Jesse Plemons, Sigourney Weaver, Jeffrey Tambor, and Steven Spielberg.

Much like Super 8, PAUL is a love letter to Steven Spielberg, but unlike the J.J. Abrams film, PAUL isn’t a celebration of Spielberg’s films as much as it is a celebration of what the films meant to fans.

We see this in evidence right from the start as Greame (Simon Pegg) and Clive (Nick Frost) make their first pilgrimage to Sand Diego Comic-Con. These guys are fans and I appreciate how they’re fans without an over-fetishization of geek or nerd culture, which is a trend that has pretty much run its course. They are who they are, definitely fans but also definitely themselves, too. Clive is a writer and Graeme is an artist, and they’re not just visiting from England to experience SDCC, but to take a road trip through some alien hot spots in the American West.

We stay in San Diego just long enough to establish that these two guys love their sci-fi, and then they’re off in an RV. At a roadside diner where Jane Lynch works, Graeme laughs along with two redneck stereotypes (David Koechner and Jesse Plemons), who decide to interpret his joviality as hostile instead of friendly. When Clive comes out of the bathroom, the two rednecks make fun of Graeme and Clive for being gay.

Which they’re not, but which is also a recurring joke in the film.

Graeme and Clive hightail it out of there and accidentally put a dent in the rednecks’ truck on their way out of the parking lot. Later on that night, as they stop to take some pictures at another sight on their stop, they see some approaching headlights and wrongly assume its the rednecks. Fleeing the scene, they are quickly overcome by the headlights, and as the car whizzes past, the car wrecks and the boys stop to have a look.

The rednecks are the worst part of the film because they are never anything but their base stereotypes. Many of PAUL’s conflict are derived from pitting different social groups against each other: nerds, rednecks, the deeply religious, the bad ass Mr. FBI Man, but only the rednecks never reveal themselves to be something more. Luckily, despite their introduction as the film’s first antagonist, they are not major players in the movie.

At the scene of the accident, the two Brits meet Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), who solicits their help in him getting home. Grame proves himself the cooler customer, more willing to accept an actual alien in their presence, while Clive passes out and pees himself. From there on, we’ve got a combo buddy comedy/road trip with Paul the alien as the third wheel tag-along.

Paul is designed to be a mid-sized alien with very human tendencies: he likes to smoke and drink and swear, and there are times where this gets a bit much. There is some over-reliance on the comedy coming simply from Paul doing these things, as if an alien who swears is, in and of itself, inherently funny. Maybe if this film had come out in 1987, this would have worked, but now it already feels kinda stale – if Paul is intended to be funny, he needs to be funny irregardless of being a little grey alien with big blue eyes.

The most interesting aspect of this film is simply watching two different comedy camps come together. Up front is the Pegg and Frost duo as PAUL’s main stars and it’s co-writers, and in less-obvious roles are part of the Arrested Development family in the persons of director Greg Mottola, and actors Jason Bateman and Jeffrey Tambor. It’s a winning combo, with the deadpan-jerk humor of Bateman and Tambor blending nicely with the disbelieving-nice guys style of Pegg and Frost.

There is a third wheel here and that’s the inclusion of Seth Rogen as the voice of Paul. Mottola has a history with the Apatow/Rogen family, too, as he also directed Superbad and was a director on Undeclared, so Rogen isn’t completely alone here. Personally, I’ve had my fill of Rogen’s Big Loud Idiot type, and even though Paul doesn’t entirely fit that mold, Rogen’s voice keeps pushing the character in that direction. It’s hard to think of Paul as either intelligent or likable with that awful voice coming out of his mouth, but it’s certainly not enough to sink the character or the film.

Graeme, Clive, and Paul pull the RV into an RV park for the night, where they meet Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a one-eyed, over-protected daughter of a religious zealot. PAUL takes all kinds of shots at God and religion and Paul becomes the (celebrated) serpent in the Garden. When Ruth starts espousing her faith (and it’s not like she says, “I like Jesus,” because she actually says, “The world is 4,000 years old and God created it in six days.”) Paul loses his marbles and starts debating her from inside the RV’s bathroom, even though he’s supposed to be hiding. Paul ends up getting Ruth to turn away from her faith, in part because he shows her his entire life story through a mind link and in part because he cures her dead eye.

