Renovatio Records: Alien: Resurrection

Alien: Resurrection (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Music Composed by John Frizzell

We have another surprise for this Alien Day! To complete the saga of Ellen Ripley, Renovatio Records presents you with the score for Alien: Resurrection by John Frizzell. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the 1997 sequel is set 200 years after Alien 3. Sigourney Weaver comes back as Ripley, who has been cloned by the United Systems Military (USM) with the purpose of removing the alien queen embryo from her body. As a result of this cloning process, Ripley has inherited some of the physical attributes and capabilities of the Xenomorphs, such as acid for blood. The USM plans to breed the aliens aboard the spaceship USM Auriga, using human beings (delivered by a group of mercenaries) as involuntary hosts. As expected, after maturing, the aliens eventually escape from their enclosures and start wreaking havoc across the ship. Ripley sees herself forming an alliance with the mercenaries to try to escape and destroy the Auriga before it reaches Earth. Little do they know that the alien queen has also absorbed some attributes from Ripley’s DNA, and is now able to develop a uterus and give birth to a new kind of monster. Secondary roles were played by Winona Ryder, Ron Perlman, Dan Hedaya, Dominique Pinon, J. E. Freeman, Brad Dourif, Kim Flowers, Gary Dourdan, and Michael Wincott.

Though the film generally received a bit more appreciation by fans and critics than its predecessor, Alien: Resurrection lacks in originality as it was conceived as a combination of the mystery of Ridley Scott’s original film with the action of James Cameron’s sequel. Thus, the film ended up recycling what by then had become a tired concept, resorting to forced scenarios for the sake of having new groups of humans being hunted and nastily killed by the Xenomorphs. The once mysterious and fascinating beast was brought down to nothing more than a two-dimensional killing monster, which is a bit of a letdown. However, the film is a lot of fun and has several things to appreciate. As its predecessor, it is wonderfully shot (courtesy of Seven’s cinematographer Darius Khondji), the set designs look amazing, and ADI Studios' animatronic special effects are outstanding. Thematically, the film is quite shallow, but it does explore the dangers of genetic engineering under greedy hands, functioning as a cautionary tale. In the future, humans have become so unsympathetic and primitive when striving for their goals that the only individuals showing genuine human emotions are manufactured people. Moreover, the best developed concept of Alien: Resurrection is the parallelism between the cloned Ripley and the android Call (Ryder), both characters being the result of human creation, and both struggling to find their purpose in life. Their relationship evolves from being flirtatious at first to nurturing by the end, with references to motherhood, birth and identity appearing from scene to scene, against a backdrop of religious undertones and sexual innuendos. The film aims at answering several intriguing questions concerning the identity crisis of these man-made individuals: Is Ripley a person, a construct, a monster? Why is Call the most humane character in spite of her not being a human? Why does the newborn creature that the alien queen gives birth to identify Ripley as its mother? All of these questions are indeed engaging and very well planted, but unfortunately, they are not clearly resolved, overshadowed by the quick pace of the film and many scenes that are borderline an assault on the senses. Nevertheless, Alien: Resurrection stands as a very distinctive entry in the Alien franchise, namely for its compelling visual style and for several memorable sequences: a gut-wrenching scene in which Ripley meets her former failed clones, a breath-taking underwater chase, the newborn’s horrific demise, and a scene in which Ripley is abducted and slowly carried by a Xenomorph through the dark that it is filmed in such a way that it looks like they are having sex... All of this enhanced by Frizzell's omnipresent score.

Back in the mid-nineties, composer John Frizzell was relatively unknown in the business, working mainly as an assistant for James Newton Howard. He auditioned to compose the score for Alien: Resurrection knowing that he would have big shoes to fill after Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, and Elliot Goldenthal. Director Jeunet heard Frizzell’s samples and the composer was brought on board, facing four arduous months of writing and recording the score. The director requested him that the music should have a unique approach that would differentiate it from the previous films in the franchise. To achieve this, Frizzell found inspiration in the sensual and erotic overtones of the film, leading him to create several themes and motifs for characters and situations. The main theme for the film is constituted by a set of ascending and descending string movements that accompany an ominous descending melody. This sensual theme is presented in the “Main Title” cue and it is recurrently used throughout the rest of the score, the melody itself working as a motif for the Xenomorphs. Ripley receives her own theme; a tragic melody in strings that appears in the superb cue “Post-op”, as the character wakes up, evoking a rebirth. The opening three notes of Ripley’s theme also serve to effectively accentuate the heroics performed by some of the characters in later parts of the score. Frizzell also provides Call with a theme of overlapping string notes that fittingly elicits her human-android duality; the most significant apparitions of this theme can be found in “Call Finds Ripley” and during “The Chapel”. All of these themes mature in instrumentation and rhythm as the movie progresses and the characters evolve, while the score showcases how well Frizzell uses electronic and synthesizer sound effects, blending them with the powerful 100-piece orchestra and supplemental choir. His idea was to merge the acoustic and the electronic to reflect the synthetic and the organic concepts of the film, respectively. One of the best examples of this blend is the opening part of “The Aliens Escape”, which features a prominent use of industrial percussive loops, accentuated by orchestral timpani hits and relentless string and brass phrases.

The action music provided by Frizzell also deserves attention. There are several action passages throughout the score, but “They Swim…”, in particular, is the pièce de résistance in this regard. This rousing and bombastic track, which allegedly took Frizzell a month to compose, underscores the nail-biting underwater sequence in which the group of humans is chased by two Xenomorphs through a flooded level of the Auriga. It provides many instances of harmonic and enjoyable rhythmic action that is as engaging as Horner's music for Aliens, but the most effective bit involves accelerating percussion hits over string crescendos and brass stings as one of the Xenomorphs calmly and effortly swims approaching to its victim, who desperately struggles to escape. This part alone is nerve-racking and will have you gasping for air. Overall, Frizzell's work for Alien: Resurrection offers plenty of characteristics to appreciate, from compelling motifs to rousing action, and even several nods to the previous three scores in the series. This assignment was Frizzell's big break into the industry, allowing him to develop a career in composing scores for horror and thriller productions.

Alien: Resurrection was released in 1997 by RCA Victor in the form of a rather short album that included about half of Frizzell's complete score. The album provides several of the major action highlights but is missing several standout cues mostly from the third act, namely the finale "I'm a Stranger Here Myself", a beautiful orchestral and choral track that rounds up the score and the film nicely when the survivors reach Earth for the first time in the franchise. Furthermore, the listening experience of this album is disrupted by the insertion of Handel's operatic source piece "Priva Son D'Ogni Conforto" from "Julius Caesar", which is totally out of place. As a result, bootlegs with the complete score quickly surfaced until La-La Land Records assembled a 2-CD limited release in 2010 that includes 86 minutes of Frizzell's finished score, as well as alternate takes, and the original album presentation. While totaling up to a generous 140 minutes of music, many listeners considered this presentation to be an overkill and quite repetitive. For these reasons, Renovatio Records has produced a new 52 minute album that includes most of the material already available in the original album presentation, but with longer versions of several tracks, plus most of the music for the third act that was left out of that album. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this Alien Day as it should: re-listening to all the scores from the Ripley saga!!!

Track listing:

1. Main Title (2:12)

2. Post-Op (1:22)

3. Docking The Betty (1:19)

4. Facehuggers (2:10)

5. After Hours On Deck (2:10)

6. Call Finds Ripley (2:59)

7. The Aliens Escape (4:47)

8. Elgyn's Death (3:35)

9. Ripley Meets Her Clones (2:48)

10. What's Inside Me? (2:48)

11. They Swim... (7:00)