Follow TV Tropes

Following

Trivia / Alien: Resurrection

Go To

For the movie:

  • Awesome, Dear Boy:
    • Winona Ryder has said that she took the role in this before even reading the script, because she had always wanted to be in an Alien movie and could brag about it to her brothers. She joked that she'd still do it even if she was killed off in the first scene. She also jumped at the chance to appear alongside her idol, Sigourney Weaver.
    • Sigourney Weaver was reluctant to do a fourth movie after the rather final ending of the third. However, when she read the script, the scene where Ripley sees the seven failed attempts at cloning her was enough to make her sign on. But she also gave other reasons:
      "They basically drove a dumptruck full of money to my house."
  • Corpsing: Vriess's line was originally "Who were you expecting? The Easter Bunny?", but it kept setting everyone off in hysterical laughter (due to the actor saying "Eastern Bunny").
  • Creator Backlash:
    • Writer Joss Whedon was dissatisfied with the film, among other things because he was roped to play straight a parody script he had written.
    • Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet was uncomfortable with the film from the beginning, as he actually believed that producing another Alien movie was a bad idea. He also considered himself unfit for the project, as he was specialized in weird fantasy films as opposed to grim science-fiction like Alien (and he didn't even speak English, so he constantly needed a translator). The resultant experience, worsened by the heavy Executive Meddling and late budget cuts, made him swear off Hollywood for decades. However, he has stated he is actually proud of the film itself even if it wasn't perfect nor pleasing to do.
  • Creator Killer: Slightly subverted because director Jean-Pierre Jeunet wasn't actively looking for a career on American soil, but this film ensured he wouldn't get another call until 2013. The film also did critical damage to the career of producer Gordon Carroll, who only did Alien vs. Predator before he died.
  • The Danza:
    • Carolyn Campbell as Carolyn Williamson.
    • Ron Perlman as Ron Johner.
    • Gary Dourdan as Gary Christie.
    • Dominique Pinon as Dom Vriess.
  • Deleted Scene: Most of which are re-inserted on the Special Editionnote .
    • An alternate opening that appears to be from inside an alien's mouth - only to reveal is just a fly on the windscreen of the Auriga, which would then be squashed.
    • When the baby alien is removed from Ripley, she wakes up on the operating table and breaks the surgeon's arm. This foreshadows that she has part of the alien's DNA much earlier than in the theatrical release.
    • When Ripley is being shown various pictures - glove, fruit etc. - one of them is of a young girl who resembles Newt. Ripley is visibly troubled by this.
    • As Ripley and Gediman are having lunch, Wren would tell her that Weyland-Yutani was bought out by Wal-Mart years ago.
    • A completely different sequence introducing the Betty crew. Elgyn flirts more with Hillard and tells Call and Vriess over the intercom to get ready. Cut to Call and Vriess working on some cargo, where Vriess would make a rude joke. This then goes to the scene of Christie receiving his weapons (which happens first in the theatrical cut), then back to Call and Vriess. Vriess throws a tool at Johner's head, he'd make a crack about Johner's alcoholism and he'd say something about deserving better company after he threatens Call.
    • More lines in the meeting between Perez and Elgyn.
    • After Call says they can freeze Purvis, she has another run-in with Johner. Christie then offers to keep an eye on Purvis just in case he starts acting funny.
    • Before diving underwater, Christie and DiStephano start geeking out about weapons. Christie also explains that their weapons are specially designed to operate in water, explaining why they're able to fight the aliens in the flooded kitchen.
    • A line averting the Inferred Holocaust of crashing the ship on Earth; Call says she recalibrated ground level - ensuring the ship will crash on an uninhabited quadrant. Ripley then tells Call about Newt.
    • A different ending taking place after the theatrical climax. Ripley and Call say the same lines except on Earth, showing the ruins of Paris behind them.
  • Dueling Movies: Alien Resurrection competed with Deep Rising. They came out from within a year of each other, and featured very similar plots.
  • Dyeing for Your Art: Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Leland Orser, Gary Dourdan, Kim Flowers, Dominique Pinon, Raymond Cruz and J. E. Freeman had to do fifteen training sessions in swimming pools in preparation for the underwater scenes. They had to do a further two weeks of training on set before anything was shot. Sigourney Weaver missed most of this, as she had Broadway commitments before filming.
