Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: 200 years after Ellen Ripley aborts the alien threat on humans. Humans, clone, Ellen Ripley, and in turn, the threat of the aliens is reborn.
Now Ripley8 must decide which species is the bigger threat and try to Finish what Ripley OG tried to finish 200 years ago.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Fantastic.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Is that accurate?
[00:00:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. Spot on.
That's spot on.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: I. I run a quiz at the end of this, and I'm always like, okay, I gotta make sure that we talk about these things in some capacity. And you just hit, like, six of them in one thing. I'm like, all right, cool. We're good.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Just banging them out for you.
[00:00:41] Speaker B: Appreciate you.
[00:00:43] Speaker C: I just hope that you were able to work in a board.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: All right, all right. So starting this off, I have to ask, as we always do.
I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this one, but, like, run. What is your history with Alien resurrection? Do you remember the first time you saw it? Do you watch this one often? Do you watch it? When you go through the Alien movies, do you stop at 3 or 2?
[00:01:05] Speaker C: This. This was the second time I've seen this film, and I was really hoping that I would revisit it in a better light than the first because.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: Because I didn't see it in a great light the first time.
[00:01:21] Speaker C: It's. It's the movie in the franchise that I wish never existed. I wished as much as we dug on Alien 3 last week, links in the description below.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: Exclamation mark.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Movies.
[00:01:34] Speaker C: This one was able to dive underneath that low bar and have room to spare.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: What about you, Will?
[00:01:44] Speaker A: You know what? This one's a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, you guys.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: Oh, we know it's bad if he likes it.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yeah. I'm notorious for enjoying bad movies because.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Does that mean you see this one a bunch of times, or is this just like you watch and enjoyed it?
[00:01:59] Speaker A: You know what?
[00:02:00] Speaker C: This.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: I may have seen this one just as many times as the OG oh, wow. Yeah. And part of it is just, like, it was always on reruns on, like, TV and stuff, whereas the other ones, I didn't find that to be the case. And so I think I just happened to see it more. And it's just such a hilarious movie that I.
I just stop and watch it because it's funny to me.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Fair enough. Fair enough. There is a very real possibility that this is the first Alien movie I ever saw because I was pretty late coming to the party on these ones. I don't remember when I first saw Alien 1 or Alien.
So that's the only, like, wild card. Like, I. I probably saw bits and pieces of one and two before this one. But, like, from beginning to end, this is the first one that I saw back in, like, 97, 98, whenever it came out on VHS.
I can remember a buddy coming over and us playing, like, Mario Kart and watching this on a New Year's Eve or something like that.
And I don't remember much of the plot from then, but, like, things like the alien melting the floor and that's how they escaped from the cage was something that I absolutely remembered from this franchise, as well as the alien spitting. And so I kind of thought that was something they could just always do. And now going back through 1, 2 and 3, it's like they could. They never spit. And, in fact, it doesn't even make sense in this movie that that happens. And we'll get to that later on, I'm sure. But it was just one of those, like. It's so weird what was ingrained in me as part of the Alien franchise. That isn't until, like, this movie, which is arguably one of the worst ones, the aliens swimming. Again, they look far more animalistic, which is, again, how I think of the aliens. I don't think of them as standing upright on two legs and walking around like they do in Alien 1 and 2. I think of them as, like, kind of being more sleek and. And stylistically that. So it's really interesting to go back to be like, oh, that's why I think this. Oh, that's why I think this. Which was kind of interesting.
That being said, I gotta say, I'm with Will on this one. I liked this way more than I liked Alien 3.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. I didn't.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: You sound like guilty pleasure. Fair enough.
I'm putting words in your mouth. That's fair. Yeah. If you were here last week or if you want to go back and check the vodka.
I didn't like Alien 3 very much at all. I actually had a lot of fun with this movie. There are problems. There are a lot of problems. This is not a good movie, but it's a fun movie, so, see.
[00:04:19] Speaker C: Stephen in chat, says the movie definitely doesn't take itself seriously, but I felt that they did try to take themselves seriously, aside from maybe the general in the movie. He seemed a little bit just silly to me.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: He's a cartoon. He's a living cartoon.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: Right. But the rest of the movie seemed like they were trying to take themselves seriously. Seriously. And that's so for Me, I couldn't do it. I couldn't just enjoy it as a. As a dumb movie, as a. As a bad movie. Like, with. What was it? The Predators?
That movie did not take itself seriously. I think we can all agree on that. We talked about it. And so when I went back in, I took Will's advice and, you know, don't take it seriously. Just enjoy it for a slapstick kind of movie. And I was able to enjoy it.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: A little bit more.
[00:05:04] Speaker C: This one. I tried that, knowing that it wasn't going to be something I enjoyed, and I couldn't. I was like, they're trying. They're trying too hard. And they should have just made this a spoof of itself. What, Dan, what do you think about.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Do.
[00:05:16] Speaker C: Do you really think it was. They took him seriously? Like.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I. I think they took themselves relatively seriously, and I think they did it.
I think they did it relatively well for what it is now. You got to remember this is 1997 when this movie came out, so the graphics are pretty decent for the time. I'm sure there's a little bit of CGI to touch things up, but it looked good. The aliens looked phenomenal. I thought. I. I didn't have a problem with any one of them. The space scenes looked way better than Alien 3 did.
You've got the military guys, Perez. General Perez was in a completely different movie. Like, he was being very cartoon villainy, whereas everybody else seemed like they were trying to be a bit more realistic and trying to play it a little more seriously. And I'm. I was pretty okay with it. Now, again, there are serious faults in this movie, but if you go along with it, if you go along with the ride, like, okay, so I've always said I'll go along with whatever your premises as long as you stick to your premise.
I think the fact that they could clone Ripley 200 years later when she melted herself in iron in this, like, ridiculous nowhere backwards planet is crap. That doesn't make any sense. But that's the story they want to go with, so I'll go with them on that. And the fact that it took them eight tries to get it right, I'm okay with that. Now, how did they get alien DNA to clone inside of her? And how did they make sure that it was a queen? That doesn't make any damn sense, no matter how you look at it. I'm not sure how they got DNA in the first place, but I have no idea how they got alien queen DNA from, like, a hairbrush that Ripley touched once. That doesn't, that doesn't jive for me. And there's some other things we'll get into later that don't really jive. But if you're gonna say no, we live in the future, like, like the first movie is 300 years in the future and this is 200 years beyond that. So we're like five, 600 years in the future from where we are right now. If you want to tell me that you can clone things from a single brunt of brush of hair, sure, I'll go with it. That's, that's the rules you're putting forward. Let's run. So once you get past that, then you're working this kind of just a fun sci fi romp where they're just running away from aliens. The humans feel powerful enough as opposed to like in, in 1 and 3 where they don't have any weaponry whatsoever. But not as powerful in say two where they're like fully armed military guys.
What do you think, Will?
[00:07:26] Speaker A: I don't like any of what you just said. No, I'm just kidding.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Well, then we're in our normal place.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: No, no, I actually agree with you. Alien 3. There's like out of nowhere an alien egg on the ship for no reason. That's the catalyst for the story to go forward. This one is. Yeah. They get DNA from the planet she was on when she was pregnant with an alien. So obviously alien DNA melds with human once it's inside of you. I guess so. So you can just pull an egg out of them. Who cares?
You just have to buy into that horrible concept. It is horrible. And then you just have to enjoy the ride. But the problem is it's not an enjoyable ride. It's just riddled with plot holes and horrible characters and things that don't make sense. They're breaking rules, which Dan hates.
So there's so many problems with the movie. And Ellen Ripley isn't Ellen Ripley, she's a clone. Which is fine. But I miss Ellen Ripley because she's the best character to come out of this whole franchise anyway. So there's a lot of problems, but there's a lot of fun.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: I do like that they specifically say, this is not Ellen Ripley. So the fact that she's playing a different character you're kind of okay with because this is not Alien. This is Alien Ripley slash alien. So she's a little bit faster, she's a little bit stronger, she's a little bit more aggressive, and you're kind of just like okay. Like if that's, if that's what you're going to put forward and say.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Is the, Is this character?
