Downward But Onward

Rating: 3/10 (4 August 2013)

It happens so often. A really good movie is made, and then come the inevitable sequels that eventually start to leave a bad taste in your mouth about the entire series, no matter how good the original was. Alien 3 is the second sequel in the series. The original "Alien" (directed by Ridley Scott) was quite good, tense and suspenseful. I didn't think James Cameron did a good job at all with "Aliens," and here David Fincher has failed with "Alien 3."
There are times when this is mildly tense, but generally speaking I was bored for most of its run time. Part of the problem here is the setting - the movie is set on some sort of prison planet, where Ripley (again played by Sigourney Weaver) crashlands after the events of "Aliens." She's the only survivor, and she wakes up in a medical unit, surrounded by a motley (to say the least) crew of thugs thieves and rapists and child molesters (as they describe themselves.) What this means is that, automatically, aside from Ripley there's nobody here to care about. Seriously - who cares about these guys for even a moment? The alien creature is, of course, back and wreaks havoc among the inmates. The alien has morphed yet again. In the first movie we saw little of the creature. In the second, it was more front and centre. This time we get a really good look at it, and to me it came across as a bit of a cross between a giant octopus and a raptor such as you'd see in "Jurassic Park." There's no particular reason to be frightened by it - we know what it's going to do. Fincher goes for a lot of blood in this - but blood isn't scary. It's even pretty easy to figure out how this is going to end. It's hardly worth the effort involved in watching.
I rated "Aliens" as a 3/10. I'll give this the same. It's a little weaker even than its predecessor, but it's close enough to get the same rating.