My Review of Alien 3 (1992)

Rating Scale:

12/10—a complete masterpiece; flawless and outstanding
11/10—Excellent, near-perfect film
10/10—the standard rating; awesome film with a couple of flaws
9/10—a wonderful film with several flaws
8/10–a great film with numerous flaws but not enough to ruin it
7/10—a fun and entertaining movie; not great but still enjoyable
6/10—a slightly above average film; it is something I might watch again
5/10—mediocre movie; not awful but not great either
4/10—a below average film; it could have been much better
3/10—a bad film; poorly written and poorly executed
2/10—a very bad movie; the few good things in the movie overshadowed by the bad things
1/10—a terrible movie; a total waste of time
0/10—a worthless piece of abomination; should have never been made

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Hello there, folks! This is Mr. J back with another movie review for today! It is now time for my review of the third installment of the Alien franchise simply called “Alien 3”, released in 1992. As some of you may be aware, I enjoyed the first two movies for its lore, original characters, story, the thrill, the terror, and the buildup. After watching the second movie, I hoped the following sequel would be just as good if not better. But after seeing this movie, I gotta say…it was a huge disappointment. This is how you throw away everything that was set up with little to no effort.

After flying in space for a period of time, Ripley and her fellow survivors are spotted by an infiltrating face-hugger who implants an egg in her while she was unconscious. Then she crash-lands on a prison planet where she encounters a group of prisoners. There, she faces yet another threat that seeks to devour anything it finds…and to preserve seed in Ripley.

There’s not much to like about this, honestly. The story here feels so empty and unfulfilling due to the way they needlessly tarnished Ripley’s character and how they wrote her progression. This is where she now becomes one with the Xenomorph species by becoming a mother of a Xenomorph baby. Just…what???

First of all, where in the hell did that face-hugger come from? There was no trace or one frame of an alien sneaking aboard their escape pod at the end of the 1986 movie, so how did that thing get in there in the first place? It’s basically forcing a story to come into existence at this point. Second of all, why did it take so long for the baby alien to burst out of Ripley? Is it because it’s a queen and therefore it takes a lot longer somehow? It’s never explained in the movie.

And I was pissed off at the fact that three other survivors (Hicks, Bishop, and Newt) did not survive the crash. Why did they unceremoniously kill off the best characters of the last film off-screen? What purpose did that serve for the story? It felt like a genuine slap in the face of everyone that loved these characters and the face of those who created them like James Cameron.

“Come on, guys, let’s just kill off the most interesting protagonists off-screen at the start of the film, and go from there! Lol! It’s nothing! We’re great writers!”

Just unbelievable. Moving on, the new characters here—the prisoners who have a criminal past yet also are religious zealots—most of them felt so one-dimensional and boring. There’s nothing compelling or unique about them; it’s the same issue I had with “The Predator” (2018) where a group of secondary characters who range from comedy relief to just shallow are only there to become forgettable cannon fodder. I didn’t care about any of them whatsoever.

There’s one guy who I did like: Dr. Johnathan Clemens. It looked like he was gonna have a sympathetic character arc until the Xenomorph killed him off quickly. Great job, writers, you took away the only new character I was starting to like. Such wasted potential, in my opinion.

But my biggest gripe with the movie is the usage of this ugly Xenomorph. It not only looks terrible design-wise but also looks stupid. It acts and moves like a dog and has a little too much screen time. I felt no fear or horror emanating from this creature because it acts more like an untamed animal rather than a terrifying extraterrestrial entity. And the CGI looks beyond awful!! It looks so off-putting it was so hard to watch. Were the animators even trying at all?!

And once again, we have yet another human antagonist who, of course, admires the beauty of the Alien and does whatever he can to set it free and then gets killed for it. Having delusional morons doing something to keep aliens alive is getting old at this point. It’s no longer fresh, so please stop doing it and utilize a fresh new concept to spice things up a bit. It shouldn’t be that hard to do.

The only things I do like about this train wreck is the decent action, the acting, the choreography, and the cinematography. Other than that, everything else was a big disappointment from start to finish.

This was not a good start for David Fincher’s filmmaking career, and I can tell he wanted to do something interesting with the movie. If it weren’t for the studio interference, this could have been a lot better. And yes, I watched the Assembly Cut of this film…it’s STILL BAD! Regardless of what anyone says, this was a poor attempt at continuing the story the first two movies left off. With that said, it gets a 4/10.

Peace.