Alien³ - Movie Review
1This review may contain spoilers.
"Alien³" (1992) directed by David Fincher takes the quality of the series down significantly. It kills off all of the legacy characters and gives us a barely serviceable and mostly uninteresting plot.
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and her crew are in cryostasis pods after the events of the previous film, and their ship is damaged so they are sent to a nearby all-male maximum security prison. Ripley's crew has died off screen, including Newt. Ripley will be stranded on the prison planet for about 1 week, and there are dangerous murderers and rapists aboard alongside with her. A Xenomorph makes it's way to the prison station and Ripley must try to defend herself without any proper weapons since there are none on the premises.
Alien 3 starts off rocky but ends somewhat strong. It starts off rocky because it kills Newt and the other legacy characters rendering the events of the previous two films less meaningful. The tension and fear should be coming from the Xenomorph(s), but it actually comes from the prisoners which I don't like. Generally I love bottle locations but the entire film taking place on this boring and lifeless space prison was a bad call in my opinion.
The film ends strong because it takes an unforeseeable turn an "impregnates" Ripley with a Xenomorph youngling, meaning she has to either die or have an intense surgery that you probably couldn't survive anyways, which does add some intrigue and tension to the story. Ultimately she chooses to sacrifice herself and commit suicide, and this was definitely the best scene of the film and I respected it as that is not the typical ending you would see in a franchise like this that wants to keep creating sequels. Killing off Ripley was a good decision because after everything she has been put through, she can not ever trust the company ever again which means she would have no dealings with the aliens unless they came to her on purpose or were to invade Earth which I'm guessing they will at some point (I have not seen the sequels after this one), but they haven't yet. The soundtrack continues to be great but the visuals are surprisingly terrible in this and the actual alien itself is unfortunately not a big selling point this time around as you rarely get to see it, and when you do, it looks worse than ever before in it's CGI "first person shooter" glory.
Alien 3 itself as an entertainment product was bad, but was an okay ending for the character of Ripley. I am still interested in this universe enough to be willing to give the sequels a chance, so I have not wrote out this franchise just yet despite the dud here.
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