I have some issues with this – not as a Christian, because even though I was raised Catholic I don’t consider myself aligned with any religion these days, but just as a matter of logic. Simply because the Bible does not take aliens into account does not mean that their existence disproves the concepts of God and Creationism. I suppose the point here is that because Ruth is such a strict Christian that Paul’s ability to show her that the world is more than 4,000 years old becomes the crack that breaks the dam. It’s simplistic, but it fits the film’s general theme, which is that the group dynamic is more important than an individual’s personal issues.

I really like how PAUL picks up people as the film moves along. First, the road trip is about Graeme and Clive’s adventure, then it’s folds in the plot in getting Paul home, and then when Ruth is added, it folds in a subplot of self-discovery. It’s a really good script that’s only sidelined (like most comedies) by a weak joke here and there. The nice thing, however, is that PAUL is every bit as interested in telling a story as it is in simply telling jokes.

There’s plenty of nods to Spielberg (and the director’s voice even makes an appearance), but the funniest reference is when Clive (who feels like he’s blown it by passing out and peeing himself when he first met Paul) is trying to explain his actions to Paul and he says, “I’ve been waiting for this since Mac and Me and I feel like I’ve blown it!”

Mac and Me.

It’s a great reference because Mac and Me is widely recognized as a cheap E.T. knock off, yet that doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there who like the movie, which furthers strengthens the idea that Graeme and Clive are just regular fans.

It’s the combination of sci-fi love, camaraderie, and jokes that work better because they’re amusing rather than because they’re laugh out loud funny. I mean, how can you not like a movie that sees Clive referring to Paul as Short Round? PAUL hits all the right notes for a good time. It’s not hysterical (except for Jason Bateman, who’s very, very funny here), but it is constantly amusing.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS: Am I On Speakerphone?

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) – Directed by Drew Goddard – Starring Kristen Connolly, Chris Hemsworth, Anna Hutchison, Fran Kranz, Jesse Williams, Richard Jenkins, Bradley Whitford, Amy Acker, Brian White, and Sigourney Weaver.

Let’s be clear before you pass this italicized point: if you’ve come here because you’re looking for one of those reviews that don’t ruin the story, you’ve come to the wrong place. It’s a point I like to make from time to time that I write “reactions” more than “reviews,” which is never made more clear then when I review a movie like THE CABIN IN THE WOODS here in the infant stages of its public existence. Because, and I want to be perfectly clear here, I’m going to talk about the movie. All of it. Which means SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. Spoilers. Big ones. Like, the ending and stuff. You have been warned.

Oh, and if you just want to know if you should see it, then yes, by all means, go see it. Quickly. Before you accidentally hit the page down button and find out the entire movie is actually an extended opening scene for Avengers.

Follow along on Twitter.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is the movie that Scream 4 should have been. Not literally, of course, but instead of simply falling back on decade-old tricks, I wish Scream 4 had the inventiveness, fun, and frights of THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, a tremendously good time of a horror movie that’s much less about being some kind of meta-commentary on horror movies as it is a deepening of the horror movie mythos.

It’s really not even that, and I appreciate that CABIN isn’t trying to be a wholly deconstructionist take down of horror movies. CABIN is better than that by being less than that; never forgetting that it’s a movie here to deliver the thrills and chills, CABIN takes a standard horror set-up – the teenage, “cabin in the woods” story – and pulls back the curtain to reveal two additional layers of meaning in order to give us more of the stuff we came to see: blood, guts, frights, and cleverness.

(And Amy Acker. It’s always good to see more Amy Acker.)

CABIN posits that the teenage horror story is actually a deadly game being run by a corporate facility for reasons unknown. There are similar operations being run by facilities all over the world and head technicians Richard and Steve (Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) are ready for the big day. It’s a very clever move to show us the technicians right up front to let us in on the twist; CABIN could have given us the entire film from the college kids’ POV, but by showing us the Wizard at the same time we’re watching our characters move through Oz, CABIN adds a layer of fun to the proceedings.

It’s also a joy to watch two solid actors like Jenkins and Whitford blitz through this dialogue with the right sense of pace and detachment. Thrills and chills aside, it’s worth watching CABIN just for the way the characters talk to one another. Co-written by director Drew Goddard and producer Joss Whedon, Jenkins and Whitford have a wonderful sense of “9 to 5″ about them, that tells us that this job, no matter what it is, is just that – a job. When Wendy (Acker) joins them and starts in with her heightened nerves and panicky concerns, Richard and Steve just brush her aside and remind her the last time their facility had a failure it was because of the chemistry department.

“And what department are you in?” they ask rhetorically.

