"Sucks to High Heaven"

Rating: Null/10 (6 October 2000)

This is the response I received from a friend of mine when I asked his opinion of this film before I went to see it; he paused a long time before replying, then said: "I'm sorry; I was searching for the most appropriate words." The bizarre part is, that most people I have spoken to, both guys AND girls, have chosen a very close approximation of this phrase after seeing this movie. Either there is a subliminal message in this movie the audience picked up on, or this really is the only way to describe this movie. After finally seeing this movie years later, I have to agree wholeheartedly.
Deliberate spoilers ahead:
I liked `Aliens', and wanted to see where the characters would go after the movie. Unfortunately, they literally go nowhere. Newt (the little girl) and the robot are destroyed when the escape pod they were on crash-lands on a prison planet (we see a still photograph of the little girl, horribly burned beyond recognition), conveniently saving the studio a few grand in actors' fees. `Aliens' showed these two struggling valiantly against death for most of the film, and here they don't even make it to the planet alive? Did the producers think the audience wouldn't care about this? The movie begins with this scene, and if I had seen it at the theater, it would have inspired the quickest walkout in history. My friends and I cared about the events 90% less after this.
Weaver miraculously survives, as you can't kill the hero or any actor who is commanding $2 million to appear in the film. Apparently this sucked up most of the film's tiny budget, as it was made for only a few million including Weaver's salary. If the producers couldn't do better than this budget for a sequel, they should have waited for more money, because the effects are seen in the claustrophobic prison planet and sets they are on.

Apparently, one of the aliens (resourceful little buggers) manages to stow away on the escape pod for the trip (by this time you'd think they would expect this before headin' out. "Computer, have any aliens come on board lately?" "Why yes, there's one hiding under the third manifold in fact. Funny you should ask.)" After Ripley heals up, she discovers she is on a prison world surrounded by male cons who have found religion. She meets Charles Dutton, playing a charming character: `I am a former rapist and murderer of women', he boasts. `Don't I make you nervous?' `No', she replies. `Do I make you nervous?' This scene doesn't create dramatic tension, but does induce nausea.
Sigourney Weaver is a gun opponent, and allegedly only agreed to do Alien3 if the producers would eliminate the use of guns in the film to make an anti-gun statement. In this film, she says `You mean you have absolutely NO WEAPONS on this base??' The one alien proceeds to shred most of the male inhabitants with ease. In Aliens, Ripley was blowing away dozens of aliens with her machine gun. Nice, um, anti-gun statement there, Sigourney. The NRA could not have made their point better than this film.

Naturally, the evil mega corporation finds out about the alien and high-tails it over to the planet to capture Ripley and the critter. We also find out that Ripley has been implanted with an alien Queen larva, who is about to emerge, and will surely create thousands of more aliens or worse, thousands of sequels like this one. Somehow the bad guys know about this as well. It is never explained how she got implanted with the larvae, but this is one of too many story holes to count.
In the final scene, to prevent the bad guys from getting the queen larva she is infested with, Ripley leaps into a convenient pit of molten lava to sacrifice herself for the sake of humanity, just as the queen larva bursts from her chest, in slow motion. This scene has to be seen to be believed. Then again, don't see it. Just believe it happens.
I didn't see Alien 4, because I had lost interest in the series after this. The only way they could have induced me to see it is if number four had started with her waking up in the escape pod, shuddering and saying `God, what a horrible nightmare. What a horrible, cheap, underproduced nightmare.'
Unfortunately for the audience, the nightmare was real.

In honor of the movie's title, three out of ten stars.