The Films of 1997: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Each time I pen a review of a sequel that doesn’t quite measure up to the original film, I am reminded of the late critic Roger Ebert’s brilliant opening line from his review of Halloween II (1981): “It’s a little sad to witness a fall from greatness.”

And a fall from greatness is exactly what we witness in the 1997 cinematic sequel to Jurassic Park (1993), The Lost World: Jurassic Park. 

Fortunately for audiences and fans of the franchise, it’s not a colossal drop.  

Rather, this first sequel dips from the realm of “classic” (like the original) to merely “good.”  Bottom line: it could have been worse, perhaps even a lot worse. 

Although marred by a final act that seems utterly disconnected from the body of the film proper, The Lost World remains enormously entertaining.  

The film plays like a tense roller-coaster ride and one crafted with uncommon technical skill to boot.  In particular, an incredibly complex, nail-biting set-piece involving a double trailer on a precipice – in a rain storm, no less – reveals Steven Spielberg’s killer instinct and directorial legerdemain. 

Perhaps the most significant difference between Jurassic Park and its sequel is that The Lost World feels a whole lot, well, meaner.  

While some fans and critics may consider this shift in tone lamentable, there was probably little choice. You can only play the “wonder” card once, and Jurassic Park did so superbly. Now the franchise gets down to some brutal, bloody business…

Technically astounding, and with protagonists constantly in “the company of death,” The Lost World represents an above-average sequel to Jurassic Park, but in both coloration and thematic tenor, the film feels very dark and even devoid of joy.   There’s nothing wrong with existing on that plateau, but after watching this film you feel more throttled than you do enthralled.

And while beautifully rendered, the final image of the film -- a fantasy-land of diverse dinosaurs dwelling together in peace within a literal stones-throw of one another -- feels piped in from another franchise all together.  

Given what we know of man, and particularly of man as depicted in the film itself, there’s no reason to believe a paradise like this would be permitted to thrive. 

Even worse, given what we’ve seen of the dinosaurs, there’s no reason to believe they would inhabit this world either, living peaceably in such close proximity to one another.

“Our last chance at redemption…”

John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) summons mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to his home to inform him of some startling news. A Jurassic Park “Site B” exists on an island eighty miles south of Isla Nublar, called Isla Sorna. There, dinosaurs have lived in isolation for four years.  In fact, they are thriving.

However, all that is about to change. The new head of InGen, Hammond’s nephew, Ludlow (Howard) believes that the way to raise his company out of bankruptcy is to exploit the dinosaurs.  Specifically, his plan is to capture the dinosaurs at Site B and bring them back to San Diego as a stadium attraction.

Having learned from his own unique mistakes regarding the dinosaurs, Hammond understands the folly of this course, and believes that the dinosaurs should be left alone to live in peace without the specter of human interference.  But to rally the public to support his cause, he has sent paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) to the island to document life on Isla Sorna. 

Because Sarah is his girlfriend, Ian heads to the island on a rescue mission, along with videographer Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) and tech-guy Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff).  They are joined by a stowaway, Ian’s daughter, Cathy (Beller).

In short order, a squad of hunters arrive on the island too, and commence a vicious dinosaur safari at Ludlow’s behest.  When one of the hunters, Roland Tembo (Peter Postlethwaite) captures a T-Rex infant, it’s worried parents come looking for it, and the dance of death begins anew…

“An extinct animal come back to life has no rights…we made it…we own it.”

Along with director Spielberg, David Koepp returned to scripting duties for this sequel, The Lost World.  Accordingly, the film feels like a legitimate continuation of the first film, right down to the feisty, occasionally corny or schmaltzy sense of humor. 

In terms of narrative depth, however, The Lost World offers something a lot scarier than science run amok, the chosen terrain of the first film.  In short, the follow-up concerns capitalism or big business run amok, and in that regard is indeed frightening.  

Specifically, the film revives the axiom that the free market becomes ethical only when the cost of unethical behavior becomes too great a cost for the market to bear.  Here, Ludlow has no time for ethics until he is on the line for murder and property damage. And even then, he’s still trying to figure out a way to make money…  

Another way to parse the difference between first and second film in the JP series: If Jurassic Park concerned the wonder of dinosaurs brought to life via the auspices of science then The Lost World dramatizes the crass, inhuman exploitation of these DNA-created animals…for profit.  

In fact, all of The Lost World is suffused -- at least thematically -- with a tremendous sense of…responsibility. 

Because modern, technological man created the dinosaurs of Isla Sorna in the first place, the argument goes that man is responsible for what ultimately happens to them, and must treat them with respect and dignity.  

We see this idea reinforced and mirrored throughout the film, in both a subplot about reluctant, absentee father Dr. Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and his daughter, Cathy (Camilla Beller), and even in the story involving parent Tyrannosaurs and their infant offspring.

Warm-blooded or cold-blooded, we all struggle to be good parents, and preserve the future for our children. We can’t abandon our children, or we risk turning them into monsters.

Given this leitmotif, the film’s villains come under the camp of vulture capitalists like Hammond’s nephew, Ludlow (Arliss Howard) and irresponsible, merciless hunter, Dieter (Peter Stormare), a man who views every new dinosaur as a thing to bully, hurt, or beat down.     

