Not for all tastes, but I like brooding meals

Rating: 10/10 (8 February 2005)

Series note: It is strongly recommended that you watch the Alien series in order, beginning with Alien (1979), followed by Aliens (1986), then Alien 3. Each is a direct continuation of the plot of the earlier entry, like chapters in a novel.
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is unintentionally crash-landed on Fury 161, a remote, maximum-security prison planet. The prison, which was also a work camp in the mining industry, has been reduced to a bare-bones inmate population and staff, with the inmates--murderers, rapists and such--consisting primarily of those who have converted to their own brand of religious sect. No one at the prison has seen a woman in years, and they have never seen what Ripley has accidentally brought with her to the facility--a hostile alien, intent on killing them all.
This may be the most "difficult" film of the Alien franchise. Although it has some stylistic elements from the first two films--everything from claustrophobic pursuits down dark, crypt-like corridors to the feeling (if not accoutrements) of big action blow-outs--director David Fincher has created the Bleak House of the series. In a personification of the films, Alien 3 covers the later adolescent years, when the series has decided to become a nihilist and write doom-laden poetry.
And that is the deciding factor regarding whether one is likely to enjoy this film or not. Fincher has abandoned the breakneck pacing of the second, James Cameron-helmed film, and returned to a slow, complex dramatic pacing more akin to Ridley Scott's first Alien. Alien 3 trades traditional horror material (the first film could be seen as an almost Gothic haunted house story), gunfights and explosions for a constant dark, dingy atmosphere, both literally and figuratively in terms of the characters and their relationships. The film is imbued with brown tones, with a bluish-gray for contrast. Everything and everyone is dirty, beat-up, bruised and bloody. There is threatening machinery everywhere you look and infestations of overgrown lice. Imagine Clive Barker supervising the set design of a bloated subway system merging with the inside of an Egyptian pyramid, and you get the idea. (That is a more literal analogy than you may think--the climax could easily be seen as basically a Mummy film set in Egypt due to the environment and the structure of the action.) Alex Thomson's consistently remarkable cinematography is also worth noting in contributing to the delicious, gloomy atmosphere of the film.
I love that atmosphere, and the regularly graphic grimness of this film (especially in the director's cut, or "special edition", which you should be sure to watch rather than the theatrical release), but it may be difficult for some viewers to take. Add that Fincher has made the film primarily about the intricate relationships of a relatively large cast of prisoners and their trying to deal with the sudden presence of a woman in their midst, and you lose another gaggle of viewers, but again, some of us still love it. Of course, there is alien-fighting stuff here, but we're back down to a single alien, and our heroes have to fight it with whatever is at hand, including weapons like axes and the machinery at the prison. The villain in Alien 3 is just as much "man against himself" as it is "man against monster".
Fincher also wisely continued the plot thread from Aliens about Ripley's daughter, and her motivation towards the end of that film based on the loss of her daughter, in conjunction with the adoption of a functional surrogate. That aspect continues to supply the motivation for her actions in this film, where she undergoes a number of crises, and where in the end, she becomes a much more mythical figure.
A lot of people dislike both the ending of this film and the fact that two primary characters are killed off without so much as a peep in the beginning, but it's important to remember that the underlying theme is nihilism, and the remote possibility of overcoming it through sacrifice--for example, with the prisoners finding a highly questionable religion, complete with "celibacy", with the hardships experienced by Clemens and his subsequent decisions, and with the final acts of redemption at the climax of the film. In that context, the plot points that tend to be disliked do not only make sense, they're absolutely necessary if we're not to completely ruin the tenor and subtext of the film.
It is again worth noting the influences that the Alien series has had on other films. A prominent example is the Matrix series, which took power loaders as weapons of war (used in The Matrix Revolutions (2003)) from Aliens, and much of the atmosphere, production design, costume design and even some character structure from this film and used it in the early scenes aboard the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix (1999), as well as parts of Zion (in The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions).
While I can easily see how Alien 3 would not be for all tastes, it is as a gourmet meal to me. It is at least recommended viewing if you are interesting in experiencing later films in the series.