Truly Brilliant!

Rating: 9/10 (3 March 2002)

This film has to be without a doubt my favourite film of the saga. It's everything I want from a sci fi horror film and is; in my humble opinion a truly worthy sequel to ALIEN. I can understand why it was so poorly received at the time, Aliens was such a big crowd pulling success and when news of Alien 3 surfaced a lot of people expected another macho marines shoot-em-up fest. Thankfully David Fincher had other ideas, don't get me wrong I enjoy Aliens but I prefer horror over action, Aliens was the perfect advancement for the saga but I always thought that Alien 3 was the perfect way to end the saga. Thankfully through the popularity of DVD with its enhanced picture and sound, it seems that a lot more people are starting to appreciate Alien 3 in a new light, the films colour scheme is so dark and muted; it's not surprising that people who only ever saw it on VHS didn't really know what was happening. I have always compared Alien 3 to Bladerunner in terms of audience reaction - common studio opinion seems to be 'if America didn't like it then it must be poor', which is very unfair, both films were poorly received in the US but opened to far better reviews and even critical acclaim in foreign territories, both films eventually found an audience and even cult followings and both seemed to receive more and more respect as time went on. Alien 3 is far from perfect, Richard Edlunds mo-motion Alien effects leave a lot to be desired and the opening sequence still has many fans confused, but over all I find Alien 3 to be one of the most intriguing pieces of Sci-Fi cinema to be produced in the past 10 years, its not often these days that you find a mainstream major studio produced film that is so gory and downright gritty, which I think is a testament to the fabulous production design from Norman Reynolds, truly amazing creature effects from Woodruff and Gillis and the dark almost nihilistic themes that Fincher seems to handle so well. When you start delving into the terrible pre production fiasco that Alien 3 went through its quite amazing that it came out as impressive as it did, various directors and screenwriters were hired and fired at great expense way before Fincher became involved, the fact that he managed to pull together such a mess and make such a great film is quite an accomplishment in itself. I dread to think how this film would have turned out if Renne Harlin had actually directed it. Now if only Fox would get their act together and produce a directors cut (in conjunction with Fincher hopefully) I know a lot of nay sayers would see Alien 3 in a different light, the typical moans about confusing plots and wasted characters could all be answered if Fincher was to show his original version of the film before it was cut to pieces by studio heads reacting to the opinions of test audiences made up of 'brain-dead kids'. The bootleg working print that's doing the rounds is far superior over the theatrical in terms of plot and character development and deserves to be shown to the public. As it stands today Alien 3 is a great film that deserves a lot more respect than it originally received, hopefully one day Fincher will return to finish what he began and audiences can see his vision as it was truly meant to be seen.