Alien 3

Ridley Scott’s “Alien” was a masterpiece in sci-fi horror and James Cameron’s “Aliens” was an amazing action movie. Together, the films made a solid, satisfying whole that worked as a beginning, middle and end to protagonist Ripley’s story.

Ryan Lamble said in his review, “That was the upshot of our previous retrospective, and I think it's a summary that most would agree with, at least in part.” However, with “Alien³,” released in 1992, we’re in a more disruptive area. Some find good points in David Fincher’s compromised debut movie, while others have criticized it as a weak entry of the two films that came before it.

Lamble admitted, “I personally fall into the former camp, and I've written about my admiration for Alien 3 before.” It’s a flawed movie, but when seeing the trouble that happened while the movie was made, from its beginning planning parts to filming and past that, this comes as little surprise.

It’s debatable that “Alien³” had no particular reason to be made. “Aliens” had taken the story of both Sigourney Weaver’s character and her enemy to their perfect ending, where “Alien” gave the creation and “Aliens” worked as an action emotional ending.

Working on a script that works off of James Cameron’s would have been an impossible task for even the most gifted writer, and several famous people tried to do that. The most famous version was William Gibson’s, which made Giger’s scary monsters into an airborne, Ebola-like virus that originated from the remains of Bishop’s torso.

Scripts from Eric Red and David Twohy resulted in, like Gibson’s, were fast cased. Lamble noted, “Then along came New Zealand writer director Vincent Ward, whose concept was like an alien-infested reworking of his 1988 film, The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey.”

The movie shows Ripley landing on a prison planet in space, a Death Star-like planetoid that is populated with space monks, windmills, cathedrals and wheat fields. It was an odd, mysterious work that, while consisting of imagination, would have been impossible to see with the technology that was there in the early 90s.

Lamble said, “The shooting script that ultimately surfaced, courtesy of Walter Hill and David Giler, was an amalgam of numerous drafts that came before it, and had Ripley crash-landing on a prison planet full of male convicts.”

Trying to make the mood of the series back to Scott’s original, “Alien³’s” setting is a dark, rundown prison full of ducts and long shadows, and the pace of the film is tedious and gloomy.

Crash-landing on the planet, Ripley wakes up to find that Newt and Hicks have been killed in the process, and she sees that she’s alone and unprotected in a place full of violent prisoners.

The guns, jokes and successful tone of “Aliens” are all gone, and the mood of “Alien³” is one of darkness and depressing, Ripley is like a warrior tired from war.

It’s this area of “Alien³” that David Fincher, making his debut here, gets absolutely right. Lamble said, “The howling winds of Fiorina 'Fury' 161 and the palpable sense of muck and grime are inescapable, and realised in occasionally beautiful sequences, most notably at Newt and Hicks' impromptu funeral.”

The quality of “Alien³’s” cast is also perfect, and Sigourney Weaver puts in some of her best performance in this film. Her sadness at the loss of Newt and her quitting when she sees that an alien is once again on the planet are perfectly judged.

Charles Dance is perfect as the mortified physician Clemens, saying his lines with a brief shortness that gives the film with a few of its occasional lighter moments, and Charles S. Dutton is similarly charming as the colony’s spiritual leader.

Sadly, the rest of the film’s characters don’t really give the same sympathy. Most you either hate (Brian Glover’s negative warden Andrews) or just nameless. Veteran British actor Pete Postlethwaite is barely given anything to do and, like the rest of the cast, is more than a victim for the Xenomorph alien.

Lamble mentioned, “Which brings me to one of the film's biggest drawbacks: the alien itself. Hatching from either a bull or a dog, depending on whether you watch the theatrical or 'assembly' cut, its movements and habits have become too predictable to recreate the sense of menace the first film invoked, and the mixture of puppet and computer effects used in its execution are all too easy to spot.”

A climactic scene, where Ripley and the surviving prisoners try to trap and drown the alien in molten lead, is more confusing than tense, and is maybe looked at as confused thinking that mirrors behind the film’s production.

“Alien³” feels like a much smaller, more personal film than “Aliens.” Its environment is more claustrophobic, its locations limited, and yet, Cameron’s movie had a much smaller budget of around $18.5 million. “Alien³” at a much higher $50 million budget and 10% of what was reportedly spent was on Sigourney Weaver’s salary.

Despite “Alien³'s” many shortages, the film is full of occasional moments of excellence, and its decision to end on such a sad way is a brave one. What could have been a simple cliché is changed into something way more complex and unusual. Instead of being haunted by her enemy forever, Ripley chooses to kill herself rather than allow the Xenomorph alien growing inside her to fall into the hands of the everywhere Weyland-Yutani.

Even though the path the creators of “Alien³” went down, a story that focused on Hicks, as was primarily thought of, or the death-ending journey’s end definitively chosen, the result would not have satisfied everyone.

Like Ripley herself, “Alien³” was doomed from the beginning. David Fincher reportedly hates the film and doesn’t want any part in the revised edition that was released in 2003.

However, without looking at the trouble from the production, the handful of directors, concepts and scripts, “Alien³” is an underrated film that has atmosphere and unforgettable looks, and some of the finest acting of any in the trilogy.

Lamble ended his review by saying, “While not a masterpiece like Alien, or a landmark of action like Aliens, Alien 3 is, for this writer, a dramatic, unforgettable postscript for one of sci-fi cinema's most fascinating characters.”

I guess everyone could probably get from what I was saying without any quotes, that I thought this film was just ok. It’s not a horrible film like everyone else said about it, but it just fell right in the middle. Strange how Fincher ended this film the same way Cameron did with “Terminator 2.” They should have stopped at “Aliens,” but this ending actually works as well, despite that it doesn’t really do a whole lot in the film anyway. I like the Xenomorph being “dog-like” in its traits, but the characters that I didn’t want to die did and the one character that I absolutely hated lived and was taken as prisoner. I admit that it is disappointing in certain ways, but I don’t think it’s really bad, just an average film. Check it out if you’d like and don’t completely thrash it like everyone else has.

Well everyone, sadly we got one more film to look at that was, undeniably, the worst in the series. If you want to know why, then you will have to wait until Monday for the continuation of “Halloween Month.”