Okay, but not Great

Rating: 7/10 (7 February 2014)

His firm hand of creative direction is not there as the actors visibly struggle. Sigourney Weaver is okay but doesn't mesh well with a cast that just doesn't cradle her character; they have no idea what she has been through in the first two films and how tough she is. For some reason too she is very cryptic about her past, and reveals little information about the alien situation. Why wouldn't she just tell them the truth?
The relationships she does form with the cast are shaky and forced. Almost every character ends up dead, but it doesn't matter because we didn't know them anyway.
As Fincher's first major feature film, the style of Alien 3 bears the least resemblance to his other films. It is his most inexpertly made film. AKA, his worst film, technically anyway. I still prefer Aliens 3 to The Social Network any day, but after investigating the production of this film I came to realize that Fincher was not totally responsible for the lackluster film that made it to theatres.
When David Fincher was brought into direct Alien 3, it was after another director had already begun production, and was fired. There was not even a finished script. As one contributor wrote in the IMDb Alien 3 FAQs about, Fincher "was forced to effectively write, shoot, and edit the film, all at the same time. There were millions of dollars worth of sets built and many takes and scenes had already been shot. Twentieth Century Fox insisted Fincher incorporate these into his production to save money.
The shadows of the masterminds behind the first two Alien films, Ridley Scott and James Cameron, must have been looming over the production, because as Fincher completed a rough cut of film, Twentieth Century Fox panicked. They began started dictating that certain things were going to have to be re-shot in certain ways, essentially stripping Fincher of all creative control. He would eventually walk away from the film. The version that was released in theatres was his rough draft, completed by a new crew in LA.
In 2003 editor David Crowther took up the task of assembling what was of the original draft, and re-edited it in a way he though was most likely the way the Fincher version would have turned out. This release was called the Assembly Cut (I have yet to see it).
All that drama of the film's production aside, the story had real potential. Even following Cameron's greatness on Aliens (1986), enough time has past that Cameron's production was no longer fresh, and this third installment could have made a significant contribution to the series. The idea of a pod crashing on a giant prison planet bringing with it an alien that threatens to wipe out all life there, and possibly even all mankind is a cool idea, right? What would have become of this rough draft had studio execs not meddled? All we'll ever have is the Assembly Cut.
The most modern incarnation of the Alien series lives on in the amazing contemporary film Prometheus directed by Ridley Scott, and on November 27th, 2015 the second installment of the Prometheus series is set be released with both Ridely Scott and Jack Pagen, the man who wrote Prometheus 1 involved. This is a film I'm counting down the days for.
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