Metaphorically bad parents, Ludlow and Dieter are concerned only how they can “strip mine” the island for profit, or for personal gratification.  It’s one thing to create new life, to play Frankenstein, but The Lost World travels further down the road and asks, how does Frankenstein treat his monster once it is here, for good? 

With humanity and grace?  Or as something to be controlled and used up?

The downside of this storytelling approach is plain.  

John Hammond was certainly misguided in Jurassic Park, but not a villain or a terrible person.  But The Lost World requires old-fashioned, mustache-twirling human villains to maintain its momentum, and they aren’t exactly portrayed in three-dimensional terms. 

The up-side of featuring such cruel, villainous human antagonists, however, is that audience members experience a vicarious sense of justice meted out when the dinosaurs strike back and kill them.  

Ludlow’s fate – to be the plaything of a T-Rex child just learning to hunt – is absolutely “just” given his cavalier treatment of the dinosaurs.  He believes that because his company created them, he “owns” them.  

In the end – at least before he gets ripped apart – Ludlow gets to experience what it feels like to be owned by someone else. 

And Dieter, after bullying tiny dinosaurs with a cattle prod, learns there is strength in numbers when the diminutive lizards team up to overwhelm him.

In terms of the “sequel effect,” The Lost World features more gadgetry, more guns, more victims and more leaping lizards than its processor did, so it’s carnage candy galore. Even better, Spielberg seems to be in a nastier mood than usual and dispenses with his characteristic sense of sentimentality.  The film’s opening sequence reveals dinosaurs surrounding and attacking a cute-as-a-button little girl, for instance.  Later, one of the film’s most likable characters, Eddie, gets viciously ripped apart by two angry Tyrannosaurs.  And this comes after after working his ass off to save Malcolm, Sarah and Van Owen.

Overall, the impression is that this sequel absolutely means business, and isn’t pulling any punches.  So obsessed is Spielberg, it seems, with the film’s action, that he stages an impressive (but also strangely obsessive…) action scene set in a trailer dangling over a high-cliff.  

This scene builds and builds, layering on new elements and becoming ever more intense, as if Spielberg is testing the limits of audience endurance, and also his ability to play us like a piano. 

And…I like it. I like a "meaner," Spielberg, one relying on his chops and sense of visual classicism.

At one point during the scene, Sarah falls directly towards Spielberg’s camera through the body of a vertically-tilted trailer, and her body strikes a glass barrier, a window.  Soon, tiny cracks in the glass begin to spread and multiply, line by line, and the progression of the shattering glass -- perhaps better than anything we saw in Jurassic Park -- hints at the true nature of Ian’s Chaos Theory.  Incident piles upon incident, action upon action, effect upon effect, with surprising results.  Pretty soon, we’re putty in Spielberg’s hands, swept up by the progression of terror.

Again, this scene is gloriously nail-biting, and literally the last word in cliffhanging action.  Through cross-cutting, fast-cuts and an unmatched sense of visual placement and geography, Spielberg transforms what might have been a short or perfunctory  moment into an extended dance with terror as man grapples with nature, technology and monsters too.  I’d give this sequence the nod as the best (and most technically complicated…) action sequence in the entire JP trilogy.

Another great scene in the film involves Velociraptors lurking in tall grass, waiting to strike a group of human passersby.  

Spielberg’s camera adopts an extreme high-angle, so we see only Velociraptor paths – like contrails -- moving stealthily through the grass on a trajectory towards the unlucky human pedestrians.  

And then the dinosaurs strike and Spielberg cannily shifts to eye level with the top of the high grass, so it looks as though the men are being pulled beneath the surface of a roiling sea.  In some ways, it’s the Jaws approach all over again, but once more, I must repeat that I really like Spielberg when he’s in “mean” mode.  When we wants to, this director can match Hitchcock or De Palma shot-for-shot in terms of visual aplomb and wicked gallows humors.  As a viewer and critic, I appreciate it when Spielberg indulges that not-often seen side of his personality.

The last act of The Lost World is the one that, as a critic, I have trouble with.  The tyrannosaurus looks small and inconsequential compared to the gas stations, high-rise skyscrapers and suburbs of San Diego, and so the final urban scenes don’t quite work as they should. 

Furthermore, Nick Van Owen – the daring “Earth First” crusader of the film – disappears completely from this final act.  

Wouldn’t he have agreed to help Ian and Sarah recover the infant T-Rex?  Nick’s total disappearance makes the ending feel tacked on after the fact, like it was a second thought, or the result of a focus-group preference. 

And finally, after the T-Rex rampage in San Diego, The Lost World culminates with that fairy tale shot.  

Now quarantined from the human world, the dinosaurs of Isla Sorna become literally one happy family.  By showcasing all the dinosaurs (T-Rex, Stegosaurus and Pterodactyl) within one frame (during a pan, left to right), the impression is of a Kumbaya paradise that, simply put, could never be.  It’s an unwelcome return to Steven Spielberg in his most sentimental, schmaltzy mode. 

Make no mistake, the valedictory shot of The Lost World is absolutely gorgeous and brilliantly rendered, but would carnivores and vegetarians really mill about peaceably together for a Sunday afternoon in the park?  