Okay, let's go with it. What happens?
[00:08:57] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty.
They do a good job of being like, oh, this is not the Ellen Ripley we know and love.
This is Sigourney Weaver playing a weird ass character. But because Sigourney Weaver is amazing, she's probably the best part of this movie.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: But.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: You were saying that, Brian was saying that this doesn't work. This didn't work out. And I don't disagree. I think the biggest problem with this movie came right from the beginning. We have Joss Whedon writing the script. And we all know how Joss Whedon writes. He writes light hearted comedies about a bunch of people, usually a group of misfits, and they go on their merry way. And that was paired with this French director, what's his name?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Jean Pierre Jeannot.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, who's more of a surrealist director and.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Much different take on scripts.
So they just don't.
I just don't think they meshed well at all.
And so it became a train wreck quite quickly. But I, my personal thought is I'm just not a huge Joss Whedon fan for one, but I just don't really think his style of writing fits in to an Alien universe.
And so that's why you got a train wreck here.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: That's totally fair.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: I'll agree with that.
The entire feel of this movie is completely separate from the entire franchise.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: 100%.
This is like the parody movie. Like you said, the Predators was like a parody of the franchise. This was like a parody of the franchise. But he.
[00:10:45] Speaker C: It even got up okay like, like it felt like a foreign made film about the Alien franchise.
And they just didn't have maybe the, the cultural context of it or something. Like it just felt completely different.
One of the biggest things that really set this movie apart for me was the aesthetics. Right from the beginning. You had those opening sequences during the credit of all that sinew and hair and skin and tissue. And it was disgusting. And that theme of grossness was throughout this entire movie. It didn't feel like an Alien movie. It felt like a disgusting monster movie.
And they just utilize the Alien name to do a monster movie. And they utilized Ellen Ripley's character to do a character with Sigourney Weaver, who was not Ellen Ripley, who just had an Ellen Ripley backstory. But she was completely different. She was given a different script to read that was a Different character. And the, the excuse they used was that she was blended with alien DNA.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:58] Speaker C: And, and throughout this entire movie there was this disgusting, gross theme that went through it. It offended me because it, it was hard for me to watch. It made me nauseous. Right. From the credits. That sinew and hair that we see throughout the whole thing. Then there's a sequence when she goes in and she finds one through seven. Right.
Lots of that to gross you out. I've never been grossed out in the franchise. That's never been the angle. It's always been jump scares. Horror, suspense.
Aliens in the dark. Right. Creepy, if anything. But it's never been disgusting. And this movie had a very disgusting aspect to it. That was the thing that bothered me the most.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: The Bishop scene in three, probably the, probably the closest. Pretty gross. Like just constantly rolling into his eye was getting me. I'm, I don't like things in my eyes. And that was kind of just standing there.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: I'm like, I'll give you that one.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: This scene could end right now, please.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: I'll give you that one.
But the, the whole movie had this different aesthetic feel, this different light to it, the different texture, a different theme to it. Everything was just slightly adjacent to what this franchise has been so far.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Sure.
Do you think that this is in, at, at its core a monster movie franchise?
I mean, up until now, I think Prometheus kind of changes the script a little bit. But up until now, is that not what the Alien franchise is?
[00:13:30] Speaker C: It's been a sci fi alien scare movie for me. I mean, we started.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: I feel like you're just using like slightly different terminology to say the same thing.
[00:13:39] Speaker C: I, I've never felt the alien was a monster. It always felt like a creepy alien to me. It always felt like this very foreign thing where when I think of a monster movie, I think of a hulking beast.
Right, okay. And, and in Alien, it was, it was not, it was a very foreign thing that was invading into your space.
[00:14:03] Speaker C: I don't know. And then of course, we go to a war drama in two, and then in three, they come back to some weird stuff too. But it's never been this monster movie. And at the end, when they, when they give birth to the alien at the end and it's just this abomination of both.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: We're gonna get there, don't you worry.
[00:14:21] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:14:23] Speaker A: I, I, I, I want to note a little bit too that I don't think Alien is a classic monster movie franchise. And that's why it has worked up until maybe now.
Alien, the first movie was the closest to a monster movie, but I'd say it's even more of a horror slasher film because monster movies are more usually like jump scare, grotesque. Like, I don't know, like we didn't.
[00:14:52] Speaker C: See much in Alien you don't see a lot.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: It was a suspense and thriller kind of scare you.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: And then I feel Aliens again was more of a war action and Alien 3 I feel was more of a drama suspense because of the, you know, run down prison and these lifers who are trying to redeem themselves morally and, and get on the right path, whatever have you. And then also the dark, you know, ending to Ripley's tragic story. And then Alien Resurrection comes through as like an action comedy. Like I feel like it did take a different genre route. It just wasn't successful because I don't feel like it fits in, in as well as the other genres that were touched upon in the previous movies.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: That's really interesting, I would argue.
I mean, okay, I didn't see as much of the comedy in this one. I think general presence, off base.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: You don't see the comedy in this movie.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: I, I think there's unintentional comedy, but I don't think like there, like what, what was a comedic line? Like, what was a line? You were like, ah, that was clearly interesting.
[00:16:02] Speaker C: Ripley's interaction with Paul, what's his face, the monkey looking face guy.
Sureman. Sorry.
[00:16:14] Speaker A: I mean he does act like a.
[00:16:16] Speaker C: Monkey in the beginning.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: Like he's. Anyway, she has that interaction with him playing basketball. The, the, the thieves guys, they're, they're a little bit kind of, you know, they got some sarcastic. Who are you expecting, Santa Claus?
[00:16:32] Speaker A: That's a comedic line, Dan, believe it or not.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: I don't remember that. But that's fair.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: There's, there's a lot of comedic lines in this movie. There's a lot of comedic sequences in this movie.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: Ellen Ripley, I would say there's far.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: More comedic sequences in two.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: I disagree. 100% disagree.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Really? You don't think that Hicks is a way funnier character than anybody in this?
[00:17:02] Speaker A: I think Hicks is a humorous character.
[00:17:04] Speaker C: Yeah, humorous and entertaining. But I think this one tried for some, some kind of jokes and stuff like that.
When, oh, when the androids drinking the liquor or something and, and she's like, oh, what is this? Battery acid or whatever. They've got like these like slight attempts to showcase how these people don't really take themselves seriously. Whereas in like Alien 2 you had the Marines who were interacting with each other. Super seriously kind of. Kind of joking around. I guess. I guess there's some similarities in both.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: What's Right.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Let's be honest.
[00:17:40] Speaker A: Okay. But like. Okay, okay. Wait, wait, wait. The whole.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: I think we're getting off.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: All I need to know is where it is and how to kill it. A super serious line.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: How about this guy with dual pistols pulling them out, ricocheting the bullets into the head.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: That was dumb as.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: That's a comedic scene. It's written comedically. That's. That is comedy.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:01] Speaker A: Did it play well? There you go. That's the problem. It doesn't play. And that's maybe why you don't think it's a funny movie. Because none of the jokes land. And that's why I find it funny. I don't.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: I don't think that's funny. I think that they actually think I'm dumb enough to believe that you could make a shot like that. And I find it insulting. I don't.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: And if the bullet goes through a helmet, that's meant to prevent bullets.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Most helmets aren't actually meant to prevent bullets so much as, like, shrapnel and such.
[00:18:30] Speaker C: Maybe if they bounced it off of five walls and then hit the guy or something where I absolutely know this is meant to be stupid. I felt like they were trying to really pull off that shot. And then he does it again later when he ricochets it off the the wall and back and blows up the eggs for no. I'm like, yeah, flamethrowers. Just set them all on fire and dunk back under the water. Why do you got a ricochet grenades around up there? Let's.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: It was just stupid, everything that they did. Maybe you thought it was funny clean. I just thought it was stupid. And I was insulted that I had to turn my brain off to enjoy this movie. And then even if I do turn my brain off and go, okay, whatever. Ricochet Rick over there is making all these crazy shots. I'm still grossed out by the aesthetics of it. I will say that the aliens themselves, when they weren't done swimming through the water, looked good. Even swimming through the water.
They looked okay in the water. It was definitely a CGI kind of thing. And whatever. All was dock points for that. When it doesn't. I want to blend cgi. Not just have a CGI monster, but whatever.
[00:19:37] Speaker B: I could have gone for the water being murkier so that. Yeah, you don't see them quite as clearly, but was okay.
[00:19:45] Speaker C: Because when you use prosthetic Aliens or animatronic aliens or whatever. They're always doing effects like shaky camera or steam or close ups so that you don't see the wires, you don't see the rickety things moving. You hide things like that. I think they should do the same thing with cgi because they're just not good enough with CGI to fool me. And so, yeah, murkier water would have been appreciated, make it hard for me to see. So I know it's swimming through the water, but my imagination is doing 90% of the lifting on the shot. And I think it would have been way scarier because seeing them swim through the water was like, okay, that's a cool CGI shot of them.
[00:20:19] Speaker B: But.
[00:20:20] Speaker C: But my imagination is going to do better than anybody at a computer desk ever could.
[00:20:23] Speaker A: Right, right, right.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair of almost literally every movie ever, though.
[00:20:30] Speaker C: Well, I think every movie ever should start merking the waters on their CGI shots.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Hey, fun fact, fun fact. They actually had to, had to add milk to the water because when they were originally filming, it was too clear to actually tell they were in water, so they actually had to murky it up with milk.
But they should have done more.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Yeah, fair.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Okay, okay, okay.
[00:20:52] Speaker B: So we talked about. Go ahead.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Here's my sum up of this movie, of how I felt and I, I felt audiences like Brian felt about this movie. And it comes directly from the movie. At one point, Ripley8 says, Let me get this quote exactly here, because it's so funny.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: She says, who do I have to fuck to get off of this boat?
And.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Also, this is a comedic line, Dan, in case you're not aware.
[00:21:24] Speaker C: Not to laugh at it too, but in retrospect, this is quite hilarious.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Cuts to Christy going like this.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Like, so disbelief. Like, what did this person just say? His face.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: I mean, that might have been me too, in my chair.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: His face says everything that every audience member was experienced while they watched this movie. Like 100% watch it back. That's what everybody, I feel, was feeling.
[00:21:49] Speaker C: I've got a question for Dan. Sure, Dan.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: Sorry, can I just. Can I get go with what Will just said in the.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: Okay. So that line really hit in a, In a this is awkward way. Like, that was like, this doesn't feel like Ellen whatsoever.
Sorry, high zero. Alien resurrection. That didn't feel like Ellen Ripley whatsoever. That line I felt very, very left field.
And then I thought, okay, but in three, her sleeping with the dude randomly also felt like it was pretty out of left field. So like, what do we really know about Ellen Ripley? Maybe this kind of. Maybe she is like, she lived what, like, original, actual Ellen Ripley was a minor on a ship out in the far middle of nowhere with, like, seven dudes and one other woman. Who knows what she's actually like. You know what I mean? Like, maybe also, this isn't actually real Ellen. So, like.
[00:22:36] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: I don't want to say I gave it a pass because I still was like, that was a dumb line. And that doesn't feel like something she should be saying.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: I don't know her that well, and I don't. This isn't her. So, like.
[00:22:46] Speaker A: Or a serious line.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Sure. It's comedic in. In nature.
[00:22:56] Speaker C: You brought up Alien 3 and how Ripley's character seemed a little bit out of pace with Aliens.
And now in. In Alien Resurrection, we have a drastic change to her character and how she acts. She's creepy. She's different, obviously, because she's blended with an alien. We now have Alien Ripley instead of Ellen Ripley. And so, Dan, in three, we talked last time about how we were kind of offended that.
Or at least I for sure was, that they killed off a lot of the gains that Ellen Ripley made from Aliens. They just. In the first opening sequence, in flashes of light, they just destroy everything we gained in the first. It was almost disrespectful to the first film.
And now in Alien Resurrection, I felt they took every aspect of the franchise and changed it by five degrees and gave it all a different slant.
Ellen's personality is now different. She's not the same character. We have a different style of Android that we find in it.
Everything looks different. Everything's a different color, a different cinema style for the film. The aliens are now different in that they can spit. They act a little bit differently, although they're still in touch with some of the other canon, like books and stuff, but especially when we get to the birth of the alien. That's all different.
Everything's a little different in this. And I. I felt it was kind of the same thing. It was disrespectful to the franchise to use all this and change it all in. In the way that they did. It didn't add anything to it. They weren't expanding it. They just changed it. Dan, did you feel that they were dissing on previous content or. Or do you think that they made changes that improved on this?
[00:24:49] Speaker B: So I got two trains of thought on this one. As I mentioned, this was my first Alien movie.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:24:55] Speaker C: So this kind of started a lot.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Of Ways this is getting back to what they're supposed to be. Like, okay. Like, no. Okay. First off, I have to say.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: It'S like, I'm defending this movie because it's more fun for me than if we're all just on the same page. I'm not saying this is a great movie by any stretch the imagination. Like, I'm saying this is better than three, but, like, it is not.
I will say it is better than three.
[00:25:18] Speaker C: It is not better than it doesn't.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: Hold a candle to one or two. And it is not a good movie. Let's just make sure that's 100 clear for you guys.
[00:25:27] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:25:28] Speaker B: That being said.
All right, let's go through your points one by one. We know it's not Ripley because that's what they say at the very beginning. Ripley died. They wanted to bring her back. They wanted to have Ellen.
[00:25:37] Speaker C: But as far as changing her in this way, did that bother you?
[00:25:42] Speaker A: That didn't bother me.
[00:25:43] Speaker B: Not really.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: It's a different character.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: I immediately, it's immediately entirely.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: You immediately know she is not ripley.
Of the three past movies, this is Ripley 8. This is a clone. And there is something completely different about this person.
It is a different. And I believe it's, it's, it's actually a good thing in this movie because it's makes this character, Sigourney Weaver's character, feel more like a drone. Out outcast.
No place, no home, nothing.
So I, I actually kind of liked that, even though it wasn't really well done.
But I, I didn't mind at all that this was not the Ellen Ripley we know and love, because I love the Ellen Ripley we know and love. And I accepted her death in the third superior movie to this.
[00:26:39] Speaker B: So I would say that it's kind of like going back a second, like Arnold schwarzenegger in Terminator 2. Like, you get the same actor theoretically playing the same role, but it is not like they're both Terminators. They're both sent from the future. They're both played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but they are vastly different characters.
Now, that's maybe not the greatest.
[00:26:57] Speaker C: I disagree. I think that is the exact same character assigned to a different task is the exact same same character.
[00:27:03] Speaker A: I feel, I feel the robot element kind of throws your.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: That might not be the best example.
[00:27:08] Speaker A: Metaphor off of there a little bit there. But yeah, I, I, I understand what you're saying.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: In the same kind of way where they're like, here's the exact same actor playing the same role, but this is why it's different. You go, okay, this is why it's different. And you move on with your life.
[00:27:19] Speaker C: Well, in your. In your. In your depiction of Terminator to Terminator 2.
[00:27:24] Speaker C: Which is head and shoulders over.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Alien Resurrection 100, I'm not arguing with that one right now.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: Comparing apples to shoes.
[00:27:37] Speaker C: I think that they took a character and put it in a different situation and made it very interesting, and I enjoyed that. And I feel like they took Ripley's character, threw it out the window, and just had Sigourney Weaver be in this one and gave it a new character, and it. A whole new character. I don't like where they went with it. I don't like what they did with it.
[00:27:59] Speaker C: Ripley, I think that they should have found a different way to introduce the aliens back into the story.
Just on a com. No, I don't want to give anything away here, but show hands. How many of you have seen Romulus? I'm just curious. Has anybody seen Romulus here?
Okay, no, we'll talk about it.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: Give it till January.
