A Thought-Provoking Slasher ?! Think Not !

Rating: 6/10 (18 October 2011)

The first Alien was horror with some ideas about the human vs. the unknown. The second Alien was action / horror with no ideas but making everything as very big and very hot. Now the third Alien tries to mix the first with the second to lose the best of both!
Here's an excellent ground for one of a kind genre movie. A prison of only-men criminals, who became mostly religiously fanatic. After a long time in which they didn't meet a woman, and decided to refuse the whole female race, they meet Ripley, and more than that; they have to "join" her to terminate the new-hybrid Alien. Undoubtedly, it has a dramatic and metaphoric potential. It could have been unprecedented woman-movie about an educated one being trapped in ignorant whole-masculine society / prison that despises her, so how about their developed common necessity to be both hand-in-hand to destroy one danger. It could evoke too the human vs. the animalistic sides' conflict, with the woman as the sole rational soul amongst a world of barbaric men. But Alas for that or else.
Everything sounds chop-off. Nothing is complete. At one moment, the doctor; a sympathetic with the heroine and a possible lover for her, dies while telling the story of his guilt (??). The head of criminals / nut priest befriends with the heroine pretty fast; so what was the meaning of the hate as a drama, or pure thrill?! Yes, the matter of Ripley being pregnant with Alien's Junior was wild and surprising, but I couldn't get to understand how it happened. The movie doesn't disappoint the intellectual core, whatever it might have been, that promises of only, it even harms the attempt of ordinary viewing for a solid Hollywood fare.
Speaking about the "fare" side, David Fincher, who came from the music videos and TV commercials, doesn't offer much in his debut as a cinema director. The movie is too dark for its own good sometimes. The action isn't so dazzling, I don't know how to do that right after what James Cameron did in the second (explosive is the word!). And as a horror, you know that you've seen better.
The one fulfilled and complete good idea in this movie was the matter of having no guns or weapons. That was so ambitious and creative. On one side, it gives the instant question "How they're going to face the monster?", and, on the other, it gives the opportunity to watch different kinds of improvised weapons. Other than that, nothing was really "going on"!
The thing is the movie suffered a long-term of rewriting, re-shooting and reediting (over a year was spent in the editing process apart). That's why many points looked eventually strange or incomplete. Though, I believe it was a fine cinematic exercise for Fincher in making movies, and in dealing with the Hollywood masters, read: the producers, who can play with any movie in any way they want. His born as a master director himself would be postponed till (Seven - 1995) and (Fight Club - 1999). Therefore, see him revenges, or says what he originally wanted to say, in (Alien³: The Assembly Cut), released on DVD in 2003.
I totally ignore the debate around "Was Bishop II human or android?", because seriously, it's nonsense. What would be gained out of that, since the whole thing ended up as another slasher movie yet set in the space, with many important points left incomplete!
P.S: In 1992, the movie's star and executive producer, Sigourney Weaver, said: "I am sure there will be Alien 4, it just won't have me in it." Nevertheless, she did (Alien 4: Resurrection - 1997). Maybe to make more money? Or maybe.. to apologize for this sequel!