Movie Notes: Alien 3
= 2 stars
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance
Directed by David Fincher
Synopsis
Ripley’s ship crashes on a prison planet — unfortunately, a highly dangerous alien has arrived with her.
The Good
- Grim, musty look reminiscent of the first installment. Fincher would go on to better things (Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac).
The Bad
- Having Ripley be the sole survivor is extremely lazy and particularly cruel to Newt in particular.
- The characters — largely isolated prisoners — are serious bores, or pseudo religious blowhards that reminded me of a really terrible seventies sci-fi film Quintet. The unfortunate effect is not caring when they begin falling prey to the carnivorous alien.
- With suspense and care removed, the alien becomes rather unintentionally funny. There’s some woefully sad CGI alien work here, and a really dumb “alien cam” that shows the chase from its point of view.
Conclusion
In space, surface appeal can only get one so far. While Aliens 3 is often visually interesting, there’s precious little happening plot-wise. The result is a bummer of a sequel, only barely worth watching.
IMDB: Alien 3
Wikipedia: Alien 3
Rotten Tomatoes: Alien 3 34%
Broke my heart that this story killed off Newt, who had survived where so many, supposedly better-trained men could not (in the previous movie in the series). And then to crack open her chest with that nasty tool to see if she was infected was just more than I could stomach. It went beyond cruel — it was dehumanizing and gratuitous.
Also to have killed off Hicks so abruptly also was a crushing blow since I’ve always liked Michael Beihn. Maybe it would’ve been a bit better if he’d even had a fighting chance in this movie but to kill him off even before the credits finished was needless.
The grim prison planet setting was interesting, but just as you said, the inmates were mostly grisly killers who didn’t warrant any compassion. It was way too “Britishy” feeling with it’s “stiff upper lip” feel.
Sure, it was a terrible idea to kill off Newt and Hicks in the first 5 minutes, and some of the effects were bad, but I peronally loved this film. Ther’es just something about it that makes me smile.