Quickie Review: Alien 3

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2016)

Listenwhen you hear about the production problems behind Alien Cubed (which started well before filming even began) you have to credit the team for even being able to release a finished film. Still, the final product is what a movie is always going to be judged on, and it is here that audiences everywhere were treated to a massive kick in the privates through the off-screen and pre-credit deaths of two characters, Hicks and Newt (ohum, spoilers), who had so much time and characterization pumped into them in the movie's predecessor, Aliens. From then on it only gets worse, as the film takes place on a prison planet full of unlikable cockney rapists, murderers and thieves and film downgrades from the previous instalment to just one Xenomorph. The special effects present are some of the poorest in the whole series, with the killer alien looking laughably cartoonish at times. Not to mention the MASSIVE PLOTHOLE that the movie's whole existence rests on. It's no wonder why Fincher wants nothing to do with his debut feature.
There are some positives however - the aura of dread in the previous two instalments is present here, and the lack of weapons means the Xenomorph seems almost as powerful as in the original Alien. Ripley's death, though unwanted, was clearly treated with respect. And the Alien franchise is one of those where an instalment will come out that is so bad that it makes the movies that came before it look fairly decent. And each film in the franchise after the first two gradually got worse. That, and the release of the Assembly Cut of Alien 3, makes the movie not too hurtful in the grand scheme of things. After all, this is the same series that has AVP: Requiem.
Best Scene: Morse (Danny Webb) delivers one of the funniest F bombs I've heard in a rare moment of comedy in the movie. It's the part just after where the warden is carried off by the alien. Everything about it, from the delivery to the timing, makes the moment hilarious.