The Alien was a dog!

Rating: 6/10 (6 June 2007)

I absolutely adored the first two Alien films. Alien creates a dense atmosphere of paranoia, claustrophobia and sheer terror. Aliens was a fantastic continuation of the story, adding a great adrenaline rush as well as an amazing character study. After watching these two masterpieces, I was a bit uneasy about watching Alien3, mainly because of the low scores it had received. I gave it a spin anyway, and was sorely disappointed.
The film is much darker than the previous ones, and opens with most of the larger roles of Aliens being killed in a crash. All right, it might still work. Ripley is held on a prison planet where the inmates have found religion. Odd, but all right. An Alien survived the crash and is now loose in the prison. Ah, the plot thickens! In the prison, there are quite a few interesting personalities, such as the insane Golic (Withnail & I actor Paul McGann) and Dillon, the spiritual leader of the inmates. The most interesting one is the doctor of the place, Clemens. We get a glimpse of his story and his life, but he is eaten by what has become a grotesque hybrid between the world's worst killer machine and a vicious chihuahua before his story reaches a conclusion.
And this is the problem with the film. The most interesting characters are killed off at the beginning, Ripley just wanders around, trying to stay alive, without any real motive. In Alien, the crew wanted to get home. In Aliens, Ripley wanted to protect Newt. In Alien3, she just doesn't want to die. Sure, the whole Alien Queen thing was interesting, but it wasn't enough for the character, and so I think it ended on a sour note.
The inmates are the worst, however. Where Ripley just lacks depth, these attempt to preserve a hard-boiled street style, throwing foul language and punches around meaninglessly. The whole religion-thing just seems tacked on and is largely forgotten by the end of the film (which was, by the way, far from satisfactory).
And the Alien itself is just horrible as well. I like the idea of it changing with every film, but here it more resembles a dog than it does the fearsome killer we saw in the previous films. Come on, this is Alien, not Cujo! The terror of the first film is completely forgotten here, and we're supposed to be entertained by an adrenaline rush. I certainly wasn't.
Alien: Resurrection wasn't a good film. But at least it had a proper ending, and decent characters. Alien3 was just a misfire, and I don't think of it as canon in the Alien storyline. David Fincher is a fantastic director, and he has created some absolute masterpieces. But Alien3 isn't one of them. It could have been great, there were many interesting elements, but overall, it should never have happened. 6/10 is being extremely generous.