2 out of 5

Director: David Fincher

Right. Well. I wanted to give you a new version here, but the consensus is mostly correct: Alien 3 is not a good film. I respect Fincher’s attempt at evolving the mythology, but unfortunate timing (CGI toddler years) and heavy-handed-handling steer this film into boredom after the aliens actually start appearing. But it starts nice: moving past all of the script drafts and plot-tweaking, once we accept that alien and aliens explained all we need to know about the buggers, it becomes apparent that any future films can only amount to good and scary sci-fi action. Alien 4 got this, but here in 3 we’re still in deadly serious territory, which, admittedly, works for our opening. Ripley’s ship from #2 crashes on a prison planet, the all-male prisoners and guards not too appreciative of a mysterious women hanging ’bouts and talking about the alien that maybe was on board her ship. Weaver is very good here, and the dynamic of Charles S. Dutton as a sort of reverend amongst the prisoners (though a prisoner himself) and Charles Dance as the troubled medical attendee offers a lot of interest – a setup that would have fared well with the more minimal Alien. But it’s when the alien starts to show itself that the embarrassing puppetry and effects don’t help to hide the increasingly ridiculous script. The uninspired pre-shaky-cam I’ma-try-and-make-this-action-scene-INTENSE,ya’ll camerawork (sorry, not a big Fincher fan) just adds to the gimmicky feeling. I know this was Fincher’s first film, and it was bound to be troubled as an attempt to further the series, but every attempt at gritty and scary in the film’s latter half just feels like a stylistic decision and not related to the movie. Which is how the viewer ends up feeling. Interesting patient start, a messy end.