Not likely…

I know a lot of critics hated The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  I’m not one of them.  In Horror Films of the 1990s I rated it 3 stars out of 4, and I stick by that assessment.  

The film entertains…almost relentlessly, and there is a subtext here about protecting the lives we bring into the world, through science or nature. The grueling, edge-of-your set action scenes work like gangbusters as well.  

But the script takes a few wrong turns in the end, and closes on a note of such utter fantasy, that you’re left, finally, with a sense that you have witnessed, if not a fall from greatness, then at least a small stumble from the path of greatness.

Movie Trailer: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

The Films of 1997: Alien Resurrection

 

It’s intriguing to consider how all the Alien films differ in tone, approach and theme or message. 

The 1979 film from Ridley Scott is all about feelings of isolation and terror in the loneliest, darkest corner of deep space. Underlying the film is a comparison between three distinctive beings that qualify as survivors: the alien, Jones the cat, and, of course, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).

Each one survives or endures a harrowing crisis based on its biological or “natural” make-up (instincts) and individual intelligence.

By contrast, James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) is a gut-crunching, nail-biting war film that forges a space age comparison to the Vietnam conflict. The Colonial Marines go into a combat situation with the best technology, the best training and the finest experience in order to battle an enemy considered “primitive,” but which nonetheless challenges their assumptions of dominance.

The film also sets up a dynamic battle between maternal figures: Ripley and the Alien Queen.

David Fincher’s Alien³ (1992) categorically eschews thrills and action in favor of a dark, intimate story about Ripley’s soul.

Is it worth it to survive if the entire human race is jeopardized by pursuit of that end? In this case, Ripley confronts her own strength -- her innate ability to survive and adapt to difficult scenarios -- and judges that there is a higher human value than continued existence. The film serves as a space-age Christ parable and an exploration of spirituality, and sacrifice.

And Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien Resurrection (1997)?

I must confess my own bias here, before I continue with another word of this analysis. I have always found this 1997 sequel to be the least successful and least worthwhile of the Alien films. I awarded it just two stars (out of four) in Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), for example. My review was pretty harsh, and I wrote that the film began the “stupid-ification” of the beloved franchise.

But on a new screening of the film this week – probably may seventh or eighth viewing over the decades -- I began to detect that there are indeed virtues embedded in Alien Resurrection.  However, they are -- in some ways -- very difficult to highlight or enumerate.  Why?

Primarily because of tone.

Unlike all the others, this Alien film is a dark comedy.

Yes, you read that right. Alien Resurrection is a grim comedy about, among other things, human folly.  The film’s main character, a clone of Ripley, stands outside humanity and quips about the circumstances and nature of the failings she sees.

It’s all very….French.

Alien Resurrections acts, overall, as a cynical observation not about the qualities that separate humans from the xenomorphs, but rather those that connect us or tie us to them.

In Aliens, Ripley tells Burke that she isn’t certain which species is worse. At least you don’t see the xenomorphs trying to fuck each other over for “a goddamned percentage.”

That statement or observation seems to be the guiding principle, the overarching leitmotif of Alien Resurrection. The film goes to some length to eliminate the distance, essentially, between aliens and humans, and asks us to put aside moral absolutes or precepts about good and evil, and consider them in more relativistic terms. 

But the rub here is that the filmmakers undertake this task in Joss Whedon’s trademark glib fashion, often through quips, jokes, and moments that puncture the “seriousness” of the enterprise.  The humor in the film is not straight-up funny, but rather cold, caustic…even bitter. It arises at a considerable distance from humanity itself. 

It’s as if the Ripley clone -- no longer entirely human – wrote the film herself. 

Alien Resurrection finds a lot of things about the human race funny, but understands, simultaneously -- as Ripley explicitly observes in the movie -- that they aren’t really funny at all.

No, those things are actually really sad. 

The things that Ripley sees and comes to understand speak poorly of us as a species.  The only way to treat these problems involving human nature, therefore, is through absurdist humor.  Otherwise, the mode of expression will be…tears.

The problem, I believe, with Alien Resurrection is that some touches of humor are downright dreadful, and thereby corrupt the sense of “reality” we have come to expect in the Alien films.  Yet by the same token, “the dark comedy” approach accomplishes two things. 

Firstly, it reflects a cynical, caustic view of mankind. The film notes that man is, finally, no better than acid-bleeding, chest-bursting aliens. The gap between species has been bridged.

Secondly, the attempt to take on an Alien movie with a different, fresh tone (the dark comedy), honors the lineage and tradition of these films.  No two films in the series are the same; no two films cover the same territory. 

If I can honestly commend Alien³ for the same virtue (originality), I must assess Alien Resurrection in the same light.  I can maintain (and I do maintain) that Alien³ is more coherent and more cohesive than Alien Resurrection, but I can’t fault the latter for attempting something new. 

In the past, I viewed the movie as a retreat to Aliens territory: big muscles, big guns, lots of fighting. Now, I see that there are virtues beneath those surface values.

In fact, one illuminating way to view Alien Resurrection is as the first movement of a (not realized) second trilogy.  The separate setting (200 years in the future), the new heroine (not Ripley, but a hybrid clone), and even the enemy (not the Company, but the military), all encourage this reading.  If you look at the film as laying down future markers for the series, exploring the interaction of aliens and humans in a much closer, much more intertwined fashion, Alien Resurrection seems to open up in a more gratifying or satisfactory fashion.

