More Is Less.

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2008)

You really do have to feel sorry for Ms Ripley; she must be the unluckiest lady in the galaxy. Lost in space for 57 years, outliving her own daughter, blamed for sabotaging a spaceship, stitched-up over a 'phoney' alien, demoted from flight-crew to fork-lift driver, stricken with ongoing nightmares and then tricked into going back and re-living them again. On top of all that, she finally gets infected by the alien, jettisoned once more into space, a child she fought so hard to save gets drowned, a marine she begins to develop romantic attachments to is killed, and finally; she crash-lands on a penal colony crammed with murderers and rapists - and oh-deary-me, another alien.
You wouldn't perhaps want her as a friend.
'Aliens' - an absolute cracker of a movie - ended on something of a victorious note. Most everyone was wiped-out, but the aliens were done for and she found a surrogate daughter to replace the one she outlived. There was also a nascent love interest in the form of Corporal Hicks. It was about as near to a fairytale finish as any genuine dragon-slaying horror movie could get. And the franchise should have ended there. Sadly; it didn't. Those grasping Hollwood moguls could see only more dollar signs.
'Alien-3' had an impossibly hard act to follow. There were no more shocks or suspenseful moments left in the system, no more creepy scenarios in dimly-lit mysterious places that hadn't already been exploited, no more pools of drool to leave you wondering what came next.
There was quite an interesting beginning, with brief explanatory glimpses sequenced to the accompaniment of bewitching choral voices. Some interesting visual effects were complemented by a suitably robust audio and sound-effects package. But after that it was simply more of the same: Ripley the knowing witness attempting to convince the sceptical inexperienced. Until the beast makes a showing, and once again she has to save everyone's ass. Feminism can be taken to implausible lengths.
It's yet another small, hostile world. We seem to spend most of our time in poor light, etc, etc. There are some interesting and equally crass mood sequences. At times, Ms Ripley becomes tiresomely evasive, especially with the doctor - well played by Charles Dance.
He heads a curious mix of British character actors that includes rumbustious Brian Glover as the colony's scathing warden, and Pete Postlethwaite as one of the inmates. It seems an unlikely place for Yorkshire lads to have wound up.
With an inevitability that is barely interesting, the alien begins systematically bumping them all off. None of the characters are particularly likable or memorable, so it's hard to care for their loss. Dance's character is arguably the most sympathetic, but he gets creamed pretty early in the list. The whole thing is pretty grim, dismal and down-beat. Ms Ripley herself commits suicide in the end (not that it spared us further sequels). The un-killable alien is finally killed in a way that is quite preposterous.
And that's more or less it - until next time.
It may be that I do the movie a dis-service, but as I say; coming hot on the heels of such an edge-of-the-seat smash-hit like 'Aliens' it could hardly assume any other guise than an anti-climax. If the first two episodes had been less entertaining this might have seemed to shine more brightly, but it wasn't meant to be.
Worth a watch if you get the chance, but it certainly isn't worth a purchase or changing you plans to stop in and see.
Since this outing there has been 'Resurrection', 'Alien vs Predator' 'Requiem' and probably 'Daleks Defy Face-huggers', with 'Blob meets Drool', each featuring Sigourney Weaver in increasingly silly situations.
But; money talks.