[00:28:19] Speaker C: We'll talk about it. Anyway, back to bring the alien back into the story.
[00:28:27] Speaker C: I just. I. I hated this movie from start to finish. The way that they brought these characters. I felt like they crapped on everything I liked about the franchise. I didn't like the direction they were trying. They didn't pull it off well. I found it offensive. I found. I found it. I found it offensive to me as a viewer. Will was able to find it funny and humorous. I just found like, they. They were treating me like I was stupid.
So maybe that's because I love this franchise too much.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: So out of curiosity, you talk about Alien 3 and how they took everything away from Ellen, right?
[00:28:55] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: So in Alien 1, she's trying to get back home to her daughter because she has to go back and celebrate her, what, 11th birthday or something like that. She's supposed to go back and celebrate that. And then in Alien 2, we find out that her daughter just passed away at the age of 86 or something. I. I don't remember the exact date, but just go with me on that one.
[00:29:10] Speaker C: That's right. And they gave it some comments.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Shut up and let me talk for 10 seconds.
So we start off Alien 2, where she's lost her daughter and pretty much the biggest thing that matters to her. Then in Alien 2, we gain potentially a love interest. We gain a new surrogate daughter. And at the end of Aliens 3, she loses both of those.
Beginning of this movie is 200 years later. She's died. Her surrogate daughter has died. The person she loved has died. Her actual daughter has died. Assuming she had a husband. It's died. And we're left with an Ellen Ripley who is not caring, unfeeling, and just, like, whatever the world can burn.
Doesn't that make sense for that character at that point? She has lost everything.
And it's not like, oh, I can just go back to, like, my old home. Everything is gone.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: It makes sense for that character. I just hate that they did it this way. Why not just recast a new character? It felt like they paid $20 million to Sigourney Weaver to star in an entirely new movie, and they just used the franchise's name and. And the character's name, and that was it. They should have just done a different movie and they could have saved some money if they.
You know, I. I don't.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: I don't. I haven't seen Prometheus in a long time. We'll get to that in a little bit. You're more familiar with this franchise than I am. Don't.
[00:30:27] Speaker A: The.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: My apologies. The Engineers. Is that what they're called?
They create this alien franchise. The alien species. Right.
[00:30:34] Speaker C: They don't necessarily create the alien species. They create an ooze.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Do they exist anywhere else?
Or were they on that one spaceship that crashed and got nuked?
[00:30:45] Speaker C: Do. I don't know the Engineers?
[00:30:48] Speaker B: No, don't. The aliens. The xenomorphs.
[00:30:51] Speaker C: The. The xenomorphs are specific to the goo interacting with our human DNA, not the engineer's human DNA. We go full circle later, but.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: But up until this point, we've only seen them on that one spaceship. Humanity has never interacted with any other capacity. There's been no lines of dialogue of how we could possibly go. Now, obviously, like, they created cloning for this when they could create something.
[00:31:17] Speaker C: In the franchise, we only know of the Engineers as that one fossilized dude in the big chair.
[00:31:23] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:31:23] Speaker C: And the eggs were beneath him in his spaceship. The spaceship was on LV426. And that's all we know in the franchise up to this point.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: As far as the other things you're mentioning, the. The. The androids are different. That makes sense. It's 200 years later. The ship looks different again. That makes sense. It's 200 years later. Think of how much cars have changed in your lifetime. You're 40 years old.
[00:31:45] Speaker C: I don't understand. I don't dis. Disagree with how they went about it. All of that makes sense. Ellen Ripley's character changes. All of this makes sense. And they rewrote it into the plot. I just hate the way they did it.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: I can't change your mind how you feel. I'm just saying, like, it's. It's not super left field for me.
[00:32:06] Speaker C: Every. No, everything that was cool has been changed drastically. 200 years of evolution changed drastically. And they didn't build on anything. They just destroyed it all and rewrote it all. And they used the name of. Of the franchise and they used a Sigourney Weaver as an actress and. And they built something that was different from what I liked and enjoyed. And they made it disgusting with this bone and sinew and hair grossness everywhere, the mutations and stuff, and it just. It just grossed me out. I didn't like where they went with this and the acting sucked and the story was stupid. They could have.
You're going to see how they could. They could do this movie way better.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: I mean, in fairness, like, you could say about three as well.
Like three.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: Three could definitely could have been done better. And like we said, we think this was too many hands in the. In the pot, too many people in the kitchen trying to make that work. I can appreciate what they tried to do. I can appreciate the things that they tried to do. They were unable to do it successfully, but I can see the relations from Alien 3 back to Alien the first movie.
Trying to bring in these themes that would scare you and make you feel claustrophobic and make you afraid of the people that surrounded you and. And all the things. And they were trying to relate to different aspects of things in the franchise. This one just took the actress, took the name brand and ran with it. And it was disgusting.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: So, Brian, fun fact. One of Whedon's initial scripts had Newt's DNA be the one cloned from the third movie, and Ripley was never going to be in the movie.
[00:33:55] Speaker C: Would have enjoyed it more.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: But guess what?
Ripley and the production company saw the script and was like, this is great, but let's get Ripley in this because that will really sell it.
So you're not wrong.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Probably not wrong. It probably did sell more tickets. Having 100.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: 100. Right. That maybe would have played a little bit more to your appeal of the franchise than bringing Ripley back just for Ripley's sake.
[00:34:21] Speaker C: I think I could have enjoyed it a little bit more.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:25] Speaker C: I felt like putting Ellen Ripley. I felt like putting Sigourney Weaver on the poster was a dirty trick to get me to go in and hope for what we've seen in previous movies and hope to get back to Alien or Alien two after the travesty that was three. And instead they kicked me while I was down and fed me this dog shit movie, which was just gross and it wasn't what I've wanted.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Now, now I do want to ask you. Sorry.
[00:34:54] Speaker C: Do you have something I was going to say there. We've seen in Alien isolation. The game, they have an interesting way of getting the alien back and making an interesting story out of it, which I wish they would have made a movie out of the video game. It's a real good time.
You know, they had somebody go back to the crash site of the Nostromo.
[00:35:15] Speaker C: No, it's actually, you should have. It's like in the opening sequence of the game, they talk about it.
[00:35:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:21] Speaker C: Somebody finds the. The black box to the Nostromo and they use that flight data to go find LV426.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:35:29] Speaker C: And they make a whole big story out of this. And that was an interesting way. Okay. There's. There's something that logically could happen and I don't have to stretch to. To go for it. And you. And then you can make any kind of story you want.
But instead they wanted to give birth to that human alien thing and suck it out a window, which was probably the most gruesome death I've ever seen in cinema. And it was.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: We just did the Evil Dead franchise.
[00:35:53] Speaker C: This is nowhere close, honestly. It was on par with Evil Dead. Like, it was really disgusting to watch that thing get sucked out the whole. The size of a quarter.
[00:36:00] Speaker A: Yeah. It was also sad because, like, grandma was watching the granddaughter just go out the window like that. You know, family just fleeting away, you.
[00:36:09] Speaker C: Know, And Sigourney flipping through your finger.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:13] Speaker C: Oh, God. Oh, it's just. No.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: Okay. No, before we get to there, because we're definitely going to get to there. Aliens cannot, up until this point, spit acid. Right? Well, we don't know that introduced. But we've never. Okay, so earlier in the movie there was an. Actually, I really liked it. A cool scene where they've got three aliens trapped inside of a room.
[00:36:31] Speaker A: I liked it too, for all the different reasons.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: And the two aliens turned on the weaker one to escape from the pen. That felt like something animals would do in captivity.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: There was a way out. I can absolutely see them turning on. On the weaker one and attacking it.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: They have a conversation before they do it.
[00:36:50] Speaker C: They're like, Dan, if we all had acid blood.
If we all had acid blood, Dan, you, me, Will, just go ahead and take Will out.
[00:36:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that makes the most sense.
So they did that. That's really cool.
[00:37:04] Speaker C: I'm gonna go for me chat.
[00:37:06] Speaker B: He's making alliance quick. I like it.
