Waste

Rating: 4/10 (15 August 2007)

What a waste of time and talent is ALIEN 3. Ripley wakes up to find herself on a prison planet. Newt is dead and it is many years later. The prison planet is dark and drab and stark, and so are the characters. For those ALIENS fans hoping for an extension of James Cameron's masterpiece of a sequel, what a huge disappointment ALIEN 3 turned out to be. Death and despair is at every turn, and there is little action to compensate for the gloom that pervades the storyline. Susan "Sigourney" Weaver is absolutely wasted as Ripley. If she were a more discerning actress, perhaps she would have turned down a third go at the role. If the movie itself had been better, perhaps the series would have wound up a memorable trilogy. Instead, this turkey led to an even bigger turkey, ALIEN: RESURRECTION. Neither original director Renny Harlin nor his replacement David Fincher should have been allowed within 500 miles of this project. It needed a sure hand like Cameron's. Believe me when I tell you, you may safely skip this one and the one that follows. For that matter, the fifth movie in the series, AvP, isn't much of an improvement, but in its own odd way is slightly more watchable than ALIEN 3 and ALIEN: RESURRECTION. I agree with those fans who felt the series should have ended with ALIENS.