A disappointing sequel

Rating: 5/10 (13 August 2014)

Alien 3 is not a dreadful film. It has a few good moments. But it also has a whole lot of bad moments. Moments that are badly paced or that have incomplete cgi effects. After expectations were risen so high by the previous two films, this one was certain to be a big let down.
It starts just after the events of Aliens. The ship crashes on a prison planet of around 20 convicts. Ripley is the only survivor and begins to realise that it was one of the Xenomorphs that sabotaged the ship. It quickly becomes a fight for survival as Ripley works with the prisoners to destroy the monster.
It's not a bad story (even if the logic of putting 20 prisoners alone on a planet is questionable) but I would question the decision to kill off the rest of the survivors in the last film. They were very likable personalities and wouldn't have needed any exposition to build their characters. Instead we're left with 20 characters who we never learn much about and none of whom are memorable. I could go years without watching Aliens and remember all of those crew members. I've only just watched Alien 3 and feel like I've already forgotten most of the characters.
But whilst the prisoners may be forgettable, luckily we do still get Ripley. Whilst the character isn't really expanded on, Weaver does bring an great performance to the role. This time she shows a true sense of anguish. The feeling that there is no hope. She shows total despair knowing that she has lost everything. But she never gives up. She refuses to back down and keeps fighting no matter what demonstrating a very real and grounded sense of bravery. She's one of the few reason that this film was in any way worth watching.
But unfortunately the film does screw up the Xenomorph. Largely because we see too much of him. In the previous two films then the Alien barely even gets any screen time, with our image of the alien being built up through quick glimpses to create a more mysterious and threatening creature. Here he appears on screen far more and we see too much of him. He's less imposing and seems more like a run of the mill monster than anything else. .
On top of this the decision to use computer generated effects to make the monster was a bad one. This was before effects could create a realistic figure and because of that when the alien does appear through cgi it never looks like it's really there. Worse yet many of these cgi shots were incomplete or done badly, causing many shots of the alien in the final chase to be extremely green or have a weird colour scheme. It's particularly unfortunate as when practical effects are used in the film they do seem genuinely impressive.
What's annoying about this film is that it does have some brilliant elements to it. It could have been a decent film with the claustrophobic prison scenery and returning to the simplistic survival horror of the original Alien movie. But it's mixed with the likes of slow paced action scenes and the entire prison population having either underdeveloped or uninteresting characters.
Probably this comes down to studio interference as Fincher cited it as the reason he left the film during editing as it did not let him achieve his vision of the franchise. He even believed it was so bad that he has since disowned the film. It does still have some enjoyable moments, even if they are few in number. Just don't expect it to live up to either of the previous films in the franchise.