I thought that was a really cool scene. Like, I get that they were communicating with each other, and if that made you laugh, then so be it. I can't. I can't argue with that. But I thought it was a cool scene until the alien spit acid later on and be like, oh, if they can just do that, what on earth was the point? Like, all three of them shoot the door and then, ta da. We move on with life.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: I can explain that away if you want.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: I would love it.
[00:37:29] Speaker A: Terrible movie. Their acid on the man's face barely damaged him, to be honest. Compared to their, like, bodily fluid melting through multiple halls of a ship, these aliens.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: Okay, fair.
[00:37:43] Speaker A: These aliens just start spitting like they're going spittooning. The scientists, however dumb, they are going to realize, oh, oh, wait, what are these guys doing? Oh, oh, well, let's see. Oh, oh, shit, they're going to melt through the floor. All right, send it in. Let's freeze them out.
[00:37:59] Speaker C: And end of Alien.
[00:38:01] Speaker A: So these aliens had a discussion. Be like, we got to get out of here. Oh, yeah. How are we going to do it? Well, we could. I got some spit going. We could brew it out. No, we need to empty your whole tank, bro. And then they're like, all right, let's go. That's how it played out. Those were the scripted lines. I looked it up and.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: And so it still makes sense that they can spit acid and had to gut one of the aliens to get free.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: I'll go with you.
[00:38:27] Speaker C: But I was sure I enjoyed that sequence. That was one of the better sequences in the movie. You know, he puts his hand over the button, showing that these are intelligent creatures. They're figuring things out. It was cool with that.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: All right, fair enough, fair enough.
I like that scene. I thought that was cool. And then when they spit out, it.
[00:38:46] Speaker C: Was like they later put acid spitters into the franchise's canon. And they can. Some of, some of the aliens can now spit acid.
[00:38:56] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:38:57] Speaker B: And if that's the way the alien race goes, I'm actually fine with that.
[00:39:03] Speaker A: Again, these are cloned aliens with more human DNA maybe than usual. So maybe they have different attributes. Just like an alien that bred with the dog had different attributes. Who knows what this cloning process did? We saw a lot of weird cloning shit in this movie, so. So it can change their Attributes however we want. I don't think we've ever seen the webbed hands before this, have we?
[00:39:26] Speaker B: No, I don't think so.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: So hey, out of curiosity, did.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: Where did the seven or eight or 12 eggs come from?
Those came from the queen, right?
[00:39:39] Speaker A: I assume so.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: But then why does the queen have a womb that creates a hybrid? More, how does she do both?
[00:39:46] Speaker C: Because she was Ripley's gift to her was a third cycle in her evolution where she lays eggs and she reaches, I don't know, menopause and has a human baby or I don't know what it is, but.
[00:40:02] Speaker C: Gives birth.
And what I don't get is why does this thing pop out of disgustingly, by the way, everything in this movie happens disgustingly. Why does this alien come out of this disgusting womb and then rip its mother's face off and then go cuddle up with Sigourney Weaver?
Why?
That doesn't even make any sense at all.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Okay, I agree.
[00:40:30] Speaker C: Baby bird book that I read to my kids and the bird figures out that the tractor is not its mother. Okay, how does this stupid creature think that Sigourney Weaver is its mom?
I don't know.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Oh man, that's so funny.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Okay, so out of curiosity, I just want to clarify something because like I agree with you. Everything you just said is weird and stupid.
Are we supposed to feel some amount of sympathy for the weird Frankenstein's monster style alien, the hybrid?
[00:41:03] Speaker C: No, I think it was just one more aspect to gross us out on an emotional level at that point.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: Okay. Cuz like he definitely had very sad, sullen eyes. I was kind of getting the impression that like when he was killing, he was like, he was definitely not killing Ellen and he didn't want to kill.
[00:41:20] Speaker B: Cell and Annabelle, whatever that Winona Rider's character call.
Sure.
But he killed the other person.
[00:41:29] Speaker B: Pretty, pretty easily. Like no. No complaints. Was that a. I don't know my own strength? Was that a you're a threat?
Like I was getting vibes that you are supposed to care about this thing to some capacity.
[00:41:40] Speaker C: I think that what they were trying to showcase was that the alien now had human like emotions. That's all that was supposed to do is show us that now they are not just instinctual, but they have emotions. And this alien human hybrid is psychotic. That's what we were supposed to learn. This was like the serial killer born with alien half blood DNA kind of thing. This was an abomination in every sense of the word. Emotionally, mentally, physically, all of it. It's just a total Abomination. And we're supposed to be grossed out by every thought. It's its appearance and its emotional state.
And that's just what I got from that.
They. They certainly made me horrified and disgusted at this thing.
But I was also offended because I.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Haven'T really got that vibe from you yet. Run.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: Kids.
[00:42:43] Speaker C: Say it up. This movie grosses me out. It's hard for me to watch.
[00:42:46] Speaker B: I would love to hear Will's thoughts on this, because I think he's a little less emotionally connected to the franchise.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: I mean, yes, I agree with Run7 on this. I think this movie is so much darker than the third movie.
The third movie is dark, man. They kill her family right out the git. And it just goes downhill from there, where she has to literally sacrifice her life for the good of humanity.
It's dark and this movie goes darker.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: Goes darker, yeah.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: Only it's. It's just.
It's. It's camouflaged in humor and bad direction.
[00:43:25] Speaker C: And more direction than humor.
[00:43:27] Speaker A: But, yeah, yeah, I'll go the other way, actually, but either you both are totally legit answers.
I. I think it's just camouflaged between all these horrible things that are not horrible, poorly executed elements of this movie that.
That people don't see that. I. I think this is truly a much darker picture.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: In comparison to the third movie.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: If you were to watch Alien 3, and I'm asking legitimately, I. I don't know if you can. Thank you. If you were to watch Alien 3 and it was the only Alien movie you've ever seen, or you were to watch Alien Resurrection, it was the only Alien movie you've ever seen, which one do you think would make more sense contextually?
[00:44:09] Speaker C: Okay, what are my choices? Alien Resurrection or Resurrection or three?
[00:44:13] Speaker B: But you've never seen any other Alien movie.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: I feel like Resurrection might be a more complete experience, as silly and as.
[00:44:25] Speaker C: Stupid as it is honest, honestly, you know, when you. When you frame it like that.
[00:44:30] Speaker C: Yeah, maybe.
But two entirely different experiences.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Oh, for sure.
[00:44:37] Speaker C: Three is relying on us having a preconceived notion of the character that we're getting in Ellen Ripley, and then also kind of just like forgetting the fact that she just lost what has become her only family in the first opening sequence. And she's relatively okay with it.
She treats that much the way you would treat a hangover.
And then.
And then. And then you go on. And you have. And you. You kind of go on this preconceived notion of Ellen Ripley, whereas this one is creating a new character who Sigourney Weaver plays.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I agree, because 3 is actually attached to the trilogy, whereas I feel this movie is detached from the other movies.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: For it. Yeah, it should be called Alien.
[00:45:24] Speaker B: Well, it's because she comes back from the dead. Like, it's.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: No, for sure.
[00:45:26] Speaker C: It should be called Alien Abomination.
I mean, I wouldn't be.
[00:45:30] Speaker B: I wouldn't be sad about that.
[00:45:31] Speaker C: Like, honestly, if they title it Alien Abomination, I would be like, okay, they're going to use the franchise and just gross me out with it.
And. And that's what it is. I mean, they did have an abomination of the alien that was. That was melded because of this. This idea of genetic tampering.
And we're gonna see in future movies, several future movies, genetic tampering with the alien virus, treating it as a virus, and we start broadening our horizon of the entire franchise. But in a much better way than this movie was able to pull off. This movie wanted to broaden our horizon and treat the alien as a virus. They totally missed that virus thing, and they just got into the gross mutations.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: I mean, that virus thing may not have been fully fleshed out at this time. Right. Like, we can't. We can't fault this movie for things that may not have been at the time.
[00:46:24] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't. I don't know what the. Because I'm unfamiliar with the timeline and things. What was going on, the side stories and ideas.
