Heck, David Fincher himself has disowned the film that he directed. Including Alien 3 and Resurrection in the discussion is off the table.
WATCH ALIEN 3 ASSEMBLY CUT ONLINE SERIES
In my mind, this series ends after Alien and Aliens, and begins with Prometheus. But if you're going to do that, don't compromise the story or tarnish the spirit of the films that came before just to get what you want out of a threequel. There's always something to be said for taking a film series in a new direction, and Alien 3 attempts to do that with Ripley's unique relationship to the Xenomorph. Sadly, it's hard not to think of how this film impacts some people's viewings of the first two masterpieces. The entire production of this film was an absolute disaster. It attempts to reconstruct David Fincher's workprint (which the studio balked at), but goes one step further and adds color correction, additional special effects and remixed 5.1 sound. Not to mention the fact that some of our favorite characters from Aliens were swept away to either glorified cameos or killed off unceremoniously. 2003, the 'Alien Quadrilogy' box set was released with a newly created cut of 'Alien 3' entitled the Assembly Cut. What we got was a messy script, an uneven tone, and unfinished CGI/visual effects. It seems like everyone involved had their own agenda and vision for how the story should pan out. Let me get this straight, we're on a prison filled with murderers and rapists, and the guards don't have any weapons to use if things go bad?īut really the problem with Alien 3 is just that there were way too many cooks in the kitchen. But even that feels tarnished due to Sigourney Weaver demanding Ripley to not hold any guns, which in turn meant the entire prison she's trapped in seem illogical. Slow, brooding, and lacking any excitement or tension provided from the first two makes this film only watchable because of Ellen Ripley. Alien 3 once again changes up the formula, but is inferior in every way. Alien relies on our fear of the unknown, while Aliens is a relentless action film that never lets down its guard. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) crash-lands on Fiorina 161, a bleak planet inhabited by former inmates of a maximum-security prison, but an Alien was also aboard. With a young and inexperienced David Fincher, an actress making demands, a script that was being written on the fly, and a less than compromising studio, Alien 3 is about as disappointing of an end to a trilogy as I can remember.Īlien and Aliens are two entirely different films that provide tension in different ways. Alien 3 is one of those situations where the quality of the film we got is no one and everyone's fault.