A very poor movie and a major letdown for the Alien series

Rating: 1/10 (12 March 2009)

I'm not sure I've seen a film as poorly made as Alien 3. Anyone who hasn't seen this abomination should avoid this film like the plague. It sucks in every way. It starts off by killing all the characters the audience had grown to like, it throws out everything that made the first two movies great and replaces it with a mutant infested prison colony "at the ass end of space". Who wants to see that I wonder...
The plot unfolds like in a generic slasher-by-the-numbers flick, but you will never get to know or like the prisoners, the alien just kills them off randomly and mindlessly, no cocooning like in the previous movies. Amidst this mess Ripley, the last survivor of Aliens, but don't expect her to fill the emotional void, she turns out to be a soulless bitch torn between the desire to kill herself and wipe out the alien before the company get their hands on it.
The concept of this movie couldn't be more unoriginal: The first half plays out like a cheesy copy of Alien: The humans don't have guns and the alien hides in the dark and takes them out one by one. Unfortunately, since the characters were never developed in the first place, this part is completely void of suspense. When the remaining characters realize what is going on, they try to "guide" the alien through a maze of tunnels to a room with a blast furnace, the only way to kill it. The movie then changes pace and genre in what seems like a pathetic attempt to cater to Aliens fans: The alien chases prisoners through tunnels for a whole hour of cheesy and muddled action scenes - with the worst special effects in the entire series! I didn't go into this movie expecting it to be as good as the first two movies (third movies never are!), but I surely didn't expect it to be this weak. A mockery of the first two movies and an insult to the creative geniuses of Ridley Scott and James Cameron.