Yeah.
I mean, this may have been what tipped the scale for future movies. And like, oh, see what you were trying. But we got to do better. And then they come in and reset with Prometheus.
[00:46:41] Speaker A: That could be because this is the farthest in the timeline any Alien movie has gone. And maybe nobody wanted to touch it because it was such a show. Right.
[00:46:49] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: So they're like, let's go back closer to where the source good movies are and play around in there for a while.
[00:46:56] Speaker B: Well, if theoretically the aliens only existed on that one spaceship, again, I don't know. We'll get there.
[00:47:01] Speaker A: Right there.
[00:47:01] Speaker B: If they only exist on that spaceship, they only exist on this ship 200 years in the future. Right. Like, there's 200 years where there's no xenomorphs in the galaxy based on what we're seeing in these first four movies.
[00:47:14] Speaker C: Right.
[00:47:15] Speaker B: So kind of like they're not only bringing Ellen back, they are bringing back the xenomorphs. Like they were an extinct species as far as we knew, and they're coming. And anyways, I. I I'm. I'm taking the opposite side on this one because I really enjoy the debate, and I've actually had a ton of fun recording this episode so far. It's not like I think this is a great movie. I just enjoy the. It's great seeing Brian get heated.
Is the Earth. And they. They mentioned Earth going. Going to Earth, which they got there really fast for how slow they seem to be going.
Is the Earth a desolate wasteland or is it still inhabited?
Because the explosion at the end definitely triggered a nuclear winter. You.
[00:47:50] Speaker C: You got that too.
They nuke, like, a third of the hemisphere.
It was huge. Right into. I think that was Africa. They just wiped all of Africa off the map.
[00:48:02] Speaker B: That dust cloud's taking most of us out.
[00:48:04] Speaker C: We saved humanity. I'm like, oh, did you?
[00:48:12] Speaker A: Okay, so, funny story.
[00:48:13] Speaker C: I didn't get into that one too deep.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: There was a spirit special cut of this movie as well, where the intro of the movie was different and the ending of the movie was different. And the ending of the movie was much more like army of Darkness director's cut, where they actually show them on Earth. Paris, surprise, surprise, French director. And it is obliterated.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Okay, I did see that there was a special edition of this movie, and I looked into it, and they're like, this is absolutely not a director's cut because the director says the theatrical is the preferred version of it. I was like, yeah, if it's good enough for the director, it's good enough for me. So I just watched the regular one on. On Disney, but it really didn't add.
[00:48:54] Speaker A: A lot at all in this one specifically.
[00:48:58] Speaker B: Beginning end in a different conversation with Perez and.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Slight. Very slight.
[00:49:02] Speaker C: Yeah, so this isn't spoiling anything because none of us know any more than the. Than the trailer that's out. But we do have the new series coming to Hulu, Alien Earth, and I don't know when that takes place. I don't know if that's 250 years in the few. 300 years, however many years in the future after Alien resurrection, or does that take place a little. A little closer to home? Like, is that somewhere in between Alien and Aliens, like, isolation takes place?
We don't know. But I am presuming that the alien species, if it makes its way to Earth sometime before Alien resurrection, that most people want to pretend that this movie doesn't exist.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: Okay, so there's two things I'm gonna say on that. Because Alien vs. Predator is not canon in the Alien universe.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: That is correct.
[00:49:57] Speaker B: But from what I remember from those movies they take place on Earth and there's a whole lot of aliens in the Antarctic or something, so they could go that route. Although I pray desperately they do not.
[00:50:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I kind of hope they just keep it jokingly.
[00:50:09] Speaker B: How funny would it be if the series took place 199 years in the future and the series finale is them getting nuked from this planet, this ship crashing into them, and that's the end of the show. It's just like, oh, they. They tied it all together.
[00:50:26] Speaker C: I don't know. It depends on how many seasons, how popular it is. They'll make it a couple of seasons and then. I don't know.
I don't know. I hope Alien Earth is a more subtle.
[00:50:37] Speaker C: Look into the franchise. I hope that they aren't just going for action and aliens. I hope they're going to develop characters, they're going to have interesting plots. They're going to get into, like, the politics of keeping the alien a secret or exploiting it as a weapon. And that there's just little tidbits of the aliens actually in and we get substantial characters that we can really latch on to is my hope for it.
Because we've already seen a lot of good aspects in this, with Aliens being a big war drama, with Alien being a scary thriller, with some other movies that tried some themes that didn't really work. And I'm interested in some character building at this point. I'm interested in seeing more about Wayland Yutani. I want to know more about the Yutani aspects of Wayland because we've seen Bishop Weyland.
There's. There's other things that I want to explore in this world, and I don't need droves of aliens popping out. So I've got high hopes for that, for that series.
[00:51:34] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that later, maybe after the. The episode or something. But I definitely have thoughts on what I'm hoping that shows. I haven't actually watched the trailer yet. Anyways, back to Alien Resurrection. One of the last things that I just want to touch on really quickly, and it'll probably be very, very short.
Is anybody else completely 100 over the Android revelation halfway through the movie that somebody in the cast is an Android? Because I'm so freaking done with that.
[00:51:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: Like, can we. I really hope. I know there's. I think it's David in. In Prometheus.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: But I think, you know he's a Android right from the jump.
[00:52:07] Speaker C: You know, David's.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd be very okay with that. But like this whole like, oh, you got shot, you must be dead. What? You're an Android. Oh, come on. Like, did I. I don't remember that. But at the same time, the second I saw her, she's like, oh, she's an Android.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: Like.
[00:52:22] Speaker A: I was more surprised. She found like a 32nd way to get where they wanted to go 10 minutes ago after she got shot.
[00:52:29] Speaker C: Yeah, she like swam backwards and climbed around the spaceship and opens the door and I'm like, found a much easier.
[00:52:34] Speaker A: Way without an alien devised trap.
[00:52:37] Speaker C: That bothered me.
[00:52:39] Speaker A: Yeah, here I am. Let's go.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: Should have just listened to me.
[00:52:44] Speaker C: Would have, would have been much more entertaining had they explored the idea of her just being an Android from the jump. I would have liked, you know, she's a special Android, a droid built by droids or whatever. Yeah, I would appreciated it had they just allowed that theme to grow in the movie from the start. And you can compare her being not human to Ripley being not quite human right from the get go.
[00:53:09] Speaker A: Both outcasts.
[00:53:11] Speaker C: Yeah, way better.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: See, there's. There's so many things in this movie that like almost are cool.
She, the Android Call is like the most humane person in this movie. This movie is filled with inhumane people. The whole military experimental B ship they're on are all like, we are going to meld aliens and humans and we're going to make an army and this is going to be great. The pirates that jump on ship are literally stealing people in cryosleep to save sell them for a glass of whiskey and a warm night's sleep. And there's like zero likable characters. Ripley themselves. Ripley 8 is like this half alien, half human, just like not knowing who they want to be on the side of. So it's like there's no likable people. Except for Call is the only, like, I need to do what's right for humanity. And that's kill Ripley before these aliens. Oh wait, there's aliens everywhere. Oh, that's not good.
[00:54:12] Speaker B: We.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: We gotta blow this place up. Oh wait. We found this dude who still has an alien in their chest. Let's bring him along. That's fine. He's got an alien. We'll bring him along. I'm. I'm down for that.
Even their character fully wasn't.
[00:54:25] Speaker C: We don't even know.
[00:54:27] Speaker C: Ellen Ripley.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: Right?
[00:54:29] Speaker C: Like, it takes us a while to understand whether we like Ellen Ripley or not. Like at first we're like, oh yeah, we gotta like her. And then she's all weird. And part alien. And then later, she decides to go for team humanity. And I'm like, okay, I guess that you're on our side.
[00:54:45] Speaker A: Yeah. But, like, just what I'm trying to get at is I. I like the idea of call.
I don't like that they reveal how they reveal, oh, I'm a droid, just like every movie. But I. I enjoyed their reason for this movie in being in the movie, and I enjoyed that they're the droids become the most humane thing because they've always strived to be human. And humans are like, are. Are gone. Right.
So there's elements of this movie. I like execution. Hilarious.
[00:55:18] Speaker C: I liked when the general rolled the grenade down into the escape pod. I saw the alien go in, and then he gives his men the salute.
So cheesy.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: The.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: The funniest part is he rolls it. The. The doors close. He has no idea if it made it into the ship or not. And then he's just like, I think I got it.
[00:55:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:42] Speaker C: And he reaches back and pulls, like, a piece of his skull off, and he looks at it.
[00:55:46] Speaker B: Oh, that lasted way too long.
[00:55:49] Speaker C: I found humorous because it was so cheesy and just ridiculous. It was. It was so far ridiculous. I found that to be humorous and stupid in a way that I could just laugh at. This is just so over the top at that point. But there were other things that I felt like I was supposed to take as. As a serious thing, and. And I'm like, I'm just not that. I just can't. I can't take that as what they were feeding me.
[00:56:13] Speaker B: Yeah, the. The. You mentioned it, and I do want to go back to it.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: The.
[00:56:20] Speaker B: I don't know, the smugglers, I guess we'll call them. Yeah, they were like, whatever. They're kidnapping people in their tube, bringing them to where they needed to this station, selling them off. But then all of a sudden, one of them is awake and has an alien living inside of it. And they're like, all right, we'll take this guy back with us. We'll be safe.
[00:56:35] Speaker A: You're like, amazing.
[00:56:36] Speaker B: Ron Perlman should have shot that guy in the face the second he saw. Just like, no, we don't care about you. We care about self preservation. We're not bringing one of these things on our ship willingly. That's dumb. That should have happened instantly. But then when they do bring him back to the ship and he ultimately turns and, like, runs straight at the guy who's shooting him, like, 18 times. And for some reason, those bullets don't do anything to him. And he runs around and grabs the guy and, like, the chest burster goes through his head. I'm like, okay, that's called comedy.
[00:57:03] Speaker C: Dan was really. Was that 100% reason for that guy so that we can have that.
[00:57:10] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:57:11] Speaker C: Crazy death sequence?
[00:57:12] Speaker A: Like, 100%.
[00:57:14] Speaker B: I don't see you're saying some things are comedy like that and like the shooting the bullet and ricocheting it. I think those are stupid, but I think somebody somewhere thought those were badass. I don't think that they wrote those in thinking that's funny.
[00:57:26] Speaker C: I don't find them as funny. I, I find it as I think.
[00:57:28] Speaker B: They'Re funny because they're so stupid. But I think somebody somewhere was like, this will be cool.
[00:57:34] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I, I think if, if there was more actual comedy, more slapstick comedy in this, if there were characters who were intentionally silly, who are surviving when they shouldn't be surviving or something like a Bill and Ted kind of characters or something, then stuff like that becomes funny for me to watch. But I didn't have any characters like that. I didn't have any scripting like that. I felt like somebody was trying to make this serious and it was just stupid. It's like when you see the transporter jump his car upside down, hit the hook from the crane, and it knocks the bomb off the bottom of his car, and then he lands on four wheels and drives away. And I'm like, that's impossible. I can't go with that. I can't.
I want to believe the impossible. I want to see a movie like the Matrix where I'm watching and I'm going, oh, yeah, these guys are dodging bullets. And it makes sense to me because they're in the Matrix. And that's how it works. It's a thing that makes sense.
[00:58:31] Speaker A: You didn't like the aliens dodging bullets?
[00:58:33] Speaker C: Weird aliens dodging bullets?
[00:58:35] Speaker A: Yeah. When they're on the ladder.
[00:58:38] Speaker A: What is it?
Over backwards, and the aliens just, like, on the ladder dodging the bullets.
[00:58:45] Speaker C: Well, again, that doesn't make sense, and it's stupid to me. Make it make sense. Make me believe it. Make me believe the unbelievable. And I'm having a good time. Okay. Jurassic park made me actually walk away from that movie and think that someday dinosaurs could walk the earth. And to this day I'm sitting here thinking, let's go collect mosquitoes, because I think that could happen. They made me believe the unbelievable.
This movie just made me feel stupid for giving it a chance. Oh, yeah, it's Stupid.
[00:59:20] Speaker B: All right, well, let's call that and roll into our final scores because, I don't know, we're probably just gonna start repeating ourselves after this. Yeah, I think we pretty much know where we're all gonna land. But, Brian, I'm gonna start with you, if you don't mind.
[00:59:30] Speaker C: Okay. This is the. This is the lowest score of any movie I've ever given on this series.
[00:59:38] Speaker C: I thought the plot was atrocious.
I know for a fact there are better ways to get stories out of this franchise, regardless of where you are in the timeline.
The acting was not great in this movie.
Maybe. Maybe I'm giving the acting a bad score because I was expecting one thing and I got something completely different.
But most of the characters, I thought, didn't do a great job of being who they should be.
Maybe they were given bad lines. I don't know. I think maybe that has to do with the direction of this movie, which I thought was atrocious. It wasn't what I wanted in this franchise.
I did think that the aliens looked good. I thought that some of the effects looked pretty cool. I wasn't a fan of the cinematography. I wasn't a fan of the lighting of the themes of the movie that they used. Going through the tunnels. I hate it when we see, like, a military spaceship that looks like a dark, cavernous thing. I'm like, why can't we just have lights in the hallways? Like, why does it have everything have to be so ridiculous? But we've seen that in Alien 1, so I'm going to give it some room on there.
The music didn't do anything for me. In fact, some of the sound effects and some of the scoring was a little too over the top. Kind of took me out of it a little bit. Gave it a lower score for that. Does this movie hold up? Hell, no. This movie is cheesy and lame and makes me feel bad.
I watched it this for the second time and I felt even worse about it than when I saw it the first time. And I really went into it with an open mind, especially with newer content coming out. As we go into the franchise, we see how this was done so poorly. It just gets worse and worse as this franchise goes on. This is and should be the aborted stepchild of the franchise. It's disgusting and horrible.
Did I have any fun? No. From the opening sequence, the. The disgusting senu and hair themes, the disgusting mutation themes, the slime, the way that they took Geiger's work and mutated it slightly, everything being changed Just really offended me as I watched this movie. The fun score just almost flatlining for me. I gave this. And I'm being very generous as I possibly can here. I'm giving this a 34 out of 100.
[01:02:03] Speaker B: That's pretty brutal.
[01:02:05] Speaker A: It's a great score run.
[01:02:09] Speaker B: I'm totally fine with the score. Because you've been passionate about this the entire way along. It makes completely.
[01:02:13] Speaker C: I thought it would be lower, honestly.
[01:02:16] Speaker B: It is still higher than almost your entire Highlander franchise. So it is not the lowest score you've ever given.
[01:02:22] Speaker C: I almost flatlined it for the special effects because they use such gross stuff in it. But they did have some good points where they show the alien. So I gave it a few more points back there. That actually brought my score up to a 34.
[01:02:36] Speaker A: Now do you want me to go into my rating?
[01:02:38] Speaker B: I would love it.
[01:02:39] Speaker A: All right.
Wrap this pup. Yep. All right. Is this a good movie? Absolutely not.
Do I enjoy some of the story elements? Yeah, I think there's some good ideas in this movie. I think they expand on some things that were questionable in other movies.
I think where this movie fails is in a couple of areas.
One, a Joss Whedon script, which should be Firefly. I. I feel like the crew in this movie is like the skeleton of the Firefly fly crew.
And that was obviously directed the way it was meant to be. Light hearted and fun. And this is a. A cool space adventure. Let's. Let's all have a laugh, quippy, witty, whatever. This movie had that written in, kind of. But into a dark toned movie about aliens and motherhood and losing yourself and being reborn without choice and all of these other like super heavy elements and pairing that with a surrealist director who doesn't even understand the jokes that are written on the page. There's so many things that just fall apart when you paired those director and writer together that it just became an abomination.
