Good - but you probably expect more action

Rating: Null/10 (17 October 2001)

Who wants to follow up one of the most successful sci-fi series ever? David Fincher was not as famous or successful as he is now and definitely took a brave step in signing up for this. Looking back on it with his other work in mind it is obvious that he brought his own dark vision to the project.
This was always going to suffer from comparisons with the previous two. It suffered especially as the audience expected a gun-fest; an expectation rather stunted by the news that the film would be set on a prison planet and contain no guns. What the film does do is put the alien back in the shadows and bring back some of the original's terror.
Where the film fails is that it loses a lot of the excitement and tension of the others and replaces it with dull sections of the film and a lack of clear direction at times. Despite keeping the excellent sub-plot of the evil military government the film does fall badly when viewed with the others.
When you've got a series, changing it dramatically will only ever lose audience. Here Fincher puts the alien back in the shadows and takes out all the gun-action to up the tension - he does a reasonable job but compared to Alien and Aliens this was never going to be much more than a disappointment. Of course it's still miles better than most sci-fi!