Alien Resurrection question

[Sgt. Sacrament]

I enjoyed "Alien" and loved "Aliens", but was turned off by "Alien3" and never cared to see "Alien Resurrection". "Resurrection" was on G4 last night, so I watched the last 45 minutes of it while working out. What I saw didn't make me want to see any more, but I had a question: at the very end, the big ship was on a collision course with the Earth, and then it hit the Earth's atmosphere, and it just blew up. Was there a reason for this, or was it just dumb or a way to save $$$? I expected it to plunge into the atmosphere and burn up, not just explode. I've never seen "Dracula 3000", but I've heard that at the end of that 'film' that the spaceship just blows up for no reason. Maybe it was a homage to "Dracula 3000"?

 

[Magisterfrodo]

I took it as sort of irony that this is how Ripley finally made it back home.

 

[MeanJoePhaser]

I think Winona Ryder's character programmed it to do that. But it's been awhile since I've seen the movie.

 

[Pingfah]

I've never seen "Dracula 3000", but I've heard that at the end of that 'film' that the spaceship just blows up for no reason. Maybe it was a homage to "Dracula 3000"?

Is this bit a joke? An Alien movie paying homage to a crappy vampire movie that came out 7 years after it was made?

That would be quite a feat.

 

[Teelie]

I don't know why they did it. Budget reasons would probably be it. The original ending was meant to take place on Earth which has become something of a wasteland/world and have this big showdown with the Newborn.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Winona Ryder's character set the ship on a collision course due to there being multiple xenomorphs aboard while Ripley 8 and everybody else escaped on the Betty, unknowingly also having a stowaway in the form of the Alien Hybrid

 

[nx1701g]

Actually it didn't hit the atmosphere and blow up. The ship actually did make it to the surface and crashed in Australia according to the script. The resulting explosion was supposed to have destroyed the aliens.

 

[Anwar]

I would have liked the alternate ending with the ruins of Paris to be the real ending. It would fit the bittersweet nature of all the movies better.

 

[miraclefan]

I would have liked the alternate ending with the ruins of Paris to be the real ending. It would fit the bittersweet nature of all the movies better.

Give or take, I don't care.

 

[nx1701g]

I would have liked the alternate ending with the ruins of Paris to be the real ending. It would fit the bittersweet nature of all the movies better.

Plus it was a great scene.

 

[Da'an]

Call: "We used up too much fuel. I can't make critical mass, I can't blow the ship."
Ripley: "Then crash it."

Or something like that, I forget the exact line.

 

[crouteru]

I assume Whedon wrote in the crash because we've already seen a ship self-destruct (the Nostromo).

 

[RoJoHen]

Call: "We used up too much fuel. I can't make critical mass, I can't blow the ship."
Ripley: "Then crash it."

Or something like that, I forget the exact line.

Yeah, that's more or less it.

It didn't blow up because it hit the atmosphere. It blew up because it actually crashed into the planet.

 

[Harvey]

I would have liked the alternate ending with the ruins of Paris to be the real ending. It would fit the bittersweet nature of all the movies better.

Then watch the extended version, which is far superior, outside of the silly new credits sequence.

Or are you referring to a permutation of this scene which was never filmed?

 

[Sgt. Sacrament]

I've never seen "Dracula 3000", but I've heard that at the end of that 'film' that the spaceship just blows up for no reason. Maybe it was a homage to "Dracula 3000"?

Is this bit a joke? An Alien movie paying homage to a crappy vampire movie that came out 7 years after it was made?

That would be quite a feat.

Hah! It was a joke, but I didn't realize that "Dracula 3000" came out later! That's great. Perhaps the "Dracula" explosion was an homage to this film, a tip of the hat to Buffy's Joss Whedon. Or maybe it was just dumb. Or both.

Actually it didn't hit the atmosphere and blow up. The ship actually did make it to the surface and crashed in Australia according to the script. The resulting explosion was supposed to have destroyed the aliens.

I'll believe you, but it happened quickly, and I wasn't sure what was going on. It showed the interior of the ship with the computer counting down "3... 2... 1...", then showed the exterior of the ship blowing up with a BIG nuclear explosion. It looked to me like the ship hit the atmosphere... as if it were a brick wall... and then exploded. Perhaps it could have been hitting the ground, but the ship didn't look damaged from reentry, and the escape ship clearly had to struggle through reentry.

 

[nx1701g]

^ The escape ship was said to have been older than Ripley was (200+ years technically) and the Auriga was a state of the art warship though.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

The Auriga is travelling at relativistic speeds by the time it plunges into Earth's atmosphere. Wherever unregulated space is, it is unlikely to be within the Solar System and the ship was burning hard for only a couple hours to get back to Earth. I don't think it was exploding on hitting the upper atmo, the descent was just incredibly fast. Though maybe it exploded due to compression in low atmo. I believe the shockfront blew back cloud cover for hundreds of kilometers either way.

If Mad Max thought Australia was bad before, the Auriga Tunguska Event should have him wishing for better days when it was only sort of a radiation saturated, fallout choked wasteland.

 

[xman]

I would have liked the alternate ending with the ruins of Paris to be the real ending. It would fit the bittersweet nature of all the movies better.

I agree.

And I believe that Winona sets the ship for auto destruct so that the aliens never reach Earth.

X

 

[Reverend]

I think the short answer is they ran out on money and that shot of the ship exploding was quickly bodged together by some minor effects company. In fact, isn't that shot the one that ILM made a point to tell people that they didn't do it, lest it reflect badly on their reputation? I think it was, but I may be thinking of something else.