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Alien 3
(**)
It looks good. It clanked and clattered in all the right ways. But all the imagination in the Alien series seems to have been sapped out in 1986 with James Cameron's superb "Aliens". This isn't to say there's nothing good about Alien 3. Far from it; Alien 3 just looks good. It's probably one of the best lookingmovies to have hit theatres up to its release date. To see the alien running around on the ceilings in full bloom is something that needs to be experienced.
Another good point to the movie is that we can identify with Ripley so well here. Much like her, we've had nothing but this Alien. "I don't know anything else", she says at one point. Neither do we. If Fox studio releases and Alien vs. Predator movie, I sincerely hope they take it in a direction far away from the Alien movies.
The story starts right after the end of Aliens. Ripley is the lone survivor ofa life support vehicle that was jettisoned from the Sulaco for unknown reasons. No prizes for guessing that there was an Alien on board and soon after she crash-lands on Fiorna 161 people start disappearing.
Fiorna 161 is a prison planet; a wasteland inhabited by former inmates who havefound God and don't want to leave their only world behind. Charles S. Dutton plays a particularly spiritual man who is the unofficial head of the group, and Lance Henrickson has a brief role both as the android Bishop and also as a Company man.
When I watch this, I realize just how nice it is to see Charles S. Dutton work. This is a man who lends credibility to everything he does, and when he's worried we start to care and perhaps even thinks that something in the movie matters. For that matter, Sigourney Weaver does a fine job as Ripley. But the problem doesn't lie in the acting here. The problem doesn't even lie in the movie itself, to an extent. The movie looks just fine.
But was a sequel really necessary? With the end of Aliens, we were given that sense of closure; putting Ripley back in harm's way just comes off as a shallow attempt at money.
That's exactly what it is, of course. Even though David Fincher (Fight Club, Seven, The Game) gives everything a great look, it still doesn't quite work. I heard there's going to be another Alien sequel. If one does appear, expect a large amount of foul language in my review; so please keep the children away.