Speaking to
Empire Magazine, Whedon reminisced about his involvement with
Alien: Resurrection, and the
Alien film series as a whole. Whedon also briefly commented on
Prometheus:
"Yes, I did see Pro-meaningless,” he joked. “In all seriousness,
Alien: Resurrection was, I thought, the lowest I could ever feel. And then they cancelled
Firefly. ‘Yup, there you go. That’s me feeling even lower.’ Let me quote King Lear — ‘The worst is not, so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst’…
You don’t ever get over it. When you are making a movie you are making something that is going to last forever, especially now with the internet. So there is always going to be a s**tty
Alien movie out there. A s**tty
Alien movie with my name on it."
So what went wrong? Whedon has his own thoughts on why
Alien: Resurrection was almost a franchise killer:
"Casting is storytelling. I wrote two characters for
Alien: Resurrection and their arc was that you would not know what way they were going to go. One of them turned out to be insane — and what do they do? They call Brad Dourif. So there is no plot twist. Brad is a very good actor but he has been pigeonholed into these roles. Then they cast J.E. Freeman as a thug — and his character was also supposed to be a mystery. So there you go again — the mystery is gone. Those are just a couple of examples because there are thousands of them when it comes to
Alien: Resurrection."
