I haven’t blogged in a while, but I’m back, and I’m in reviewing mood.
The reason for that is a lazy day. For obscure reasons I can’t figure out, my recent lazy day routine (when I’m lucky enough to grab one) is watching movies I’ve already seen, particularly from the 1980s and 1990s, therefore no longer being recent but certainly not being ‘old’. At least not in my mind.
Today I decided to watch Alien 3.
The least original screenshot of Alien 3 possible.
John’s opinion on Alien 3 as of noon on August 31st, 2008:
Alien 3 is an underrated sci-fi sequel that easily relegates Alien: Resurrection to being the worst installment in the Alien series but fails to reach the heights of the first two movies. As David Fincher’s first feature film it showed promise at the time, and the “dog-alien” has been the subject of unfair criticism. At the very least, Alien 3 rounded out the series, before the nonsense of Alien:Resurrection (specifically: Winona Ryder and alien-human hybrid clones that excel at basketball).
John’s opinion now:
Wow. So, I always knew that Alien 3 had experienced a ‘troubled’ production, but having never bothered to go back and watch the movie since I first saw it in 1993, I was missing out on some pretty big problems. The movie is put together really, really badly with a plot that opens up a ton of interesting possibilities but delivers on none of them. The acting talent available is formidable, but these people are working with thin stuff. For example:
- The warden type character played by Brian Glover decrees that Ripley will not leave the infirmary to wander the prison inhabited entirely by depraved male religious zealots, but she does anyway, and nobody tries to stop her or lock her in said infirmary.
- We are regularly asked to suspend our disbelief for stylistic touches that don’t add anything to the film and serve no purpose, case in point: Ripley confronting the male prison population in service of some vague feminist agenda. In the twenty-second century.
- The “dog-alien”, luckily for the scriptwriters, has a canny sense of dramatic timing, and chooses its victims in a manner that defies any kind of real predatory instinct but serves to move the plot along without any kind of conflict between characters that might actually generate some kind of drama.
So, in short, the film is a mess, but one that I enjoyed watching. It’s still better than Alien: Resurrection.
It also gives me a tenuous excuse to post this:
Best radar-watching simulator ever made.
My favourite game on the Sega Genesis not featuring a very fast blue hedgehog. But I won’t talk about that game now. Maybe somewhere else.