Beautiful and thoughtful instalment to the franchise

Rating: 8/10 (16 August 2001)

I like Alien 3 a lot, I know I'm one of the few who does, but that doesn't matter... Most people refuse to like this film, because it's not Aliens (1986) - and nor should it be... The thing I like most about this franchise is that every film is different, mainly down to the use of a different Director with a different style for each film. Alien 3 marked the film debut of commercials wiz-kid David Fincher -another reason people don't like this film (but I discussed that more in-depth in my review of Se7en).

Alien 3 is the most beautiful, thoughtful and yes, darker Alien film... Alex Thomson's gold tinted photography creates a gothic and haunting look and atmosphere to the prison colony, (what with this film and Se7en I would say Fincher has seen Lars Von Trier's The Element of Crime (1983) one too many times). This also takes the franchise back into a more adult area, the character are more human, not the caricatured hero's we saw in Aliens, these are tortured people with dark pasts, we only get small hints as to why they are there, but that's enough.
Fincher has an obsession with the darker side of man, it's apparent in all of his films right up to the more recent Fight Club (1999) - but with Alien 3, he takes one of cinema's most well thought of, and well loved characters (Weaver's Ellen Ripley) and strips away the "tough cookie" exterior that surrounded her in Cameron's predecessor. Here we see the torture she has endured in the previous instalments, what she's lost - she no-longer feels human, she has more connection with the alien... And her ultimate sacrifice that she makes in order to finish what was started back on the Nostromo is one of the most haunting scenes you could ever see in a mainstream film.
I personally think Alien 3 is the best film it could be (maybe even better if Fox hadn't decided to re-edit it), and it has it's own identity - it's not just a lame Aliens rip-off... It's the kind of film people will have reactions to, and that's what makes Alien 3 such a great film... Good or bad, 30 years from now, people will still be talking about it.
8/10