Unfairly maligned

Rating: 8/10 (24 May 2007)

For a franchise which owes so much to atmosphere, Alien3 is often unfairly overlooked. The penal colony sets are a triumph of mood and environment and make a perfect mold for the cast, the script and the movie as a whole.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Weaver is at her most vulnerable and human, providing an introspective window (especially in her interactions with Clemens) for which there was no room in previous movies. And the chiefly British supporting cast is superb. Considering that this movie was originally to be the swan song of an Alien trilogy, the English dramatic sensibility gives it a perfectly dark, somber tone.
The cinematography and directing are wonderful. The imagery is striking, oppressive, foreboding and most of all consistent--everything an Alien movie should be, and maybe a better realization of Ridley Scott's original vision than anything else.
The creature itself is just the silent menace it should be. It's up to its old tricks, emerging in fast takes to thin the cast one at a time. And the final combined effort to defeat it is tense and climactic. (Charles S. Dutton has a ferocious screen presence.)
All this, its radical departure from the previous installment, is probably why this film is so dismissed. Unfortunately, people really do hate an unhappy ending, and people seem to value continuity over a movie with a refined vision that stands on its own. What most of them don't realize is that in Weyland-Yutani's bleak future, Ripley's sacrifice is a happy ending, and the last image of her vanishing into the fire to the swelling adagio is poetic. (Goldsmith's score is transporting. When I first saw the movie in theaters, the one image that stuck with me the most was the final montage, the triumph of the orchestra contrasting with the desolation of the colony.)
It isn't an action movie. It is an Alien movie, much more than Alien Resurrection, which views like a comic book transplanted onto the screen. (Alarmingly many people are willing to mention the latter in the same breath with the first and second as the "true" Alien films.) Watch this with an unjaundiced eye and you'll find a surprisingly well-made movie.