Review of Alien³ (1992) by Stuart K — 22 Jan 2016

Directed by Ridley Scott, who had made his feature debut 2 years before with The Duellists (1977), he chose something completely different for his follow-up, written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett (Total Recall (1990)) and produced by Walter Hill.

This little low budget film was made at the right time, and it started a massive franchise which comes and goes to this day. The first one will always and forever be the best. At some point in the future, the spacecraft Nostromo, which is transporting cargo across space, the ship's computer awakes the crew from a deep sleep statis to investigate a distress signal.

The crew consist of Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), Kane (John Hurt), Ash (Ian Holm) and Parker (Yaphet Kotto). They go to where the signal is coming from, an alien spaceship with eggs on board.

While Kane investigates the eggs, a creature bursts out of one of them, smothering his face. The creature has acidic blood, but when Kane awakes, that isn't the end of it... Even 35 years later, this is still a very engaging and suspenseful horror/sci-fi/thriller, which was meant to be a reaction against the wholesomeness of Star Wars, and something altogether nihilistic.

It managed to get Ridley Scott recognition in Hollywood, and it made a star out of Sigourney Weaver as well, who returned for 3 sequels.