Numanoid

By the time Alien3 came out, there were already a million Alien clones (Alien on a ship, Alien on a submarine, Alien in a high school). Alien3 turned that convention on its head with the locale, the characters (all male religious zealot prisoners!) and the no weapons angle. The setting and characters were something we had never experienced before, and the opening shocked you immediately and let you know that things were going to be bad, and real different.

Then again, I like darkness and depressing storylines and bleak futures. Happy ending formulaic Hollywood action films are about my least favorite movies. I was literally rolling my eyes when Newt first made her appearance in Aliens. Adding a kid to the cast is the tried-and-true cheapest, most manipulative way to buck up any franchise, just look at every single failing sitcom in history.

Cancer Man

Ripley always loses something between the films; after Alien she goes into stasis for nearly six decades and after that very long slumber she finds out that her seven year old daughter died a lonely old women with no family and to make matters worse, she loses her old job and gets laughed out of a debriefing conference after vainly telling the authorities about the Xenomorphs.

Ranger

I remember the other three Alien movies, but I'm not familiar with Alien 3. I read one review that complained that the profanity was very high - like 120 f's. Is that number right? I don't recall the profanity being that heavy in the other three movies.

chanster

How does going back to the original movie turn things on its head? The original Alien only had one other female cast member, and they didn't have guns in that movie either. (they did have a flamethrower but thats not a gun)

Profanity was on the high side, especially since it seemed like the same person kept repeating the same dialogue, because all of the dudes looked the same.

riley_dude

Good for shock value maybe but that's about it. Then you have the rest of the movie to sit through.

I like Dark and bleak movies, sure, when they are done well.

uberjoe

I enjoyed the movie, though not as much as 1 and 2. I was bothered by the accents, however. You had Ripley, a guy from Baltimore then a whole bunch of guys with heavy, British accents. It just didn't make sense. I mean, was this an exclusive prison reserved only for Mary Poppins castoffs (plus room for Roc)?

RogerSC

First off, I think Alien 3 was a well directed movie. It was really depressing but I thought the sets and acting were good. I initially liked Alien Resurrection better because it was more similar to "Aliens," but looking back that movie has alot of awful in it.

Anway, the reason I didn't like Alien 3 was that it was underwhelming. The first movie was a suspenseful/scary sci fi movie. The second was a more exciting action sci fi movie. The third returned to the former but still didn't match up. The first one had a mysterious planet, a strange alien ship with the "cargo," a few suprises with the alien birth and life cycle, the robot...
Alien 3 just had the alien killing off the prisoners of a prison planet. There were no new suprises unless you consider the revelation that a face hugger can produce 2 aliens.

I didn't like that the alien was dog-like. Made more sense that the alien resembles whatever creature it is birthed from but the humanoid alien looked much scarier and creepier than the Alien Cujo.

I didn't like that the Alien design didn't look very Giger-esqe (yes, I know he designed the original prototype for the dog alien).

I never saw the teaser whe it came out but I think that the logical thing would have been to have the Aliens infest earth with Ripley and co. trying to stop them.

I don't have a problem with depressing movies, but if the story isn't great people aren't gonna like it.

shill66

It's pretty high, but at least in the theatrical cut, I don't think there's a single "fuck" spoken until Brian Glover is snatched by the beast. Just another sign of the deterioration of the fragile pious "civilization" created by the prisoners.

Disc-Flipper

I'm a quiet fan of Alien 3 - I enjoy it, but won't defend it.

I didn't like the showdown at the end, with its fast cutting and wonky POV camera angles of the alien running along the walls and ceiling, which made it really confusing. I couldn't figure out what the hell was supposed to be going on until I rewatched the scenes in slow-motion on my DVD player.

riley_dude

The not going to Earth thing, I believe, was another Sigorney Weaver decision. She didn't want guns or to go to Earth.

RogerSC

I remember reading on, I think, the avp site that Sigourney was saying it was either predictable or boring to have it on earth, that in space was so much more interesting.

Did Alien 3 get a big budget? I think to pull of an Alien sequel at that time with the aliens infesting earth would have been way to expensive to produce.

riley_dude

How about now? No time like the present.

RogerSC

After seeing Alien Resurrection and AvP I don't think the people designing the aliens (or maybe it's the directors fault) can make them that scary anymore. They seem to be straying from the original visual design of a bio-mechanical species.
Not to mention, Weaver brought so much to the Alien movies, and without her, the movie would lose something.

JCFantasy23

Which is one reason I'm in the boat of happy campers. To me all three were great and different in their own right. The entire series is depressing, four being the only one that stands out as different. That's kind of the point and what makes the Alien series vary from others out there.