Alien Resurrection (1997)

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General		Extras
Category	Science Fiction	Theatrical Trailer-1.85:1 non 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded Featurette-Behind The Scenes-(3:53)
Rating
Year Of Production	1997
Running Time	104:21 (Case: 109)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (55:52)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Sigourney Weaver Winona Ryder Ron Perlman Dan Hedaya J.E. Freeman Brad Dourif Michael Wincott
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	Box	Music	John Frizzell

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	Czech Danish English for the Hearing Impaired Finnish Hebrew Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    A lot of people didn't like Alien Resurrection, criticizing it for deviating from the Alien concept. I beg to differ. I enjoyed it theatrically, and I enjoyed it on DVD. This is a very different Alien movie. It is very sensual. The lines between good and bad are blurred. There are the two aspects of this movie that I really enjoyed. Sure, there are some impossibly large plot holes. Sure, there is some cheesy dialogue and action at times, but for me, the positives outweighed the negatives by a long way.

    Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has been genetically reconstructed from what remained of her after Alien³. Unfortunately, during the genetic reconstruction, parts of Ripley's and the Alien's DNA intermingled. The reconstructed Ripley is very unusual. She has superhuman strength. She has acidic blood. She is ruthless, and clearly not the same Ripley that we have come to know and love in the previous Alien movies. However, the humans responsible for resurrecting her are more interested in the gains they can obtain from breeding the Alien they resurrected along with Ripley. Accordingly, they acquire some human hosts from a rag-tag bunch of mercenary traders, including a seriously miscast Winona Ryder as Call, their mechanic. The traders stay around the research ship, when the predictable happens - the Aliens escape and wreak havoc.

    There is some spectacular and amazing action in this movie, but the highlights for me were any scene involving the genetically-recombined Ripley. Sigourney Weaver is totally convincing in her role, playing a completely ambiguous, ruthless and extremely sensual character. It is not at all clear whose side she is on, and I just loved every little nuance of her performance in this movie.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and is 16x9 enhanced.

    The image was generally very sharp and very clear, save for the first 5 minutes or so, which were a tad on the blurry and indistinct side, particularly during the opening credits. These early parts of the film also had some minor issues with grain being visible. Once these early problems passed, however, the transfer remained at reference quality for the remainder of the movie. Shadow detail was excellent, as is to be expected from a movie of this recent vintage, and there was no low level noise.

    The colours are presented in the typical drab Alien style, and had no specific problems or highlights.

    There were no MPEG artefacts detected in the transfer. Aliasing was never a problem, but early on in the transfer, film artefacts were present to an excessive degree. Once again, the first 5 - 10 minutes of the movie seemed noticeably inferior to the remainder of the transfer.

    This is an RSDL disc with a quite noticeable and moderately disruptive layer change at 55:52, during Chapter 15.

Audio

    There is only one audio track on this DVD, an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack.

    The dialogue was always clear and perfectly easy to understand. There was a minor audio sync problem between 8:39 and 9:08 which was probably an ADR issue rather than a transfer issue, but Dan Hedaya's dialogue is just discernibly out of sync during these scenes.

    The score by John Frizzell combined the more traditional-sounding elements of previous Alien scores with some far more lyrical and sensual underscoring when appropriate. It was very nicely married to the on-screen action, and enhanced the on-screen action and tension marvellously.

    The surround channels are magnificently used by this soundtrack, which is certainly of reference quality in this area. There is never silence in the surrounds. There is always something going on throughout the entire soundfield, albeit subtle at times, keeping you immersed in the on-screen action. When the action sequences arrive, the level of sonic activity in the surround channels ramps up suitably to provide an enormously enveloping experience. This is the way action movie soundtrack should be mixed, to create a continuously-enveloping sound environment.

    The subwoofer was aggressively used, almost to the point of excess, by this soundtrack. It provided copious amounts of bottom end to explosions, gun-shots, music and all manner of other special effects noises.

Menu

Theatrical Trailer

Featurette - Behind-The-Scenes

• Trailers for Alien, Aliens and Alien³

    The video transfer is very good but not perfect.

    The audio transfer is superb.

    The extras are limited.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall