An abomination of near-epic proportions

Rating: 1/10 (11 April 2007)

One would love to have heard the story planning sessions for this abysmal third film that pretty much put the final nail in the series coffin before a lackluster attempt to revive it with another ill-fated fourth film. Ridley Scott's original was a simple And Then There Were None haunted house feature set in outer space, but filled with jaw-dropping class and style that made it stand out from the pack of a number of worthless imitators. James Cameron's sequel was a virtual text book on how a sequel should be made in that it upped the ante both action-wise and emotionally by expanding the Sigourney Weaver character, getting the audience firmly on her side and giving her a compelling relationship with a daughter figure. If the first film was an homage to a haunted house film, then the sequel is a rip-roaring homage to war films.
By contrast, it is difficult to figure what the goal of David Fincher's atrocious sequel is aiming for. It does not up the ante action-wise nor does it expand the characters from the prior films. In fact, Fincher's audience-hating mess offs two of the major characters from the prior film in the opening moments and sidelines another - apparently because of lack of imagination. We then discover relatively early in the proceedings that the leading lady is living on borrowed time, which all but eliminates any rooting interest in the film. While creatively Fincher has license to eliminate audience favorites from the prior films, he cannot jettison them with so little respect and then not replace them with characters at least as interesting without it seeming like a slap in the face, but that is exactly what he does. The denizens of the prison asteroid where the doomed heroine and her ill-fated crew crash in the opening moments is populated by an interchangeable melange of nobodies who blur together.
The storyline, such as it is, conspires a dubious and illogical scenario of how an alien could have accompanied our heroine and then propagated itself on the asteroid. Rather than an army of aliens (a la Cameron), Fincher ratchets it back so far that we instead get one modest-sized alien that is far less intriguing or frightening than the one found in Ridley Scott's original. Action-wise we get badly directed, murky-looking scenes of frantic bald men running down hallways. The alien moves at the speed of sound (almost like a Benny Hill sped-up sketch) so that it would be impossible to elude it, yet a number of characters illogically seem able to outrun it.
Fincher makes it clear from the start that he is far less interested in action or character development, but merely wishes to hang his own bizarre stabs at style onto an unwieldy framework - and stylistically he is no Ridley Scott or even a James Cameron. Why Weaver, who no doubt could have negotiated for a better story, would have returned and participated in this pap is indefensible. Even worse, why 20th Century Fox did not just end a promising sci-fi saga on a brilliant note and instead chose to have it interred and vivisected by hacks is equally unknowable. As it is, we have the perfect example of Class 101 on how NOT to make a sequel in a successful franchise.