Not a worthy sequel... but watchable

Rating: 5/10 (3 March 2005)

Alright, the movie starts off with a few brief scenes on the Sulaco. There's an Alien egg there (what?! how?!). The facehugger which hatches cuts itself on glass (I thought even the facehuggers had a bit of intelligence!) leaks acid, and starts a fire. The Sulaco's computer doesn't even attempt any kind of fire-suppression (where are the sprinklers?) and quickly ejects the hypersleep pods in an emergency escape vehicle.
The EEV, apparently without any means of propulsion, crash-lands on Fiorina "Fury" 161 (come on! It's an escape pod, but it should have *some* means of propusion or a way of making successful planetfall).
Newt and Hicks are killed. Bishop is severely damaged. Barely ten minutes into the movie, and a huge chunk of "Aliens" (in particular, the rescue of Newt) has been effectively wiped away. Don't worry, by the end, the rest will be, too.
With such a dismal beginning, the movie actually picks up. The premise, an all-male prison facility where the inmates have "found God", is weird, but workable.
The Alien has to be there, of course. A facehugger impregnates a dog (or an ox, if you watch the Assembly Cut), which in itself is impossible, since it had already impregnated Ripley on the Sulaco, and hence should be dead. That, or there were *two* eggs on the Sulaco, which is twice as ridiculous as the idea that there were any at all.
The rest of the movie basically deals with trying to capture/destroy the alien, and eliciting the wary prisoners' help to do so. All the while, communications from the Company indicate that they want the Alien and are coming as fast as possible to get it.
Ripley has been impregnated with a queen embryo (how'd that happen, anyway?), and becomes resigned to her fate when she finds out.
The latter portion of the movie works pretty well, although there are notable plot holes and problems with pacing (some of which are corrected in the Assembly Cut).
(Mostly) good visuals, a few jokes, (way too many) motivational speeches, and good old-fashioned gore at the hands of the Alien keep the movie going.
After the Alien is killed (after having survived being covered with molten lead? These things are tough, but come on!) Ripley must make the ultimate sacrifice. With Company personnel urging her to come with them, and (not all that convincing) promises that the Alien embryo will be removed and destroyed, and that Ripley can still have a life, she makes the choice to destroy the Alien... and herself along with it.
This moment makes the movie worthwhile, though just barely.
The movie itself is good. Not great, but good enough. It does not, however, fit in with the previous Alien movies. A huge chunk of "Aliens" (especially the rescue of Newt) is effectively erased to make this movie happen. And one can't deny that if Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop had all died back on LV-426 in the middle of "Aliens", we'd have essentially the same end result, minus a few deaths on Fury 161.
The movie thus sets itself to be ultimately pointless. Ripley's final sacrifice doesn't carry the same impact when you realize that if she'd just died *earlier*, things would have actually been *better*.
In my mind, there are only two true Alien movies, those being Ridley Scott's original and James Cameron's sequel.
"Alien 3" is perfectly enjoyable, if you don't consider it in terms of the series. It's paradoxical, since the movie *needs* the previous two as its set-up, but works much better if one doesn't think about them.
I won't comment on the problems Fincher has with this movie, but I'll just say that out of that mess came something palatable. Don't think too much about the previous two movies when watching this one, and *certainly* don't think about this one when watching the previous two. If you can do that, you should be able to enjoy it.
"Good enough" is my rating, 5 out of 10.