Alien 3

1992 sequel sequel

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Ripley, that robot, and that little girl from the last movie crash land on a planet formerly used as a prison but now the home of some religious cult. And, then aliens.

Alien 3? Maybe it's Alien Cubed, but that makes me think I might have to do math. Maybe it's unfair of me, but I really want to penalize this for including an exponent in the title. This movie wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. Weaver goes completely bald, completing her metamorphosis into Bruce Willis. In a way, I respect this more than the second movie in the Alien quadrilogy. Wait a second. Is that even a word? I'm fairly positive the word is tetralogy, not quadrilogy. Anyway, I almost want to respect this more because it's not a big dumb Hollywood action movie. The music's also better in this one. The special effects? Not so much. I do respect that they still use puppets and guys in costume over computer effects, but there's a lot of blue screen use (Or is it a green screen? Why do I even have a movie blog? I don't seem to know anything! Is that why I only have 4 1/2 readers?) that looks really silly. I do like how the puppet/person-in-costume movies and looks though. The plot of this third installment just doesn't seem very confident. This one stumbles around a lot more than that graceful first entry and doesn't hit the excitement level of the second movie. There are some lackadaisical attempts to say something about religion or euthanasia, maybe, but the screenwriter's heart doesn't seem into it. There's some clumsiness--a scene where some guys are running away from the alien while holding sparklers, some humor during a scene where they're trying to trap the thing--and I had trouble caring for any of the characters with the exception of the robot who comes in briefly. The dialogue is really poorly written. There are certainly a lot of "fucks" in this movie, probably to make the guys all sound tough, but when Weaver throws out her own "fuck," it's almost embarrassing. Here's what I do really like about this movie though--nobody is spared in this one, shockingly. The movie starts by killing off a little girl who Ripley fought her ass off to save in the first movie. And yes, I apologize for spoiling the beginning of the movie for you if you haven't seen this. And then it continues by killing off characters who you're not really ready to see die yet. It's kinda ballsy, right up until the end. That ending, by the way, probably would have made a good conclusion to the franchise. Not sure why Alien to the Fourth Power was necessary unless somebody just wanted money.

My spell check tells me that neither tetralogy or quadrilogy are words.