This is movie might be a little underrated, but still, it doesn't deserve a lot of thumbs up...

Rating: 6/10 (18 July 2005)

**1/2 out of ****
How do I start writing a review about a movie so complex like this? Let's see. Seeing the other two alien movies, which are much, much better than this one, we may say this one is not that great, but it's not bad also. Alien3 continues the story of Lt. Ellen Ripley (played all the time, perfectly by Sigourney Weaver... until the fourth movie, which is pure crap), always the only survivor from the killing done by the nasty creatures of the saga. In every sequel of the saga, she's the only one from the entire crew, whether they're marine soldiers, ex-criminal prisoners or just crew members of a commercial spaceship, to survive. A lot of people complained about Hicks and Newt's death in the third movie, two characters from the second movie. Even James Cameron disagreed with the idea of having those two "great characters" pass away. Well, considering all the pain, suffering, courage, fight and sweat from Ripley in Aliens (1986) in an attempt (at the time, successful) to save her comrades and most of all, Newt, it may be a little sad to see the last remaining characters from the last movie, to just die, out of nowhere, most of all, by unknown causes of causes of less priority, but hey! What, in fact, is the true essence of the alien movies? Isn't Ripley, always the lone survivor? Just like Mel Gibson in the Mad Max series. I find that idea quite interesting.
Getting past Hicks and Newt's death, which is not a negative star for this movie, let's check on the new plot. Considering that, this movie should have never been made. The second installment, I guess, was made in an attempt to wipe out all the aliens from the face of the universe. Considering they're a major threat for the future days to come, specially if they're, somewhat, brought back to Earth, they really must be destroyed. But that doesn't happen in that exact way. In fact, they're only to be taken away, when the space station, which monitored the Weyland Yutani company crew members, find out that no signal is coming as a sign of communication. So, they send the marines, along with Ripley in a mission to do what couldn't have been done in the first movie. The first movie was the discovery. The second one was the solution to that. But what is Alien3? In Aliens, the planet is totally destroyed and even the alien queen, which comes back to the Sulaco is banished to deep space. The aliens are wiped out! But no. They write a completely different story, developing that the alien queen in fact was able to lay one last egg. OK, despite that, the rest is good.
In the original threathical release, the new alien is born from a dog. The face hugger which came from the egg of the Sulaco attacks the dog and new alien is born from it. This was a great idea! Now the new creature can run faster and eat its victims like they're really some kind of a single meat. Once again, some people complained about that. Come on! What do you expect from a horror / science fiction movie, which has a nasty creature as the deadly monster to be the center of the story? For me, I guess, as long as there's plenty of blood, gore and everything and all, in that, at least, a horror movie succeeds.
Characters? Not so good as the first two movies. We don't really care that much for them, since they're almost all crazy, criminals and all. Unlike criminals from movies like Pulp Fiction, who are characters who have great personality and style, people from Alien3 are really scum. Sometimes, it's even funny to see them dying in this movie. And, believe me, that's not nice for Alien movies. My only regret was the death of Clemens (Charles Dance), a great character, and when he was developing himself, he gets killed so suddenly. And the death of Aaron (Ralph Brown), another character who really should survive, but he's killed so unfair... Ripley's death? Well, it's nice too see an Alien movie end sad. The first two had happy endings, but with tons of portions of sadness. Alien3 just enhanced that feeling. And the final speech from the audio of the last lines of the first movie were great too. Just to remember how Ripley was. A fighter till the end. And Alien3 delivers that message well. "Til the end".