Alien 3 (1992) Review

Alien 3 (1992) Review

 

So if Alien was a masterpiece, and Aliens was also a masterpiece, surely Alien 3 couldn’t live up to such hype, could it? Not only did it fail to match either of the previous movies, it outright failed on all fronts…at least, that’s how I felt the first time I saw it. 

Alien 3 is one of the most complicated sequels I can think of, but I don’t mean that in terms of its story or structure. In fact, the plot is really simple: all the survivors on the Sulaco are jettisoned in the escape craft, which crash lands on the prison planet “Fury”. But, there’s also one last egg on board, which hatches, spawns another alien, and Ripley and the prisoners try to kill it before it kills them. 

Alien 3 got complicated behind-the-scenes. The movie had a set release date, which the studio was determined to meet, no matter what. The script went through numerous versions, and finally they settled on a director, David Fincher, who went on to direct many excellent films like Fight Club and Seven and Gone Girl, but prior to Alien 3, Fincher had only directed some music videos. As a result, he had a hard time bringing his vision for the film to light, facing a ton of studio interference, and in the end, he disowned the entire thing, saying it wasn’t what he intended to make. 

Even without knowledge of what happened during the making of Alien 3, you can tell it isn’t a wholly cohesive vision. An assembly cut was made for the Alien Quadrilogy DVD set released in 2003, which stitched together some previously un-used scenes and changed the birth of the creature from an impregnated dog to an impregnated ox, as an attempt to make something closer to Fincher’s original vision (though he declined to be involved in making any kind of official director’s cut), though it ultimately doesn’t make a huge difference. 

While Predator 2 is the mean-spirited sequel of the Predator franchise, Alien 3 is the dour sequel of the Alien franchise, and pretty mean-spirited, too. It starts off with a facehugger hatching and crawling onto one of the Sulaco survivors, intercut with the opening titles, and it tries to make it ambiguous as to who it latches onto. This fails pretty hard, because it’s obvious early on that the facehugger attached to Ripley, but it isn’t revealed she has a chestburster inside her until much later in the movie. After the planet’s residents pull her from the ship wreckage and revive her, they reveal Newt and Hicks were killed, and the remains of Bishop are tossed in the garbage. This total abandonment of the characters from Aliens never sat right with me. It works effectively to make the movie as dark and horrific as possible, but at the same time, having them die off screen is a bit lazy and less impactful. 

After this, we have to endure scene after scene of prison inmates shouting and swearing and running from the creature. Seriously, I don’t have a problem with abundant swearing in movies, but in this, it just gets repetitive and annoying. Aside from a few of Ripley’s lines, no other character utters any memorable dialogue. One of the few characters who is actually interesting is the doctor, Clemens, played by Charles Dance, but he’s dispatched by the creature way too early on, leaving us with only Ripley to root for. By the nature of all the prisoner characters being rapists and murderers, none of them are particularly relatable or easy to sympathize towards, so when the creature starts killing them off, it feels inconsequential.  

In many ways, Alien 3 tries to go back to what made the first Alien scary. There’s only one xenomorph this time, which instantly feels like a step down compared to Aliens. The prison planet also lacks weapons, so they have very little to fight back with, which I guess was supposed to make it scarier, but all I can think of was how awesome it was to see the marines in the last one shooting them and blowing them up. This time, nothing of the sort happens. So in place of badass action, there must be long, drawn-out scenes of suspense, right? Nope. The movie is punctuated by moments of extreme gore, but none of it is really scary, or suspenseful, or creative. 

I wouldn’t say Alien 3 is all bad. Sigourney Weaver returning as Ripley, with a distinct new look that’s become minorly iconic, is easily the best part. After all she’s been through, she still hasn’t given up. The practical effects by Amalgamated Dynamics are great, having taken over from Stan Winston Studios. They would go on to create the effects for the next three films in the franchise. The score, composed by Elliot Goldenthal, is simultaneously unique and reminiscent of the previous films. And…that’s about all the good stuff. 

There are some other smaller, nerdier moments and scenes—I love when Ripley reboots Bishop in the garbage dump to talk with him, reminiscent of when they rebooted Ash in the original, I also love the scene in which it’s revealed Ripley has a chestburster inside her—but when I think of Alien 3, I mainly think of people running through dimly-lit corridors, swearing, while the creature chases them, and that’s about it. The creature itself is quite different this time. It runs on four legs, is faster and more aggressive, and we get many shots from its POV, which I always found odd, given the creature has no visible eyes. As I said, the practical effects? Great. But, when there are full shots of the creature, it’s done with a rod puppet against a green screen, placed into the frame. I always thought it was crappy cgi, but it looks just as unconvincing. As for cool moments with the creature, they are few and far between. I will say, the way they dispatch it at the end is unique and pretty cool. 

I should also talk about the ending. Given I saw this movie long after its release, when there were already other movies in the franchise after this, I found (and still find) the ending disappointing. It’s built up as this hugely emotional climax, that Ripley must sacrifice herself to kill the final alien within her, especially because the “real” Bishop is there and wants it for research purposes (just like Burke did in Aliens and Ash did in Alien). She falls backwards into a massive furnace, just as the chestburster erupts from her, and that’s it. I wouldn’t call it a bad ending, but after the whole ordeal of the movie, it doesn’t resonate as strongly as it could have, and knowing it isn’t the true end robs it of that intended finality. 

Alien 3 was disregarded by most fans when it came out, but over the years, some have come to point out it’s not actually that bad of a movie. And to be honest, my opinion has changed quite a bit, but I haven’t fully come around on it. I don’t hate it like I used to. I appreciate some aspects of the film, but there’s no denying it’s a significant step down compared to Aliens. I would still recommend watching it at least once, but it remains as one of the most-disappointing chapters in the Alien saga.