Strongly disagree with others' reviews

Rating: Null/10 (11 October 2011)

I'd resolved to repay my considerable debt to IMDb by confining myself to reviewing movies that didn't yet have IMDb reviews. However, after reading a dozen or so reviews of Alien 3, I write what follows in protest. Background: I watched the first three Alien films when they were released in regular theaters. I've just finished watching all four on a 1920x1080 resolution computer screen, using Bose headphones. I used the headphones partly because my wife (who also has an unaccountable dislike for the Three Stooges) can't stand horror movies, but mostly because the films' sounds coming from various directions are especially effective using them. I agree with the majority of IMDb's reviewers that Alien was a splendid, groundbreaking movie, and that Aliens was that rarity: an even better sequel. It's important to note that in many ways the style, the atmosphere of Aliens differed greatly from that of Alien.
But hereafter I part company with other IMDb reviewers. The style and atmosphere of Alien 3 differ greatly from that of the first two: it's much bleaker emotionally, and that works. At first there's only one really sympathetic character besides Ripley, and Ripley is doomed from the start; these things work, too. Several of the initially unsympathetic characters became more and more interesting to me as the movie progressed. However that may have been because I've had a fair amount of direct and indirect experience working with convicts. Sigourney Weaver was, of course, superb and convincing. The main thing is that Alien 3 is a DIFFERENT movie, but in its way also a great one. Marvelous sets. Gloomy, gloomy, gloomy. Marvelous dry, dead-pan humor in places. Marvelous scenes where you know that something awful is going to happen. Even fine music. I give it 9 out of 10.