That said, it's a guilty pleasure for me. So I'm not going to rank it as low as Run seven because I.
I bathe in joy when I watch things just falling apart because they're done so poorly. And I find the humor in those situations, I see what they are trying to do and failing at and I laugh at them for it.
So, yeah, overall I feel writing and direction really cripples this movie. It doesn't hold up because of that. But acting wise, it's okay.
The actors did the job they were paid to do because the director's like, no, read it. This line, reading should be this way. It should be serious. And they're like, are you sure? Yeah.
[01:04:43] Speaker B: No.
[01:04:43] Speaker A: A serious movie is kind of a mess. So Overall, it's a 52 out of 100 for me because I got some laughs in all the wrong places.
[01:04:51] Speaker B: I feel like I need to.
[01:04:55] Speaker C: Preface what you're about to say.
[01:04:57] Speaker B: I need to preface what I'm about to say a couple of different ways.
First off, Will, nailed on the head. You said something I was going to say, which is there are characters in this movie or actors in this movie who I legitimately really like. And that helps me get into this movie a little bit easier than when there is a cast. People I either don't like or I don't recognize. So having Ron Perlman, Winona Ryder, Sigourney Weaver, even the actor who plays Perez, I feel like I've seen in a bunch of different things. Even though I really didn't like him in this. There was that, like, oh, that guy. I like that guy. Kind of a feel to him when you first see him.
Also worth mentioning, when we rate these movies, we're not rating them out of. We're not rating every movie we ever watch on the same scale, even though they're all out of a hundred. Meaning when I say that this is a. It's not. Let's say this is a 90.
I'm not saying that. That's the same scale that I would use to rate, say, the Godfather. I'm walking into this expecting a silly Alien movie. I don't have the same reverence this series does for I don't have the same reverence for this series that Brian does. This is clearly a franchise that he deeply loves and cares about. For me, this is just aliens killing people.
When I walked into this, I expected aliens to kill each other in fun ways, and I was not terribly disappointed. I feel like, for the most part, the acting was decent enough that it didn't take me out. I like Ron Perlman quite a bit. I like. I know it's taboo to say, but, like, Joss Whedon back in the day did have a lot of hits. Whether you liked Buffy or Firefly or stuff like that, this felt very Firefly. I didn't really think of that until Will pointed it out 10 seconds ago, but as soon as he did, I was like, I love Firefly. That makes sense why I'm connecting to this movie. In outer space with this ragtag crew of characters.
[01:06:34] Speaker B: Wasn'T great. It wasn't done as well as Firefly by any stretch of the imagination. But it definitely helped to keep me engaged so that I was able to enjoy what was going on. As far as the actual plot goes, it was weak, to say the least. Where did they get the DNA for Ripley? Why does the DNA for Ripley have an alien attached to it? Why did they mutate it? Why did she mutate into an alien and alien mutate into her? What the hell is going on with the abomination in the last half of the movie? None of that really makes sense or works. But again, if that's the direction the movie wants to go, I'm going to go along with that ride. As long as you don't break those rules. And some of the ways we saw the aliens interact in this movie I actually thought was really cool, because we've never really seen the aliens interact with other aliens. We've seen Alien 1, where there's just one alien. Alien 2, where there's a lot, but you kind of see them in the shadows. They're not really. You don't really get to see them around each other very, very much. Alien 3, there's only one alien, even though it looks red and green, depending on what the scene is. And so this is the first time we actually got to see aliens. Will said communicate with each other.
And I thought that was kind of neat. It kind of reminded me of what you would see in, like, a zoo setting or a wildlife. Like Netflix. Not Netflix, National Geographic Documentary, where, like, yeah, we're gonna pick on the weak one to survive. Like, that makes sense. That's what animals do in the wild. I thought that was really cool.
[01:07:50] Speaker B: Whether or not it holds up, it's totally up to you guys. What's up to your.
Up to you guys to determine how that works. The alien at the end, the abomination, looked absolutely stupid.
If it didn't, I might not have had as much of a problem with it. We've seen this franchise where when the alien comes out of a human, it looks one way. When it comes out of a dog, it looks another way. It kind of makes sense that you would see a different evolution of it in a different way. I'm okay with that. I think the alien we got looked incredibly dumb. But the fact that it kind of gave me a feeling of like, oh, this is kind of like Frankenstein's monster, where everybody's afraid of it and it can kill you, but it doesn't really know what its place in the world is. It doesn't really know what it's supposed to be doing or why it's there why it exists. It was also birthed as weird as this is full grown, or we assume full grown, whereas everything else is birthed as an alien or as a. As a baby and grows up at accelerated rates. But this is the first one that was born full size or potentially full size. And it just didn't know what was going on.
I don't know that we were supposed to feel sympathy for it, but when you see those big dark eyes, there were times where I'm like, I kind of do in a weird way.
Now. That being said, it's not a great movie. I'm not highly recommending this. I'm not recommending this at all. But I didn't beat against the same wall that Brian did when he watched this. And it's like, this is a complete abomination compared to the rest of the franchise. I feel like three was a much worse movie than this was as far as an enjoyment level. If you're just watching. Walking in to sit down and watch a movie, you don't know what you're walking into. I feel like you could watch this and be like, that was kind of fun for a 90s movie and move on with your life. Whereas I think three is a much darker movie ending with Ellen killing herself and all the themes that are going on in there. Starting off with her daughter dying, ending off with her killing herself.
It's just bleak. And I don't like any of the cast members in that one. Whereas at least there's fun characters. This one, as stupid as they may be, I don't think it's a great movie. I did have fun with it. I gave this one a 69.
[01:09:50] Speaker C: And.
[01:09:51] Speaker A: We all know Dan loves that number.
[01:09:58] Speaker B: Lame. All right, so with that being said, we have this works. My score for the Alien franchise so far, four movies in, comes in at 73, Brian shockingly at the lowest with 69, and Will at the top with 75, bringing our rating of the Alien franchise so far to 72, meaning it still holds its top spot.
Brian, how do you feel about that?
[01:10:22] Speaker C: I'm really. I'm really happy you guys are carrying the day on one of my favorite franchises, if not my favorite franchise of all time.
Thank you guys for supporting it, even though your scores were absolutely incorrect. And this was the worst movie in the franchise, Stan. And how dare you relate anything in this movie to works of Mary Shelley. Are you kidding me?
[01:10:47] Speaker B: I seriously think that's what they're going for.
[01:10:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I understand why the Alien came out larger. It was it was in a womb. It grew like a human embryo. Right?
[01:10:57] Speaker B: Like, but aliens don't grow to full size and humans don't grow full size. So which one of those two traits is it taking? When it came out of the dog, it took on dog like traits. When it comes to the human, it takes on human like traits. Which trait is it?
[01:11:08] Speaker C: But like alien, you just wait till we get further in.
[01:11:12] Speaker A: Fair, but this one had like actually time to gestate and grow in the womb. So it makes sense. It's coming out bigger than the other alien birds that come out of your chest because they're this big. And then over like a day, they grow into a full size human or.
[01:11:29] Speaker B: Bigger, but they're still gestating inside of. So anyways, whatever, man.
[01:11:32] Speaker C: We can't talk about this until you finish the franchise. There's more to be seen.
[01:11:36] Speaker B: All right, fair enough.
[01:11:37] Speaker A: For better or for worse.
[01:11:39] Speaker C: Yeah, I know, right?
[01:11:42] Speaker B: All right. And that has been our rating of Alien Resurrect.
What do you guys think? Were we far too harsh, far too lenient? Let us know in the comments down below. And if you don't have an opinion, leave an emoji because engagement really helps this video get seen. And I'd really like this channel to grow a little bit more. If you enjoyed this, hit that like button as that also helps out. And hit subscribe so you can see more great content going forward. We record these videos live over at Twitch TV themongoolishow. So if you want to head over there, hit the follow button. You'll know when we go live. You can press participate in the conversation as it's happening at 9pm Eastern Standard Time on Thursday nights. Until next time, I hope you're safe, I hope you're well and have a good night.