I still like Alien Resurrection the least of the four original films, because of the wobbly tonal changes, but I can also see that the film boasts some intriguing ideas, and at the very least, attempts to take the series into new territory.

“I’m the Monster’s Mother.” How Alien Resurrection Succeeds

Alien Resurrection goes a long way towards making the point that “true” evil may not come down to the physical properties that divide species. Rather, the film suggests, an organism who attempts to co-opt the life another organism for its own agenda is the true face of evil. 

The aliens, of course, utilize human beings as breeding material for their life-cycle. They do this, however, by instinct, not out of malice. It’s “what” they are.”

But the humans of Alien Resurrection absolutely use other human beings to make money, to make weapons, or otherwise further selfish needs and agendas.  They put these needs, these desires, ahead of humanity, ahead, in fact, of human life. Their decision to co-opt other organisms is conscious, determined.  It’s “who” they are.

This idea is played out in regards to Ripley -- now a clone -- and the fact that seven previous versions of her were produced and discarded without thought, as merely a means to an end.  The clones are just “meat,” with no thought given to what they feel or require to survive. Quality of life isn’t even a consideration.  The Ripley clone is permitted to live only because the scientists on the Auriga possess a certain level of curiosity about her.  Importantly, that’s a reason that involves them and their needs, not Ripley or hers.

Dr. Gediman (Brad Dourif) and Dr. Wren (J.E. Freeman) treat the aliens in much the same way as they treat Ripley: as meat. They clone the alien queen, induce her life-cycle (egg-laying) and then attempt to control (using a steam button in the laboratory for punishment)), the behavior of her progeny. The mission of the scientists is to make a new weapon for General Perez (Dan Hedaya), and to control that new weapon with force. No thought is given to these creatures as living organisms. They are bio-weapons, that’s it.

Even the apparent “protagonists” of Alien Resurrection -- the crew of the Betty -- undertake action for an evil agenda. They steal a traveling spaceship crew in hyper-sleep and sell them for cash so they can get rich.  Like the scientists or the general, the crew people have decided that their selfish needs are more important than self-determination or quality of life.  Johner, in particular, derives pleasure from hurting people. He drops knives into Vriesse’s paralyzed leg.

The only person for whom this observation of avarice, greed and desire is not true is the Ripley clone.

She is a creature of two worlds, of two separate physiologies and she doesn’t attempt to “use” others for her own purposes. In fact, her mission is often the opposite of that behavior.  For example, Ripley elects to burn the surviving clones, 1-7, because one of them begs for death; for peace.  Ripley obliges because the creature is doomed not just to pain, but to slavery at the hands of those who would use it.  Ripley assesses that such slavery is no way to live, and it is right (and noble) to obey the clone’s wishes and terminate her.

At the same time that Ripley can see the humanity of the clones, she can recognize the innocence of the Newborn -- another alien/human fusion -- and regret its death. For the first time in the series, Ripley is in the position, then, of weighing or mediating the two sides of this conflict. In the past, she has always tried to destroy the aliens at all costs, as a danger to mankind and the universe. In Alien Resurrection, the plot develops in such a way that it is, finally, crystal clear, that humans are no better than the aliens; that both species are dangerous to the safety of the universe.  Consider again, there are no really “good humans” in the film.  Call is the most humane character, but she’s an android.  Vriess and Christie are okay, but they still go along with the mission to hijack the cryo-tubes, don’t they?

Consisting of human and alien nature for the first time, Ripley now understands both species, and develops a gallows sense of humor or irony about them. She finds death funny.  Not because suffering is funny. But because the behavior of the two species surrounding her have made death inevitable, a predictable punch line to a very bad joke

Essentially, Alien Resurrection re-positions Ripley. In the first movement of an apparent new trilogy, she is not the savior of mankind as she was in the first three films, but instead the arbiter or decider of values, weighing one side against the other; keeping in check the worst proclivities of each. 

And her ultimate determination of evil comes down to a simple choice of control. Evil attempts to control the life of others without any regard for its feelings, suffering, or emotional needs and desires.  The Newborn, finally, must die, because it kills without reason.  The clones must die, because they have been created not to live, but to serve an end that makes them suffer interminable pain.

When Alien Resurrection works its cold, bitter best, it is as an examination not of a good species and a bad species, but two species that hurt people. Ripley -- the only one who can empathize with both viewpoints -- becomes the one to weigh the scales.  

This idea could have really developed in future films, and it would have been interesting to see where the idea went had a second full trilogy developed.  Imagine two films in which the alien and human worlds grow closer and closer, more alike than unlike, and you start to get a notion of where the material could go.

How are such ideas expressed in the film?  Well, Ripley’s biology is an indicator of her new position. She bleeds red acid, which signifies her mixed heritage. Similarly, the cartoony, two-dimensional nature of the scientists in the film -- one mad (Gediman), one evil (Wrenn) -- makes us understand that humanity’s villainy has risen to the same extreme level as that of the aliens…or become even worse.  Ripley, “the fast learner” sees the humans for what they are pretenders to power, and is, overall, disconnected from human concerns.

