An impossibly bad sequel

Rating: 4/10 (3 May 2009)

I have never seen an A-grade movie series drop as much in quality between the first and second sequels as the Alien series. Alien and Aliens are infinitely more interesting, captivating and exciting than what translates to the screen in David Fincher's grotesquely inept continuation of Ellen Ripley's saga. Visually, the film opens well enough and nicely establishes the setting, a run-down, industrial prison complex on a remote planet at "the ass-end of space". Well enough if you are ready to put up with the downside - a string of outrageous plot holes, conceived by the writers in order to isolate the heroine from the remaining crew (who are immediately killed off in a never explained emergency landing on the previously mentioned planet), and confront her with two more aliens (born of eggs which, in a bizarre twist of fate, appeared out of nowhere on the ship from the second movie).
Unfortunately, the ill-fated story never recovers from this clumsy, uninspired opening. As a matter of fact, it does not go anywhere. The first alien infects Ripley (but conveniently waits to burst from her chest until the movie's finale), the second infects a dog/ox, depending on the version you are watching, and the resulting dog/ox/alien hybrid soon begins to attack the inmates of the prison. The remainder of the film is basically a drawn-out cat-and-mouse game in trying to avoid/confront the alien creature. With the exception of two characters, all of the British prisoners are cannon fodder. They blend together and have no distinctive personalities, almost like some of the characters were killed at least three times only to pop up later unharmed making us realize that it was just someone similar and equally forgettable who met their tragic end. The only characters that leave a minimal impression are Charles Dance's prison doctor and Charles S. Dutton's spiritual leader of the prisoners. The remainder of the cast are instantly forgettable and largely unsympathetic. A subplot where some of the prisoners stalk and try (but fail) to rape Ripley makes them even less appealing.
The lack of interest in the characters makes large portions of the movie hard to sit through. Even worse, the writers didn't manage (or care) to write a convincing continuation for the main character, forcing Sigourney Weaver to deliver the weakest performance in the series. Her acting is almost unrecognizable from the second movie. The movie ends with a supposedly tragic (actually relieving) suicide of the main character, embarrassingly similar to the prior year's mega hit Terminator 2, ironically directed by the man who made the far superior prequel to this pathetic movie.