Needn't be

Rating: 2/10 (1 September 2006)

I seem to remember when I watched this a while ago that I really liked it, and also that it was one of the best in the series. It seems that I was really stupid back then.
This movie is horrible. Awful. Terrible. I honestly was surprised at how poorly I reacted to it. I love Fincher, I love the Alien series, I have good memories of enjoying this movie, but this movie is still very poor.
Apparently, it isn't much Fincher's fault that it didn't work out so well, what with the studio control issue and whatever, but a lot of what I find distasteful in this film is the Fincher element. This movie is very nihilistic, antimaterialistic, and strongly airs a lot of Fincher's later work. I wouldn't mind it so much, in fact I'd rather enjoy it, except that it messes up Ripley's character too much.
In each movie she changes. In the first, she starts out almost completely genderless until the end while in the second she's very motherly. In this one, she's pretty much just despicable. In a way it makes sense... if you kept going through revolving periods of stasis and action--LITERALLY--you'd become a cynical nihilist as well. But this was overdone and unbelievable, not to mention ruined by her very out of character sleeping with the doctor. It doesn't fit, and it makes the ending even worse with her martyrism. Nothing's worse than a nihilist martyr.
Anyway, it would make up for it with wonderful visuals if it weren't for the fact that the graphics have aged poorly. The CGI alien, though good for the time, is so bad by today's standards that it's ultimately unbelievable. It's sad that that has happened, but honestly there's no denying it. Apparently Fincher was trying for another psychological horror like the first one (an approach I agree with, considering the second one was pretty much a dull action film), but he shows too much and makes it too bloody. Most of the time the CGI wasn't even needed anyway. Whatever.
Finally, I couldn't stand any of the other characters. Their religiosity, their Australian accents, all of that stuff really didn't add anything but a resounding sense of fatigue. It was a risky approach; if it succeeded it would have been awesome. It didn't.
This is the worst part of the series.
--PolarisDiB