There really is no human character in the film to like, and that makes the movie’s point, but in some way, it also distances the viewer from the players.

Ripley’s inappropriate sense of humor -- “who do I have to fuck to get off this boat?” -- is similarly a signifier that she no longer is exclusively on our side. She finds things funny, but knows they aren’t. They are funny to her because her new genetic make-up has changed her very nature.  She is now the child (and mother, simultaneously) of the aliens, as well as, physiologically-speaking, mostly human.

The Southland Times called Alien Resurrection “grotesque and captivating” and the “best” of the Alien series (January 9, 1998, page 12).  I agree with the first observation, if not the second. The film is unbelievably grotesque, perhaps the most so of the series.  And it is captivating in the sense that we must ask ourselves, for the first time, about Ripley’s loyalties and motivations. 

As the center of the film, she stands as an ambiguous figure, one who could side with either species.  Alien Resurrection succeeds to the level it does, perhaps, because it is the first film that suggests a balance between human and alien perspectives, and posits a force – the Ripley clone – who can navigate such a balance.

“Father’s Dead, asshole:” How Alien Resurrection Fails

A bitter, caustic film that acknowledges man’s fatal flaws, Alien Resurrection’s ideas are often superior to the execution of the material. 

 It’s one thing to add a certain level of detached glibness to Ripley’s mode of expression. It’s quite another to go for dumb physical comedy in the body of the film itself. In its ambitious attempt to be a dark, observational comedy about human foibles and transport the series in a new direction, Alien Resurrection sometimes makes the characters and world of Ripley and the aliens a live-action cartoon. 

Specifically, the frightful strength and power of the aliens has been made a laughing-stock, particularly during the horrendous sequence in which the monster’s signature inner jaw pulps the head of General Perez (a grievously miscast Dan Hedaya). 

Perez stands there, not even unbalanced by the impact, and picks out the back of his skull and brain…presumably while the alien stands there waiting for him to make his next move.

The scene is so poorly acted, so poorly presented that you can’t tell if it’s supposed to be funny or horrific.

Instead, it’s just a mess. It is a reality-breaking moment that takes you out of the film.

Also, the film -- forged in the unfortunate and unsubtle era of Face-Off (1997) and Con-Air (1997) -- is mired in stupid, macho BMF-ism.

That’s Bad Motherfucker-ism, in case you weren’t sure.

Johner is a bad MF.

Christie is a bad MF.

Vriess – a fellow in a wheelchair – is also a bad MF. 

Of course, Ripley is a bad MF too. 

Instead of genuine characterization, we’re asked again and again to like these characters because they’re too cool for school.  Ooh, look at those big guns.  Look at how Christie can shoot ricochet shots!

There’s not a single supporting character in the film who deserves to eat at the same lunch table where Parker, Brett, Hudson, Hicks, Bishop, 85 or Clements do.  They are all walking/talking clichés with only the most basic of “qualities.” 

And, incidentally, they are also pretty clearly the early versions of Serenity’s crew. 

Johner is the same dumb soldier guy/comic relief as Firefly’s Jayne. And the Captain, Elgyn, navigates with the same sort of amoral, do-whatever-it-takes-to-survive moral compass as Mal Reynolds does.  The Betty’s mechanic is the much-lusted after but diminutive Call, a good stand-in for Kaylee, except she’s an android.  Even the cockpit of the Betty resembles -- at least a little -- Serenity’s command deck. Whedon demonstrated how, in a continuing series, he could take characters of such broad strokes and transform them into beloved, nuanced individuals.  The crew of the Betty doesn’t quite get there.

Instead, the macho approach of rampant BMF-ism reaches the height of idiocy when Larry Purvis (Leland Orser) -- a man carrying a chest-buster inside of him -- also ascends to that territory. During his last moments of life, he assaults an evil scientist, Dr. Wrenn and manages to position his opponent at just the right place, in just the right moment, so that the emerging ches-tbuster breaks not just through his own ruptured chest, but -- conveniently -- through Wrenn’s skull too.  It’s a ludicrous, over-the-top moment meant to be intense and manic but in concept and execution, like the Hedaya scenes, proves stupid beyond measure.

It’s difficult to like the film, and its “dark comedy” approach when so many moments pander to dumb action convention.

Also, some of the verbal humor in Alien Resurrection doesn’t work in either concept or delivery.  “Who were you expecting, Santa Claus?” asks Vriess at a crucial juncture, and the moment flat-lines. The humor in the film is so hit-or-miss that Alien Resurrection veers between groans and giggles throughout most of its run.

Whedon once noted that it wasn’t that his script was altered that made Alien Resurrection so poor, it was everything that came in the production after the script: the casting, the costumes, even the creature design.  You can see his point.  Winona Ryder is underwhelming as Call, and Hedaya never manages to be convincing as a military general.  He could get the job, but he couldn’t do the job.

In terms of costumes, Alien Resurrection dresses all of its evil scientist in -- wait for it -- futuristic white coats, just so the audience understands that, you know, they are scientists. The cartoony aspects of this once realistic universe have been ramped up to a ludicrous degree.

Similarly, the film lacks any driving sense of momentum. The Poseidon Adventure (1972) is one obvious template for the story: survivors of a disaster must make their way through a wrecked ship. 

