* Directed by David Fincher
* Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles Dance, Charles S. Dutton, Paul McGann, Brian Glover, Ralph Brown, Danny Webb, Pete Postlethwaite, Lance Henriksen
The Plot: Taking place after the events of Aliens, the spacecraft containing Ripley and her allies in carbon sleep detects strange activity aboard, which causes its escape pod to launch and crash land on a human inhabited planet called Firorina "Fury" 161. While Hicks, Newt and Bishop are found dead Ripley survives and finds herself captured by a group in a prison facility where they soon find out a Xenomorph egg was aboard Ripley's spacecraft and caused an alien to let loose in the facility. So now Ripley has to lead this group to fight it and we have our Alien movie.Yay!
This film had a lot riding on its shoulders due to the fact that this would be the successor to one of the greatest horror films of all time in Alien and one of the best action films of all time in Aliens. Neither Ridley Scott nor James Cameron would return to direct, so instead we end up with David Fincher, who at the time was taking on his first feature directorial debut in this film. In his end there must've been so much pressure involved to continue the story for this beloved sci-fi heroine battling such devastating trials in taking on the most vicious creature ever displayed in the history of cinema.
For Fincher's directorial debut there was absolutely no doubt that the look of this film was very pleasing to the eye. There was some very impressive cinematography work and to go along with it the lighting composition for every shot was no short of excellent. It was definitely a great looking film and you could see just from the vision alone on a visual perspective that Fincher was really feeling out his dark and gritty visual style that he later on applies in his career with films like Se7en and Fight Club.
I also really liked the sound mixing and that the sound design to go along with its decent score fit the tone very well. The performances were also pretty solid and you could see that there was at least some effort given to make the characters feel they're a part of this confined environment. The practical effects were also just as impressive as the ones displayed in the first two films from the alien creature to the android prosthetics of Bishop.
Sadly, these are the only positives I can take away from this movie because Alien 3 really let me down. In fact, I actually had a pretty lousy time watching this film. I usually mention this at the beginning, but I will be spoiling a couple major plot points in the film, however, I don't really recommend you to give this movie your time of day, but if you're willing to watch it all the power to you. Read no further. If you don't care, stick around.
Now, I say the performances were fine and each actor did their best because of such a near horrific script they had to work with. The screenplay that was in use had terrible character motivations and nothing to actually have you like said characters. I didn't care about a single character in this film and as much as pains me to say it, this time around I wanted the Xenomorph to win. Remember how charismatic and full of personality the side characters were in Aliens? Remember how easily identifiable and memorable the crew of the Nostromo was in Alien? Of course you would because the writing for the characters in those films were far better established than anything this film tries to conjure up.
In the previous films just by a lick of the characters' personalities and actions you understood who they were and where they came from. Even Ripley, one of the greatest cinematic heroines of all time isn't interesting in this movie. She doesn't have that much leadership and passion like she had in the first 2 films. That aspect of her character was absent and it was such missed opportunity for how their could be so much more potential to expand her character arc. In Alien 3 the characters are so underdeveloped and in order to understand the type of background they were coming from they had to tell you who they were in very length exposition.
The overall exposition in this film called for lazy screenwriting! To make the exposition the least bit interesting have things explained through an entertaining scene or a scene with striking visuals. Heck even more concise exposition that gets to the point is just as great. I just felt like a majority of this film was just explaining things to me and waiting around until something happens. For that matter, I couldn't believe how bored I was while watching this movie. Bored...during an Alien movie. Seriously!?!?
Also, the pacing of this film is one hot mess. This is kind of the opposite of what I said about the film being dull, but in the first act, the film was incredibly choppy and even when the opening credits started to play out I knew something was wrong. There would be a title then cut to a snippet of the scene, then the next title, then the next shot, then the title, then the shot and so forth. The editing was very poorly done and felt rushed that I wished towards the beginning that the film kind of took its time to set things in motion.
I appreciate the idea to have that be the setting of the film and tell a suspenseful story in a claustrophobic environment, but the length of the film is almost too long clocking in at almost 2 hours with very little action that it could've done itself a favor and maybe took it to other places on the planet. I almost would want anything exciting to happen in the movie at this point! Heck bring in a T-Rex and maybe even a giant Pac-Man! I don't care!
I will say though that the climax of this film is actually kind of exciting and that the way the film ends with Ripley sacrificing herself was a great idea, but included in a mediocre movie where the build-up doesn't matter is a major let down. If that last scene with the other Bishop was included in a different film that lead up to that point, it would've called for a fitting end to a trilogy. However, that's not the case at all. Alien 3 gave us no build-up, no frightening surprises, lackluster characters and in general a continuation that doesn't deserve a place in this saga. It was more than fine to wrap things up in Aliens.
Verdict: C-
Not gonna lie a small part of me thought I was going to enjoy this film more than most people because in spite of its negative responses from critics and audiences, there are fans out there who enjoy this film and legitimately like it. If you're one of those people I absolutely love that you get enjoyment out of this film. Personally, it just didn't do it for me and I don't see how the extended cut would've been an improvement. I watched the theatrical cut for this review and just the boredom I faced in its hour and fifty four minute runtime was agony.
I couldn't imagine what enduring the longer cut extended by another half hour would've been like. I guess the theatrical cut gave me that idea. Stay tuned for my next review in this ongoing Alien review series where I'll be reviewing Alien: Resurrection. Yep! Despite what I heard I'm gonna endure it. I do it because I love you guys! Follow me on the social media links below for more updates and links for my reviews of Alien and Aliens if you were interested in reading those:
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Thank you all taking the time to read this review! Enjoy life! Love yourself! And be sure to see some movies and all that good stuff!
Take care. :-)
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