Alien 3 Review

As the time is near for the release of Prometheus, I will be reviewing the Alien films starting with this one (As I never counted Alien: Resurrection as a decent Alien film and no Aliens vs Predator films as well) and going back to Prometheus when it is released and for the purpose of justifying this review I will be reviewing the restored Assembly cut of the film to give it a fair chance.

Alien 3 is a strange beast of a film, went through numerous rewrites, continuous interference from Fox and a director that was put in the deep end of all this chaos. In the end what we got was a film that bears next to no resemblance of the film that was originally intended to be made yet still has a vague resemblance of what it could have been. Sounds contradictory but if you have seen it and know of the story behind it, you know what I mean.

We start off with Ripley crashing into Fiorina "Fury" 161 where the only inhabitants are a group of prisoners who have found God at the end of space, which sounds like the only part of the original story (Where Ripley lands on a wooden planet populated by Monks), the rest of Ripley's crew didn't survive which is very unfortunate for Ripley as now she has no friends or family left, she is on her own and it sets the downbeat tone of the film. For those who is expecting an all action/horror film may want to turn away from this film as it's more a Sci-Fi drama about the characters than the body count which is actually a big plus as we do explore the characters, their beliefs and know more about the setting, granted none of this explains how an Alien egg was on the Sulaco and face hugged Ripley and an Ox/Dog (Depending which version you watch) which led to this.

Of course being an Alien film, there has to be some base threat in the film which is the Alien but the real threat is the company Weyland-Yutani, who want the Alien for use as some sort of bio-weapon but what they don't realise is that there is no way of controlling them and if they did, it would mean the end of civilisation and only Ripley knows what to do, kill the Alien and herself since she is carrying a Queen Alien embryo so the tone of the film never gets lighter. The music is quiet interesting too as is has a unique industrial sound without the traditional orchestra which I've never heard in other films and that is another reason as to how this film stands out, also this film is the first feature film by David Fincher who went on to make films Fight Club and the Social Network, this being his first film was a tough one as it is a sequel to two previous films by James Cameron and Ridley Scott so it was inevitable that it won't be any way near as successful as those two films but in all fairness it still is a very well made film.

Film:            7/10