If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, The Alien Will Get Jealous

There's nothing wrong with an unnecessary sequel. Think of Back to the Future Part III, Die Hard 3, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - For a Few Dollars More may even fall into this category. All good films, all highly entertaining.

Ah, there's the rub: all those unnecessary sequels are also good films. Sequels are held to higher standards than other films - if the predecessor was good, the sequel had better be superior! And, when that sequel has nothing pressing to add to the series narrative, well...you'd really best put on a good show.

Alien 3 is an early directorial effort from David Fincher (Se7en, Zodiac) that picks up immediately where James Cameron's Aliens left off (which itself picks up immediately where Ridley Scott's Alien left off...it's a good pattern here). Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) wakes up on a barren, nasty, all-male penal colony to discover that Newt and Coropal Hicks have died or been killed in hypsersleep, and that their ship has, obviously, crashed. Suspecting that their deaths were not accidental, she insists on an autopsy that seems to deny her fears, but refuses to share the cause of her paranoia until an alien shows itself. Trapped on-planet with no means of defending themselves - no weapons in a prison, after all - Ripley and the inmates must survive until the Company ship sent to pick her up arrives.

There are certainly strong points to Alien 3, for example, Sigourney Weaver. A fantastic actress, and so gorgeous she's still gorgeous with a shaved head, Ripley was the last female action hero to simply be both a female, and an action hero. She was so special she could kick ass and take names without the whore-tacular clothing, smug bitchiness, and cheap sassy dialogue that current female "action heros" draw their power from. She was a woman in a bad situation who made do, and made do really, really well, and nothing about her shaved head and shapeless prison clothes in Alien 3 made her less womanly while doing it. It's truly sad what an anomaly Ripley and the original Sarah Connor were - seems not enough filmmakers were interested in that kind of thing.

Hey, what a tangent! In other strong points, the concept of no weapons is nicely terrifying, there is acting support from a small army of familiar British faces (and Irishman Pete Posthlewaite), and director Fincher does a nice job of making blatantly obvious lead-ins to certain doom scary, relying on skillful set-up rather than sudden shock to do the trick. There's also some interesting theological and Christological elements akin to Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Actually, there are a lot of elements akin to Terminator 2, and most of them only hurt this film by raising comparisons to that superior one.

Overall, though...well, I'd never watch it again the way I've happily watched and re-watched the first two contributions to the Alien franchise. Between unimpressive dialogue, uneven pacing, too much hit-and-miss in its theological commentary, and far too many similarities to another sequel that was released the year before and happened to be fantastic (T2), Alien 3 just doesn't have the quality required to justify its unnecessary addition to the series. Killing off the only engaging secondary character twenty minutes in probably wasn't the best idea. I understand the idea of leaving Ripley alone for the film, but leaving Hicks alive or re-building Bishop would have been nice, for interest's sake. The film drags quite a bit, seems too long most of the time, and feels like it wants to have both unrelenting and tension tension-and-release, and so succeeds at neither. The climax doesn't help things any by featuring a main character's self-sacrifice in a metal foundry...hey, wasn't that the ending of Judgment Day? And didn't that film do it way better? Wasn't Judgment Day directed by Aliens man James Cameron? Is this a coincidence? Should only James Cameron be permitted to direct sci-fi sequels, having proven his track record so nicely? Discuss.

Really, all Alien 3 made me want to do was sit down with something salty and the director's cut of Aliens. Hey, I'm going to the library tomorrow! I have just reserved a copy on-line. I am winner.