Good but not great!

Rating: 6/10 (26 December 2011)

I love the Alien saga and its storyline. With that being said, the order of greatness is Aliens, Alien, Alien 3 and the much less 4th one. Many reviewers here on IMDb have lambasted Alien 3 for killing off some of the survivors from Aliens. They say that these characters were much loved and deserved more story. HERE is the thing: this movie was made like 6 years later. You can't have the same actors in a movie this late if one is a pre-adolescent kid growing up. So here we begin with a story where Ripley is the only survivor of Aliens and crash lands on a prison planet. Long story short, Weaver was excellent as usual, Charles Dutton and Charles Dance were both great. The other actors all tended to blend in together, however. Yes, David Fincher did walk out on this movie before it entered editing but he still directed it. The directors cut is a little bit longer and does more to flesh out the story. I especially liked the strange camera angles that were used while I disliked the thankfully limited use of CGI in the movie. Overall, the story was dark and dreary as was the tone. Not the greatest movie but it still holds up.