Cut to the apartment of college student Dana (Kristen Connolly), a cutesy redhead packing for a weekend trip to the countryside. We soon meet the rest of the participants: Jules (Anna Hutchison), the hot blonde; Curt (Chris Hemsworth), the super jock; Holden (Jesse Williams), the brains; and Marty (Fran Kranz), the pot-smoking idiot. CABIN displays its cleverness in a lot of subtle ways, like how the super jock isn’t a doucebag or an idiot, or the virgin isn’t really a virgin, or the nerd isn’t a dork or geek. What we’ve got is a group of college kids that feel like actual kids, and not types.

Even though the fact that they’re types is sort of the point.

They pile into an RV and head off for a cabin belonging to Curt’s cousin. They stop for gas in the middle of nowhere and run into Mordecai (Tim de Zarn), one of these crusty old locals offering scary foreshadowing and backhanded advice like, “You’ve got enough gas to get there. Getting back’s another story.” After sending the kids on their way, Mordecai calls in to headquarters to talk to Richard and Steve. Unbeknownst to Mordecai, Steve puts him on speakerphone so Richard and Wendy can listen in. Mordecai is even crustier and offers even more spooky foreshadowing with the technicians, but the three of them find him and his warnings completely hilarious, causing Mordecai to stop mid-warning and ask, “Am I on speakerphone?”

“No.”

“I can hear the echo!”

It’s funny stuff and CABIN continually uses the technicians to set or break the overall mood of the film. When the kids arrive, get settled, and start playing Truth or Dare, we cut back to the technicians to find them gambling on the outcome of the scenario. Both parties are feeling good but only the technicians know what’s coming. When a new security guard wonders how they can gamble when the outcome is rigged, Richard corrects him, “We just get them into the cellar. They take it from there.”

Ah, the cellar. Back at the cabin, Marty dares Jules to make out with the mounted head of a wolf. Jules works that wolf’s head with enough abandon it creeps a few of her friends out, but her display is to help illustrate how the technicians rig the game by pumping chemicals into the cabin to enhance emotions. Dana is up next and everyone knows she’s going to take Truth because she’s too inhibited to see any Dare through. At that moment, the technicians decide to pop open the door to the cellar, and Curt dares her to go down there.

So she does, and she’s soon joined by the whole group. Only Marty thinks this is a bad idea, but soon all of them become engrossed in various creeptastic objects. The music and the camera work pulls us in, too, and we can see that we’re on the verge of something happening, but what? Holden has a weird, round puzzle in his hands that he’s starting to rotate, Jules is about to put something around her neck, Curt has a conch shell, and Marty is looking at some 8 MM film. Before any of them can do their thing, however, Dana reads from a diary.

The assembled technicians and scientists go crazy, as the workers who bet on “Redneck Zombie Family” win the pool.

Back at the cabin, we see the Redneck Zombie Family come crawling out of the ground. Jules and Curt decide to go for a walk in the woods to fool around, and Richard and Steve manipulate the scene to allow for a shaft of moon light to illuminate a bed of moss for them to get busy on. Richard and Steve desperately hope to see Jules’ breasts as her and Curt go at it, and our beautiful blonde obliges.

Then the killing starts. Jules is taken out first by the Redneck Zombies and a bleeding Curt makes his way back to the cabin where he decides they all need to stick together. Not liking this turn, the technicians pump some gas into the cabin that gets Curt suggesting they all split up, which everyone but Marty agrees with. (Marty’s weed inhibits the effect of the pumped-in chemicals.) Splitting up, the technicians lock them in their rooms so the zombies can get at them one at a time. In his room, Marty knocks over a lamp and realizes the room is bugged, his paranoid fears about “puppeteers” proving true. Before he can tell the others, however, Marty is dragged outside and killed by the zombies.

The three survivors hop in the RV to escape, and there’s a freak out back at the lab because engineering hasn’t blown the tunnel that they need to go through to get out. Engineering says they never got the message, but Richard recovers in time, blowing the tunnel just before the kids are free of the domed killing area. (And here, I’m a bit confused because several times in CABIN there’s inference made to someone sabotaging the proceedings, yet we never have the culprit revealed. Is it really supposed to be Marty? In between killing the Redneck Zombie and this moment in the film, he purposely sabotages the communication between the technicians and engineering? Is the damage he causes to the tunnel communique just luck? It seems a bit specific and a bit of a tight fit timeline-wise. Or, it seems like too much random luck.) Curt tries to jump a gorge but he runs into that invisible dome and falls to his death. Holden and Dana flee in the RV, but a zombie kills Holden, sending the RV crashing into the lake.