  • Enforced Method Acting: Winona Ryder nearly drowned when she was a child, and the first scene they shot was the underwater through the canteen scene. She had never been in water since her accident. The looks of anxiety before she goes in, and the utter terror on her face when they can't get out the other end? Yeah, those weren't faked — she had an anxiety attack on her first day of filming. The ironic thing? As a robot, Call shouldn't have looked nervous (after all, she doesn't need to breathe).
  • Executive Meddling: Note that, Joss Whedon's complaints to the contrary, the script to the fourth movie is substantially the same as the one he handed over (except for the ending, as he wanted the conclusion to be set on Earth but Fox instead pushed for the one still on the Auriga). It's the rest of the project that got screwed up. According to Whedon, he wrote the film as a camp Self-Parody and the studio chose to play it straight instead.
  • Fatal Method Acting:
    • Ron Perlman nearly drowned during shooting as he hit his head filming in the aquatic escape.
    • Winona Ryder also had an anxiety attack while filming the underwater scene.
  • Franchise Killer: The film differed so much from the tone of its predecessors and eliminated so much of the series' mythology (including the USCM and Weyland-Yutani) that it managed to kill a franchise that even Alien³ couldn't kill. An officially licensed novel/Fix Fic, Alien: Sea of Sorrows, came out nearly two decades later and attempted to retcon some of the material in the film (via resurrecting Weyland-Yutani as the Big Bad and reversing the damage caused to Earth).
  • The Merch: Kenner made figures based on it, like they did the first two films and the Predator. And much like their earlier efforts, it was Misaimed Marketing aimed at kids.
  • Money, Dear Boy: After declaring she wouldn't do another Alien film, Sigourney Weaver agreed to do this film. In her own words, "They basically drove a dumptruck full of money to my house".
  • One-Take Wonder: Sigourney Weaver's infamous no-look basketball shot in the movie's first act. After spending weeks practicing, Weaver was only hitting about a sixth of her attempts. The director preferred to just add the ball in later—which is why the shot was staged with the ball leaving the frame, but allowed Weaver six attempts to pull it off for real. With 5 misses, the actress put her last chance to good use. The cheers from her co-stars when she sunk it meant the shot had to be cut immediately.
  • Production Posse: Actors Ron Perlman and Dominique Pinon, who had both previously worked with Jeunet. He also brought with him special effects supervisor Jean-Christophe "Pitof" Comar and cinematographer Darius Khondji.
  • Throw It In!: Sigourney Weaver actually made that behind-the-back-without-looking basketball shot for real, and the shock and surprise the other actors show is genuine. Ron Perlman notably looked directly into the camera and said "Oh my God!"; they cut the audio for the final movie.
  • Troubled Production: Compared to the other films in the franchise, production was relatively sedate. There was only one major thing that went wrong during filming — Ron Perlman injuring himself and nearly drowning while filming one sequence, which required the shooting schedule to be slightly reshuffled to give him time to recover — and production and post-production otherwise flew by without a single problem. At most, there was that water chase sequence which proved an exhausting experience for all in the cast and crew. That's not to say things were entirely okay behind the scenes, though, as Joss Whedon had major differences of opinion with the producers and Jean-Pierre Jeunet over the tone and design of the film, but was overruled on every occasion. Even then, he didn't kick up much of a stink, since he was too busy setting up Buffy the Vampire Slayer to get involved in any major disputes.
  • Wag the Director: The studio wanted to cut the scene before Ripley's encounter with the queen, because of its heavily implied sexual nature. Sigourney Weaver threatened to not promote the film if the scene was cut.
  • What Could Have Been: See the franchise's page.

For the video game:

  • Mid-Development Genre Shift: After a tumultuous development where, like GoldenEye (1997), the tie-in game missed the film's release by several years, the third-person-shooter was nearing completion when the developers at Argonaut Games were struggling with two big issues. Their rendering technique was taxing the system to where they were struggling with various technical issues, and as a result, had to limit the enemy AI to basically bumrush the player in low numbers, which made the game not scary. However, they had implemented a first-person view and control scheme when crawling through vents and realized they could apply it to the entire game, which benefitted the build in three ways: they didn't have to throw out their existing work (which had already happened), it would amp up the game's difficulty and scare factor with a first-person perspective limiting what players could see, and the game's technical performance improved with less to display. As a bonus, the game helped revolutionize the now-standard dual-analog control scheme for console FPS games.

Top