Terribly disappointing.

Rating: 5/10 (26 September 2009)

I LOVE the alien movies. And I love Joss Whedon. I was extremely surprised to find out that he wrote the screenplay. I console myself by assuming that the character writer wrote the awful dialog, and that the producers made changes that he would not have agreed with. And that he did not cast wynona ryder. she is horribly annoying in this movie. I loved Heathers, and this was the movie that made me start to dislike her. The aliens are scary. The new Ripley-hybrid is an obvious Whedon powerful superwoman. But the story is not as good as the others. It is less coherent in places- perhaps it was edited poorly. And some of the dialog is Embarrassingly Awful. I really did not expect that from a movie in the alien series. Even though Aliens, the 2nd one, is mostly an action film, not at all a serious Ridley Scott scifi work, and has a corny line or 2, it was well done, enthralling, and scary as hell! There are some of great actors in this movie(Brad Dourif, Michael Wincott, Ron Perlman -although his performance was terrible), Ripley kicks some ass, more corporate horrors are revealed, and the aliens exhibit some new and terrifying behavior. But it is definitely my least favorite of all the Alien movies. And if you are just starting the series, you can skip it. You don't miss any information relevant to the AvP movies or any future installments. There was no super secret Bishop or Weyland Industries revelation that mattered.