Dana escapes, but back at the lab everyone is going nuts in a wild celebration, popping the alcohol and cranking the REO Speedwagon. The techs explain that it doesn’t matter if Dana escapes at this point because the virgin death is optional; all that’s required is that she suffers. We can see Dana getting choked on the screens behind the techs, but no one is even watching. No one is paying attention to anything until an ominous red phone rings. Steve answers it and is surprised to hear that someone survived.

Cut back to the lake and just before she dies Dana is saved by Marty. He leads her back to the zombie grave and they climb into an underground area. Dana can see a brightly lit room beneath them and Steve explains it’s an elevator of some kind. In they go to see who’s behind everything. Instead of the elevator moving straight down, it’s actually a prison cube and soon the two survivors are seeing all manner of monsters trapped in these cages. They realize that these monsters correspond with the artifacts in the cellar. After the monster zoo, they’re dumped into the main facility, where they have to fight security guards who are trying to kill them. They hide in a security room and Dana releases all the monsters. Appearing with the now ominous ding of an elevator arriving at your floor, monsters come pouring out of their cages in waves.

Blood, chaos, and death ensues.

Dana and Marty eventually make their way to the a circular crypt where the Director (Sigourney Weaver) explains what’s going on – each year young kids are sacrificed to the Ancient Ones to keep them from destroying the world. The Ancient Ones want a certain type of person sacrificed: the Whore, the Athlete, the Scholar, the Fool, and finally the Virgin.

“But I’m not a virgin,” Dana protests weakly.

“We work with what we’ve got,” the Director explains.

It comes down to this – to save the world, Dana has to shoot Marty, the Fool’s death needing to happen while the Virgin’s is only optional. Dana actually raises her gun to shoot Marty but then a werewolf attacks, more chaos ensues, and ultimately Marty and Dana decide to let the Ancient Ones have the Earth back.

Thanks?

I love how CABIN doesn’t back off this point, as at the end of the movie a giant hand of an Ancient One crashes up through the facility and destroys the cabin, signalling bad days ahead for humanity. While there’s plenty of allusions to other horror movies, CABIN doesn’t depend on the conventions of the genre the way the SCREAM franchise does. The largely unknown cast college kids (this movie was filmed prior to Hemsworth getting cast as Thor) are all good, but the real joy of CABIN comes from Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford, and the frequent cuts away from the cabin to check in with the technicians and scientists. Director Goddard masterfully switches back and forth, and reveals the deeper story of the Ancient Ones slowly.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS is a really smart, really funny, really bloody movie.

I love it.

ALIEN RESURRECTION: Must Be a Chick Thing

Alien Resurrection (1997; Theatrical Cut) – Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet – Starring Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dominique Pinon, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, Brad Dourif, Leland Orser, Dan Hedaya, J. E. Freeman, Kim Flowers, and Raymond Cruz.

I’d never seen ALIEN RESURRECTION before last night and I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw. Let’s be clear, RESURRECTION is not in the same league as ALIEN or ALIENS, but it is a definite step up from ALIEN 3 and it’s a pretty darn good film in its own right.

RESURRECTION is one of those movies that actually verges on being great, but falls just a bit short. It’s a fantastic Saturday afternoon movie and a could-be-better Saturday night film, but it’s also a film I’m going to watch a whole bunch between now and whenever the aliens come for me.

When I reviewed ALIEN 3, I complained that, “the corporation’s rescue squad shows up to try and take Ripley in because they still want the aliens for their bio-weapons division. Yawn. How about a film where they’ve got the aliens instead of yet another movie where this sits in the background?” Well, RESURRECTION delivers on that count, and full credit to director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, writer Joss Whedon, and co-Producer Sigourney Weaver for bringing something new to the franchise.

It’s that “something new” that initially sucked me into RESURRECTION. With the first two films in the franchise, I felt like I was watching something new, while ALIEN 3 felt a bit too much like ALIEN REDUX and a bit too much like the film sacrificed character for killing. (For those who didn’t read my review of ALIEN 3 – I liked the first half, and thought the film torpedoed it’s storyline at the midway point when it killed off its two most prominent secondary characters within minutes of one another.) One of the great aspects of a character like the alien is that you can give them to any director and get a fundamentally different look and different approach, while still getting an ALIEN movie.

