Should've died before it could breed.

Rating: 1/10 (23 November 2008)

Alien 3 is by far the bleakest, dullest, most brutal chapter of the "Alien" saga. The film establishes it's despairing tone in it's first scene. Newt, Ripley's cute little sidekick from "Aliens" is killed off before the "directed by" credit appears. As if killing off a 12 year old because she isn't conducive to your plot wasn't enough, the film goes on to have little Newt brutally sliced open in a grim autopsy scene. Sadly, it's the only scene in which Sigourney Weaver emotes at all. I'm guessing she checked out when she realized how bad this film was going to be.
The remainder of the film is spent talking about events in the other films, or the back- stories of characters who serve no ultimate purpose. The Alien is loose in the ship all this time (it comes out of a dog this time. This scene is pretty brutal and depressing too.) but doesn't do much until the film has already run out of gas.
That brings me to another problem: The Alien itself. It's the same basic xenomorph, but it walks around on four legs like a dog. OOOH scary! Early CGI effects are used to the detriment of the creature. CGI was limited at this time, but the real problem is that it strips the creature of all menace. The original alien was frightening because of how slowly it moved, giving the impression of some kind of intelligence. This alien is all bark and no bite. Maybe they shouldn't have had a dog for the host body. duh.
David Fincher has gone on to direct some great films. You can feel him trying to make things work, but either the studio interfered too much, or the script was just that bad, or maybe Fincher just hadn't found his footing yet. Whatever it was, this monster should've been killed before it spawned and gave us Alien:Resurrection, and two AVP movies.