But there’s no sense of how close or how far the survivors are at any given moment from their destination. There’s no sense that they are making progress. There’s a stop at the clone lab, a stop at the face-hugger lab, an underwater swim, a stop at a chapel, and then a dash for the dock.  The incidents feel episodic and don’t build towards anything significant or meaningful.  Similarly, this is the first Alien film in which the alien doesn’t cast a shadow over the movie even when it is not on-screen.  The aliens are missing in action for long spells in Alien Resurrection, and you just don’t feel the danger of their (hidden) presence. There’s no belief that they could be hiding around any corner.

Oppositely, Alien Resurrection’s big set piece is visually arresting indeed. It involves the survivors aboard the Auriga swimming through a flooded compartment of the ship in hopes of reaching safety.  It’s a long swim too, and the scene culminates with swimming aliens in pursuit. The scene is tense and well-shot, as characters struggle to hold their breaths and swim for their lives as the aliens, the equivalent of great white sharks, circle in for the kill. And even better, it’s all a trap, set to make the oxygen-starved swimmers open up wide…in a room of eggs and face-huggers.  This sequence possesses a lot of energy, and gives the movie a real kick.  If the rest of the movie had lived up to this set-piece, Alien Resurrection might be remembered differently.

Perhaps the greatest virtue of Alien Resurrection is that it attempts something different, and now that thing is behind us. The dark comedy angle -- the exaggerated colors and characters -- has been done, and now the series can move on and attempt another, hopefully more fruitful approach. So I champion Alien Resurrection for its decision to, in honor of the series, try something new.  But I assess, finally, that “dark comedy” is not the most successful approach for the franchise.

Even acknowledging that judgment, I can’t help but wonder what might have been: what a second trilogy -- with Resurrection as the start point, not a dead end -- might have looked like.  There are moments and images of greatness in Alien Resurrection, but overall, the film doesn’t capitalize well on them.

The Films of 1997: Starship Troopers

Not long ago on the blog, I examined the science fiction films of director Paul Verhoeven, including favorites RoboCop (1987), and Total Recall (1990).

The third film in Verhoeven’s sci-fi trilogy is Starship Troopers, an adaptation of -- or more correctly, a cinematic rebuttal to -- Robert A. Heinlen’s Hugo Award winning 1959 novel.

Owing in part to his early life in Nazi-controlled Netherlands, Verhoeven’s science fiction films often parody or critique extreme right-wing aspects of American culture, namely the excessive freedom and power of corporations, and the alarming violence of the society as a whole.

Verhoeven’s films are gory, pointed, and funny, and accordingly Starship Troopers succeeds, in many ways, as the perfect capper for the trilogy.

In other words, it functions as a summation of the director’s individual and artistic perspective.

This time out, Verhoeven reminds audiences of how easily and readily some citizens fall in line behind totalitarian, even quasi-fascist regimes, and how Authority (with a capital “A”) utilizes propaganda to transmit its message of unthinking nationalism or patriotism. 

Also, Starship Troopers points out how easy it is to manipulate opinion based on fear, specifically after an attack on the homeland.

Like RoboCop, the central narrative of Starship Troopers is interrupted periodically by short films. These interstitial interludes do not mock TV commercials this time, but rather propaganda films of the fictional Federation. These short films reveal the Earth government at its absolute, pandering worst.

These shorts -- and particularly those involving the indoctrination of children into patriotic group think -- also remain hysterically funny to this day.

Yet, while everyone seems to understand the social critique presented by RoboCop, there exist two camps of thought regarding Starship Troopers.

In the camp of those who don't really understand the film are those folks who complain about the callow cast, the tongue-in-cheek approach to violence, and the sometimes hard-to-swallow tactics adopted by the futuristic mobile infantry in the war against the vicious Arachnids, the "Bugs."

But those who do get and understand Starship Troopers tend to see it for what it actually is: a humorous warning against blossoming totalitarianism, and mindless nationalism. 

As was the case in RoboCop, Verhoeven artfully uses exaggeration to craft the film’s dystopian landscape, and by doing so, points out just how silly -- and transparent -- propaganda can be.

To put the matter another way, some critics and viewers mistake Starship Troopers for a stupid, special effects adventure, when in fact it lampoons stupid, special effects adventures, and reminds us through its grotesque, bloody carnage that there is nothing heroic, glorious or ennobling about war, or its mindless pursuit by the State.

And no, this is not at all how Heinlein imagined his literary universe.

Contrarily Heinlein’s novel suggests that violence has settled more contentious issues in society than any other course of action. The author reserves the right to vote and lead in his Utopian future only for those who have served in war.  

Everyone else is just a civilian, less-than-a=second-class citizen. Heinlein also dehumanizes his enemies in terms that Americans are all too familiar with. The Arachnids are “Bugs” in the same way that other, real-life enemies were labeled “Gooks.” 

It’s so much easier to hate and destroy an enemy when we give them names that don’t register their full humanity or intelligence, when we can separate them from "our side" and tag them as different from us.

Verhoeven’s film aptly punctures these aspect of war and fascism too.

As noted above then, the movie Starship Troopers is actually a meticulous, dedicated rebuttal to the novel, and a warning about the brand of thinking that informs Heinlein’s world view.