RESURRECTION feels new all over again because Jeunet, Whedon, and Weaver have conspired to jump the story 200 years into the future. The Weyland-Yutani corporation is a thing of the past, yet their desire to commodify the aliens remains. RESURRECTION takes place on the USM Auriga, a military vessel led by General Perez (Dan Hedaya), where experiments are being done with the recovered DNA of Ellen Ripley (Weaver). Perez’s scientific team, led by Dr. Gediman (Brad Dourif) and Dr. Wren (J.E. Freeman), are cloning Ripley in order to extract the alien Queen that was growing inside Ripley during ALIEN 3.

It’s a perfect continuity grab to bring Ripley back to life. Even better, what we get isn’t pure Ripley anymore, but a Ripley that’s been infused with alien DNA, meaning she’s got heightened senses and strength, and only a vague memory of what’s come before. I love this move because it allows the film to bring Sigourney Weaver back yet again while still keeping the integrity of her sacrifice at the end of ALIEN 3. It also allows her to reboot the character, something she was keen on doing, and set up the future of the franchise.

And if there’s anything disappointing about RESURRECTION it’s not RESURRECTION; it’s that it failed to be profitable enough to launch a new trilogy. It’s a shame because, really for the first time in the franchise’s run, the ending of an ALIEN movie had me wanting to see where this specific story would lead in addition to simply wanting to see the aliens back again.

Doctors Gediman and Wren are using the Queen to birth a new generation of aliens that they hope to tame. There’s a great scene where Gediman is on one side of their glass cell and an alien is on the other and they’re clearly studying – even mimicking – each other. (In fact, it looks like Gediman is almost making out with the alien through the glass.) When the alien gets a bit unruly and tries to burst into the control room, Gediman hits a red button that blasts gaseous dry ice at the creature to stop it. When the alien makes a second attempt, it notices Gediman’s hand hovering over the button and stops.

Gediman is pleased – the alien is learning and won’t attempt to burst through the glass again.

Gediman is dumb – the alien is learning and will try to find another way out of its cage.

While the doctors are playing with their aliens, Ripley is kept locked in a cell where she likes to lay on the floor, trying to make sense of everything that’s happened, like why she has only pieces of memory, why she can feel the aliens moving in the ship, and why she has an ’8′ tattooed on her arm. They let her eat in the cafeteria (because every ALIEN movie needs a scene where she eats in a cafeteria), but they keep her shackled because she’s dangerous. She tells Gedimen and Wren that they’re foolish because the aliens will always win. She mentions the corporation, but Gedimen has no idea who she’s referring to. Wren fills him in on the Weyland-Yutani corporation, and in the deleted scenes, even makes a crack that they were bought out by Walmart. (Perhaps this is in the extended cut; I’m reviewing the theatrical cut because Jeunet says the theatrical cut was already his director’s cut.)

Weaver is really good here; for the first time in this entire run, she looks like she’s having a blast. Granted, none of the previous movies have been a whole lot of laughs and giggles, but Weaver was typically asked to play the serious heavy. Here, she gets to ham it up a bit and it really adds a nice change of pace to the film. There’s a terrific scene (which should be a horrible scene) where Ripley meets the crew of the Betty and she goes toe-to-toe with Ron Perlman to see who can ring the most cheese out of their dialogue.

Who’s the Betty? They’re a group of mercenaries that have transported some stolen bodies in stasis to the Auriga. They don’t know why they’re doing it (so the docs can sick facehuggers on them and use them as hosts to birth more aliens), but it’s still body theft, so it’s not like they’re a bunch of nice guys and gals.

The crew of the Betty is my biggest complaint with RESURRECTION, in that they’re not much more than their type: there’s the captain, the loud mouth, the guy in the wheelchair, the new girl, the captain’s lover, and the bad-ass killer. (Whedon has said that while his script makes it to the screen, the actors went and said his words all wrong, so perhaps this is where things went wrong.) In fact, the film even carries over one of my problems with ALIEN 3, in that it quickly kills the two main secondary characters: General Perez, and Betty captain Elgyn (Michael Wincott), leaving us with the rest of the crew. (Heck, we can toss in Dr. Gediman, too.) It’s a curious move, but at least RESURRECTION makes up for their loss by having Ron Perlman and Winona Ryder in reserve.

Johner (Perlman) is all loud and disgusting, while Call (Winona Ryder) is cutesy and shy. Call is downplayed during the opening scenes because she’s the newest member of the crew, but once they get aboard the Auriga she starts acting all mysterious. After pretending to be drunk, she makes her way to Ripley’s cell, where she intends to kill her and prevent an alien outbreak. It’s too late, of course, and besides, she’s no matched for our genetically amped-up clone.

