Review of Alien³ (1992) by Kai82 — 09 Nov 2020

Ruined by development hell and a massive disappointment. After some thought over the years I think there is maybe a great movie underneath with concepts and psychological themes that I cant appreciate.

However lets start with the development (hell): Many ideas and scripts were made. There was the idea of a wooden artificial planet or moon with monks, Hicks (Michael Biehn) as main actor, Earth as setting (this information came to public attention and harmed the movie) or the Alien home-world as setting to name a view.

As you see there were some ideas with potential. Sadly they made this mess. One unforgiving mistake was negating the outcome of Alien 2. Wont spoil this but you will immediately note that they negate something important and this harms the movie and viewers expectations.

Back to the story. After the events of the last movie Ellen Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver stranded on Fury 161 which is a prison colony. She is rescued but something survived too. Sounds promising and I can retell the story in a way that you will be hyped.

Sadly the movie cant keep up. It has not the fear suspense and intensity of the first movie nor the action, emotions and immersion of the second movie. I am hesitating to call it boring and it is maybe uninteresting for me.

Many other share however this opinion. It lacks to much we liked from the prequels. Like I said before maybe the psychological and sociological themes are great but this has no appeal for me and the mainstream.

The special effects are a mixed bag and I later read that they rejected most of H. R. Gigers ideas for this movies which explains a lot. The ending however is great and a good conclusion except everyone knows that a successful franchise will always be continued.

I think that the sets look fine and the atmosphere looks like the thing they want to archive. I cant rate the acting properly. On one hand I think everyone did a great job but on the other hand I dislike what they archived or aimed for.

Would explain it with an excellent opera when you dislike opera in general and have no idea what they want to tell. Overall this was a disappointment for nearly everyone but financially successful enough to continue the franchise.

Like most fans I will ignore that this movie exists and cant recommend it.