Would you like to know more?

“They’re just like us.  They want to know us. So they can kill us.”

In the not-too-distant future, a limited democracy, the Federation, faces a new challenge from deep space: a rival race of powerful Arachnids, or bugs.

When Buenos Aires is pulped by an asteroid that originated in the AQZ (Arachnid Quarantine Zone), war is declared, and three friends go different ways.

Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien) joins the Mobile Infantry, Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards) pursues her dream of piloting a star-ship, and Carl (Neil Patrick Harris) joins military intelligence.

After a botched, failed invasion of the Bug home world, Klendathu, the Earth Federation changes Sky Marshals, and adopts a new philosophy. To defeat the Bug, humans must think like the bug.

Part of that new approach involves capturing a Brain Bug, an intelligent arachnid that has never before been seen by human eyes.

“We’re in this for the species, boys and girls.”

Much of the pseudo-fascist philosophy of Starship Troopers is voiced in the Verhoeven film by Michael Ironside’s character, Rasczak. He starts the film as the high school teacher of Rico and Ibanez, and is thus able to describe the historical and moral underpinnings of the film’s “universe” in his class lecture and discussion.

Rasczak describes, specifically, the “failure of democracy” in the past (implicitly our time, the 20th and early 21st century), and the ensuing course correction: veterans took control of the levers of power and established stability.  

What he describes, though not in exact words, is actually a military coup. 

Bluntly stated, soldiers knocked down a civilian democracy and installed themselves as rulers of a free people. Then, they favored their own people -- veterans and soldiers -- and forbid any non-veterans from serving in the government or in any other positions of leadership, for that matter.

The new Federation, then, is an example of leadership by the few, the proud, the privileged and the powerful, while the masses can only succeed by serving in the wars that their masters choose.  

There’s some debate among readers and viewers, based on Heinlen’s book, about whether all Federation service is military service, but that’s certainly how it appears in the film. To gain citizenship and even the right to vote, you must first hope you don’t become cannon fodder in your master’s chosen campaign of sustained invasion and attack.

Rasczak also notes in the film that “naked force,” violence, is the “supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.” 

Again, what this means in practice is simply that might makes right.  Violence is a moral good in this fictional universe. Those with military power get to impose their value system on the losers in any conflict. Why, because they have might on their side.

And yes, indeed, this seems very much like a fascist world-view. It is right in line with the precepts of Spanish fascism in the early 20^th century (as voiced by Primo de Rivera): “no other argument is admissible than that of fists and pistols when justice of the Fatherland is attacked.”

We see this very tenet played out in theVerhoeven film.  

At first, the Federation doesn’t believe that bugs are intelligent at all. But when territory in AQZ (Arachnid Quarantine Zone) might be acquired by Earth, suddenly the bugs are capable of hurling an asteroid directly at us, launching a sneak-attack or war upon the human race.  

Ask yourself, if the bugs have no intelligence, how could they have possibly slingshot that asteroid into Buenos Aires?

This question is never raised in the film, or by anyone in the Federation. Instead, we see news footage of the city’s destruction. We see the body count tally on the screen, going up, up and up into the millions.  

And then, quite simply, before we know anything about the enemy, we see the call to action, the call to all-out war. Honor must be satisfied. Blood must be avenged.

Importantly, a journalist asks a question about the Bugs at one point. He wonders if it is possible that they have responded in this bloody fashion because humans invaded their territory first.  He similarly questions if negotiations can’t begin, based on the things that the Bugs and the humans have in common (implicitly, territoriality).

Rico’s response? “Kill them all.”

There will be no accommodation with this particular enemy. 

The jingoistic rhetoric mounts (“we’re in this for the species, boys and girls,”) and the mobile infantry invades the Bug solar system.  And yet the so-called meteor attack may not even be an attack at all. But if it is an attack, it may be based on the same fears regarding territory and dominion that our species frequently ponders.  

But no quarter will be given, and Bug Space will soon be Human Space.

In school rooms across the planet, human students learn that bugs have “no intelligence” and that they are “evil.” And the propaganda industry begins broadcasting scenes that show mobilization on the home front. 

One very funny Federation propaganda video reveals children in a suburban neighborhood going out in the street and stomping terrestrial bugs, while a happy Mother claps and cheers, encouraged by the mindless hatred for anything insect-like.

Notice again that this isn't a defensive war launched by Earth to protect the planet or the homeland; rather an offensive spearhead deep into Arachnid territory. The battle doesn't even occur in neutral territory.  

The troopers fight them there so they won't have to fight them here, right?

The point is that the attack -- intentional or otherwise -- is mere pretext, something a fascist government requires to keep the war machine oiled and continuing...eternally.

We can tell from Starship Troopers that Earth has become a fascist state not just by Rasczak’s words and by the explicit nature of the war effort, but by the existence of the propagandist Federal Network that controls all the news broadcasts.

In describing a "WORLD THAT WORKS," a govt. propaganda film shows kindly soldiers handing out giant machine guns and bullets - like they're candy - to smiling civilian children in a suburban neighborhood. 

The military is seen here as a kind of helpful big brother; the first recourse when there's a crisis. They come bearing not food or shelter, but heavy arms.

Again, forget diplomacy, please.

