Alien 3

[Andrew]

Reader review by Lord Hades.  Despite the fact that she tossed the alien queen out of the airlock in "Aliens," and that she was safely aboard a military starship, Ripley wakes up on a prison planet with yet another alien problem on her hands.

Click here to go to the Review

[Andrew]

I think my biggest beef with this film is that it cheats to get the emotional angle on Newt's death.  Hicks' is not a big deal, because, heck, he's a Marine and probably expects danger.  However, at the end of "Aliens," the victory was Ripley laying Newt down to sleep, with the expectation of them starting a new life after they returned home.

The alien queen obviously shot a few eggs out of her backside, torn as it was from the eggsack, while fighting Ripley.  Then the Sulaco's systems completely failed to register a xenomorph aboard, despite hand held motion detectors being standard issue for Marines.  Come on, that is just lazy writing.  They could have made this movie, but with a new main character.  In fact, that is how it should have been made.

You also have to wonder about the Company leaving the convicts on the planet, because doing so involves costs.  They have to be resupplied.  The superintendent and his toady get paid.  What the heck?

Bishop's character was fun, for the brief moments he appeared.  "How are you? Oh, I like your new hair cut."

[Psycho Circus]

I agree with all of those points Andrew, I also believe that a new character in the lead role would've benefitted Alien 3 and the franchise as a whole. Hell, we might have had a 4th (a better one) sooner. It's still a good film in my opinion, (bull alien is cool) but it is by no means the best of the Alien movies or my favourite. Really wish they'd have stuck by this ending and hadn't gone on to flog it all with Resurrection.

[Mary Cherry]

I think the idea for the queen having laid eggs on the ship must have come from the end credits of Aliens where you could hear a facehugger skittering around.

[Jack]

I didn't really mind that there was apparently an undetected alien aboard the Sulaco.  By the end it was just Ripley and Newt, with Hicks badly injured and the robot dude ripped in half.  I didn't notice any sort of onboard systems to automatically detect xenomorphs, and considering that the Sulaco was apparently a pretty big ship I don't think we can expect Ripley, all worn out after her big adventure, to walk around every square foot of the thing with a motion detector.  She was pretty confident she had killed the only alien, and just wnated to get in the sleep chamber and wake up safe at home.

I though Alien 3 was pretty good, not in the same league as the first two, but not bad either.  It was nice that they developed the characters pretty well, but I really didn't care about any of them.  Still it had an atmosphere about it.  The aliens themselves were pretty cool running on ceilings and stuff.

Alien Resurrection, now that's where it went straight down the freakin' toilet big time. 

[AndyC]

You also have to wonder about the Company leaving the convicts on the planet, because doing so involves costs.  They have to be resupplied.  The superintendent and his toady get paid.  What the heck?

I got the impression they were there as caretakers, looking after the place, making sure it didn't fall to pieces. They're essentially slave labour. The company sends a ship every so often to check on their assets and resupply the convicts, and pay two flunkies to make sure the work gets done. They otherwise don't really seem to care.

[HarlotBug3]

Entertaining enough review, but it's obvious you were either too eager to love, or hate this one.

Worth seeing, if only for a look at a kind of missing link (other than jurrasic park) between puppetry and CGI monsters.

I have seen bits of the middle, and the ending to Alien Resurection. No further comment.

[Torgo]

I recommend for people who haven't already to watch the producer's cut of Alien 3 on the Quadrilogy set.   It's pretty much as close to a director's cut as we'll ever get of this flick.  It's a much better movie IMO than what got released in theaters.

But even with saying that, this is still a movie that you'll think is decent enough if you watch it by itself until you try to watch it after watching the 1st 2 Alien flicks.  That's when my disdain for a lot of the narrative choices really comes through.

There's some performances to admire and I do realize that they were trying to get back to the feel of the 1st movie in terms of being up against a single Alien without the proper weapons to battle it and survive. 

I'm a David Fincher fan and I think that anymore this movie remains more as a footnote in his career rather than a justifiable entry into the saga.

But at least it's not as god awful as Alien Resurrection was.   

[spastic]

I'm surprised to find this film reviewed here on badmovies.
Hell.. Fincher made the best alien film of the entire franchise.

That's the only alien sequel that focuses on the original ambiance (Science Fictional Survival), and even surpasses the first one (which has seriously aged). Estheticaly, the film's a beauty. The plot, despite its simplicity, is more than sufficient for a thriller-based SF film.

The "dog-alien" thing isn't even a valuable argument against this film. If you're looking for realistic and rational plots simply don't watch any Alien film at all. If you want to easily criticize any alien film, review Alien 4 (there you have a good example of ridiculous host-combined alien) or directly the Predator/Alien crap (Predators and humans are friends now.. yeea riiight..).

[Jordan]

This movie seems to get a really bad rap amongst Alien fans (and well... the general public as well). As Torgo noted, the extended cut in the Alien Quadrilogy set is far superior to the theatrical cut, and oddly enough, the xenomorph in the film was (as I recall) born from an ox on the prison planet. I agree that the theatrical version is quite flawed, but I would suggest you take a glance at the longer cut before making a final decision on this one.

Molten lead cannot kill an Alien, only p**s it off. Cold water, on the other hand, is devastating.

I know this was written for the sake of humor, but Lord Hades, have you ever seen what happens when cold water is tossed into a puddle of molten lead first hand? KABOOM!

As for the molten lead not killing the xenomorph: It has acid for blood and is hurt by, but not killed by, liquid nitrogen (as shown to us in "Alien: Resurrection"). With that in mind, I'm not so shocked that molten lead didn't kill this hardy and adaptable critter.

[Shadow]

I saw this film on opening day. The first showing of the day, in fact.

When it was over, I stood up and booed.

I have never watched it again in its entirety.

[Kutter]

I've held the position since I saw this movie in the theater on opening weekend that it actually is a really good Sci Fi thriller, if you take it out of the Alien franchise.  It's a tight, atmospheric thriller in an interesting setting with a credible monster. 

However, in the context of the Alien franchise, it's crap.  The movie obviously wasn't written for the franchise, and the backflips it had to do to wedge it in hurt both the movie and franchise considerably.  It's like the studio balked at the budget necessary for a proper follow up to Aliens and finally just said the hell with it. 

It's kinda sad, really.

[J.D.]

This explains why it sucked so bad. Not entirely the director's fault.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_3

[Kutter]

Funny thing is, this franchise could be fixed by making a new film that just decided that, while Alien3 happened, Newt and Hicks didn't get ejected and were eventually rescued.  Then we could pick up with Newt some 20 years later fending off an Alien invasion of Earth, either as it happens or in an Alien infested post-apocolypse. 

That would kick so much ass it wouldn't even be funny.  Especially if they got Micheal Biehn to reprise Hicks as kind of a Sarah Conner figure to Newt.

Fincher should be pushing for this.  He needs some redemption on the Alien front.

[Cameron]

LOL. I didn't even make the connection with the dog and the Alien (cf: cani-alien). I did not see the film until the Extended Edition of the quadrilogy came out a few years ago - having seen Aliens in the theater a few times and Alien on Showtime every time it was broadcast (I was 10). It was a disappointment - but not as bad as it was made out to be