The aliens get out of their cell by killing one of their own kind and letting its acidic blood burn through the floor. Awesome. And it proves that even in a film where you know what’s going to happen, there can still be some inventiveness and fun had along the way.

Once free, the killing cycle starts, which is where ALIEN 3 hit the skids. Even though Elgyn and Perez are killed, RESURRECTION does have some personalities to enter the void, and it gives us a solid narrative to push us through the latter half of the film. With the aliens out and the Auriga abandoned by the military force, RESURRECTION goes all Poseidon Adventure as the rag-tag group of survivors (Ripley, Call, Wren, Johner, wheelchair guy, bad-ass killer, captain’s girlfriend) must get back to the Betty to get the heck off this ship.

A bunch of short action sequences crop up along the way. There’s a really nice scene where Ripley confronts Clones 1 through 7 and a fantastic underwater chase scene which highlights the aliens in a way we haven’t seen before, and the action is generally visually, narratively, and emotionally solid. Unlike the murky ALIEN 3, there’s a really fantastic visual look to RESURRECTION; the Auriga may be mostly black, but it’s also a vibrant black that Jeunet breaks up with some great splashes of color (such as the blue underwater scene).

Ripley and Call start to bond a bit, especially after Call is outed as a robot. It’s a nice twist, but unlike Perlman, Ryder just can’t hang with Weaver. Whenever they’re on the screen together it’s like watching Toto battle the tornado – the pup might be cute but it’s going to get sent for a ride by that force of nature.

They’re making good time back to the ship when Ripley gets sucked down into a swirling mass of aliens.

And then I’m pretty sure she f*cks one of them. Or several. It’s hard to differentiate them.

It’s not like they have a Red Shoe Diaries moment (I am so out of touch with my pay cable, softcore porn references), but it looks pretty obvious that an alien sexes Ripley on her way down to the Queen. When she gets to the bottom, Ripley finds out that Gedimen has been kept alive by the Queen in order to explain to us that the DNA mixing that gave Ripley her enhanced abilities also gave some to the Queen – meaning, she can birth babies without laying an egg. The first of her new hybrid human/aliens kills her because it recognizes Ripley as its mother. (I say ‘it’ because originally it was supposed to contain both male and female genitalia.) It’s kinda a wretched looking figure, and while I appreciate what purpose it serves narratively, it’s not a great visual to have to look at.

Ripley gets to the Betty but so does the human/alien and Ripley ends up killing it by using some of her own acidic blood to puncture a hole in the window, which the human/alien is slowly sucked through into space. It’s a rather effective scene as the hybrid and Ripley are both emotionally torn over it; the hybrid feels like it’s being betrayed by its mother, while Ripley clearly feels some kind of bond back. They’re both hybrids, after all, confused about their place in the world, and Ripley now has an empathetic bond with the aliens thanks to all the DNA mingling.

Ripley gets to play mom with Call instead, as (in the extended cut) the Betty lands on a desolate Earth, overlooking a decrepit Paris. The Auriga crashes into the planet, killing (one hopes) all of the remaining aliens on board the ship. It’s a nice ending, and one that clearly sets up the possibility of another movie.

Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten it, yet, and at this point it seems increasingly unlikely. Instead of pushing that story forward, 20th Century Fox birthed the ALIEN VS. PREDATOR series and this June we’re getting the prequel that’s not a prequel that is a prequel that is Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.

RESURRECTION is kind of the forgotten film in the ALIEN franchise. The first two films are cinematic masterpieces, the third ends the trilogy, and the AVP material has the fanboy’s wet dream of two franchises colliding. RESURRECTION sits out there at the furthest point in the ALIEN universe, waiting to have its story picked up. I, for one, would love to see where it could take us.

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ALIEN / PREDATOR Review Index

ALIEN: A Survivor, Unclouded by Conscience, Remorse, or Delusions of Morality
ALIENS: My Mommy Said There Were No Monsters. No Real Ones. But There Are.
ALIEN 3: A Bunch of Lifers Who Found God at the Ass-End of Space
ALIEN RESURRECTION: Must Be a Chick Thing
ALIEN VS. PREDATOR: I Think This is a Manhood Ritual
ALIEN VS. PRDATOR: REQUIEM: Small Town America Kills Two Franchises at Once