Another propaganda film is called "CRIME AND PUNISHMENT" and it informs us that a convicted criminal is arrested, tried and executed in one day. 

Swift justice? Or too-swift justice? Is there any longer a thing, in this state, known as due process?

In a fascist society, all dissenters are called "criminals" and dispatched quickly. Lest the government be threatened by facts or evidence.. Lest viewers get to hear an argument that goes counter to government policy.

Another propaganda film in the movie is called "KNOW YOUR FOE," which gives advice about how do successfully manage a kill shot on a bug.

And then, there's "I'M DOING MY PART," which shows young children in heavy combat armor and helmets and makes the case for obliterating the Bug Homeworld, for genocide.



There's also "DO YOUR PART: COUNTDOWN TO VICTORY” which assures the scared masses at home that no matter how many soldiers die in the field of battle (308,000 die at the Klendathu encounter alone...), their country is winning. 

Facts -- and reality -- be damned. Just stay the bloody course.

So, what Verhoeven has accomplished here, in very dynamic and memorable terms, is make the protagonists of his unique film -- the starship troopers of the title -- part and parcel of an autocratic, controlling, fascist society. 

They are cogs in a fascist machine, and these Federal Network "films" dotting the movie make us aware of that fact. Again and again, but always humorously.

But that's not the only clue. 

The other obvious "tell" in Starship Troopers that Verhoeven is making a statement about the perils of blind nationalism comes from the wardrobe, the costuming choices. 

Just take a gander at the uniform Neil Patrick Harris wears as he enters the battleship near the end of the film. 

The black leather. The hat. The trench coat. Look at all familiar to you?

Who does he resemble, this heroic representative of Earth's "military intelligence" division?

There's no doubt: he looks like a Nazi, a Gestapo officer, specifically, and that's very much the metaphor here. Of course, Nazis were fascists, but also masters of propaganda, so it's a strong historical allusion.

As for the cast? Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Casper Van Dien and the like have been disparaged many times and in many places as callow and insipid clothes-horses and WB Network stars-in-the-making. 

Indeed. I think that, on certain physical/visual level this is exactly right. They are all gorgeous.

In fact, I think this is precisely why they were cast in the first place. Not a one of these protagonists seems very smart (Despite their test scores in Math). Not a one of them has any depth. Let alone perspective or insight. They are all immature.

Yet these are exactly the kind of people a fascist society would want to see populate its citizenry. Callow folks who don't question orders or the "way things are." They gladly take orders and are easily riled to violence.

So even down to casting,  Verhoeven has pulled a fast one on his audience.  What happens, one might ask, after a century of Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian culture?

I submit that you end up with the characters of Starship Troopers: physically beautiful nincompoops. 

Village idiots all...just like the characters in this film. They're tan, gorgeous, physically fit, and without a single important thought in their pretty little heads.

And at least, from the government's standpoint, they're easy to control.

As for the attack tactics dramatize in the film, well, it's true, the Earth mobile infantry seems pretty lame and ineffective. The men and women of these forces stand around and form circles carrying over-sized machine guns, and blast away (wasting ammo...) at the indestructible bugs. 

It's not subtle, but this is surely another way of indicating that to the fascist overlords, the common man -- the grunt -- means absolutely nothing. They’re cannon fodder as likely to shoot one another as they are the bugs. We need numbers, not sound strategy, dammit!

And, in verification of this notion, by the end of the film, the government is recruiting twelve old kids.

To its credit, Starship Troopers also predicts one of the absolute worst developments in the military and journalism: embedding journalists with the troops, so that they owe their safety to the soldiers and can’t be objective about the nature of the conflict, or the purpose behind it.  It is a journalist’s job to be dispassionate and objective, but it’s hard to do that when soldiers are physically protecting you from harm, and you come under fire. 

Finally, Starship Troopers notes well how, in times of war, propaganda helps to dehumanize our enemies.  

Our opponents in combat become “savages,” and “brutal,” and “barbaric,” like they are craven monsters…not actually fellow human beings with whom we have ideological differences.  

Starship Troopers provides the ultimate example of this de-humanization: the enemies are, literally, monstrous insects. 

They are disgusting bugs, and so humans have no compunctions whatsoever about destroying them utterly. These citizens of a totalitarian, highly-militarized state have been conditioned to believe the bugs are inferior to us, and deserve to die.  Again, you can go back in history and look at descriptors such as Gooks, Charlie, Japs, Jerry, and more to see how easy it is to slip into a slang that de-humanizes the enemy, making them less than our equals.

Even outside the social critique, which is more relevant today after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan than it was in 1997, Starship Troopers really holds up.  

The special effects remain, for the most part, astonishing. The scenes involving the Rodger Young in space combat look staggeringly good. And I scanned and scanned for signs of fakery with the rampaging hordes of bugs, only to not find many at all.

Over a decade ago, Verhoeven gave us a warning about the slippery slope of totalitarianism and jingoistic, blind nationalism. It was in the form of a silly, special-effects laden, gory outer space movie, and I guess it was pretty easy to ignore or discount.

It’s not that easy to ignore anymore.  

The gap between the world of fictional exaggeration and the world of reality, as we also saw in RoboCop, seems to be shrinking at a terrifying rate.