Alien 3

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#1

I will say this and wait until the booing and hissing subsides; This is the best Alien film in the series…

Okay you all done… fair enough I understand I’ll give you minute

So here it is, this the most slagged of all Alien films. And to me its truly great sci/fi. We had Alien a monumental achievement in and by itself an incredible suspense horror film. Than “alien two” and though it might sound dismissive and i don’t mean it like that. But it was simply a great sci/fi action film. And not what makes alien… well Alien. I think Audra said it in the last cast about how Sanchez pushed the aliens head with her boot to the wall and brained the thing. Which is all kinds of bad ass. but not Alien, you don’t get that close to an alien without intestines leaving your body. The Alien premise is simply this 1 of them will kill 150 of you and after they finish there’s gonna be 75 of them to fight off, So even as cool as the marines were, them in fact killing the aliens on mass , took something significant from the original concept. So back to the point. Alien three was the stripped down core concept. We have Ripley trapped with one alien. People around do not trust her. And she has to find a way to destroy death incarnate without nuclear weapons and drop ships. Now this film has an interesting background and I would definitely recommend anyone pick up or rent the quadriligy disk cause there is some great special features of the mess this film was during production. And some truly great original concepts for it. But this one boils the series down to what makes it great. Being scared like hell of the shadows.

So i’ve blathered on enough about this what do you all think, am I just crackers… or do we have some cubed love.

#2

Alien^3 is definitely unjustly slagged. It might not be what you want as a sequel to Aliens, but it’s a powerful flick.

#3

I don’t really know why this film is so slagged on.

I know when I first saw it I was hoping for something entirely different. I was hoping they would go to Earth and them fools would get their due. Although the film wasn’t what I was hoping, I still enjoyed it. David Fincher is one of my favorite directors and from what I’ve heard the whole production of Alien 3 was horrendous. It went through several screenwriters and directors. Some of whom, you may know: William Gibson (Neuromancer), Eric Red (The Hitcher), David Twohy (Pitch Black) to mention a few.

To make matters even worse, the studio got involved and messed with Fincher’s version without his consent. As a result, Fincher decided not to be involved in any DVD release of the film.

#4

I appreciated this fiilm. And I respected how they made it so very, very different than the previous film Aliens 2. And given the fact that I really loved Aliens 2 more than any of the other films, Aliens 3 kinda got overshadowed a bit for me.
But, again, the tone, the stakes, the setting, the characters are such a contrast to A2 and for me that gave it more oomph than a typical 3rd sequel.

#5

Now I would not go so far as to say Alien 3 is the best of the movies, I would agree that it was unjustly dismissed as garbage. This is a solid story with excellent acting in a setting you don’t normally see. It doesn’t have the HOO-RAH! That Aliens has, it doesn’t have the slow build up of Alien, but it is a good movie in it’s own right. I am fully convinced that this movie would not have gotten the rep it did if it did not have the name “Aliens” attached to it.

#6

The first one was the best, IMHO, but Alieneses is certainly a much better film than most people think. What’s truly amazing is how a coherent movie, let alone a decent one, got made at all with the issues they had putting it together! This could have been the most convoluted path to production this side of “Watchmen.”

#7

Are Chuck, Sean and Audra skipping over A3 for this arc? (I haven’t fully listened to the most recent podcast, so I’m not clear on that.)

#8

from what I gathered the next cast will be alien 3 and alien 4 with some avp to stuff to boot

#9

Thanks. Awesome. (I’ve been saying the word awesome too much today, where’s my Thesaurus?)

#10

I think it was in that ice cream truck that was chasing Talos.

#11

dude you can never say the word awesome to much cause it is in fact awesome; on a completely unrelated note i may be saying the word dude too much…

#12

Just watched Alien^3 for the first time. I can see why it was not well recieved when it came out. Killing off Bishop, Newt, and Hicks, basically off screen was definitly not a way to win fans over from the previous film. And aparently there was a Queen facehugger alien left on the ship somehow? Its kind of like saying the Queen from Aliens actually won.

Still, there were some cool moments in it. The real Bishop was a nice surprise. Camera work and soundtrack were both strong. It was slow moving, sort of like Alien, but it just didn’t seem as scary to me. Have to think about it some more to give it a final grade.

#13

I don’t hate the film, it certainly has merit and many bold moves. But in the end I found it rather boring, the only of the four films I could say that about.

#14

Dude, don’t sweat it – “dude” is awesome.

The Alien action in Alien 3 is kinda whack. Still, all in all, not an awful movie.

In A3, Giger is credited with creature design again. Not sure if that means he returned for this one, or if it’s a lingering credit.

#15

I love alien 3. I was disapointed at the time cause I wanted Aliens 2… or the Alien comics ( which were fairly new at the time). But in the end… I did like the movie a lot. What didn’t I like was the change in Ripley. Here’s why.

I felt Riply as a character got worse with each movie. I don’t see why she is considered so tough. She crys as much as Hudson! I love these movies but she isn’t as cool as women make her out to be. She isn’t even the coolest women in the series… she just the one that had the paycheck!

In Alien she was a great ( initialy ) minor character that suprises us by being the one that lives. She is pretty believable and cool for what she is. She is just a low level officer in a blue coller space fleet. She is nothing special. She is no hero in the action adventure movie sense…but she is a hero in the policeman or fireman in every day life sense. She was just the person at the wrong place. She is the “nerd” girl that survives every Friday the 13th movie. I always thought that was neat. She wasn’t tough… she was practicaly crying throu the whole end of the movie! She get’s lucky that the alien sleeps in her shuttle and she is able to hit a button before it can wake up and kill her! I still like her… but I can’t say that she did anything ground breaking other than cry on que.

In Aliens I like her A LOT until the end ( where most people like her most) when her character becomes a catch phrase spewing, power loader driving heroine she just seems a little lame. I will buy that she raised her personal bar a little after her trauma of Alien and looseing her daughter ( kinda- really just sleeping throu her life). Vasquez and the other female marines were realy heroes! The idea of an old 40ish year old woamn running around and winning where the marines fail is just lame! She is much cooler and believable as the brains ( or at least the voice of reason) and heart behind the mission… not the hand to hand combat against the queen person. In the end she is just annoying with all her crying, grieving , and whineing. If being a strong female character means crying and whineing A lOT… then maybe she is it. But most women usualy treat those activitys in movies as pretty sterotypical and lame. Why is it when apretty girl crys in a horror movie…shes a bimbo. But when an old grandma crys a lot during a movie she is “strong”?

In Alien 3… I felt that she is practicaly not a hero at all. She is just running around crying about the alien. She has been reduced to a wackjob. I still thought that is was a good movie. The movies are about Aliens after all, not Riply. ( something that it took the studio YEARS to figure out) Riply didn’t do much to impress me, except maybe killing herself. That was noble in a way… but kinda not… since she was really just saveing herself from a possibly more painful death.

So in the first movie… she is what she is. I liike her. Not the way many others do, but I still like her. In Aliens they kinda pretend that she is extremly smart ( instead of a simply failed officer) that character is pretty cool. The third movie… she is uncofortable to look at ( I don’t mean her looks, but the same applis there as well). She is a great actress… but the directors f’d her in that last movie.

BTW Alien 4. Hated her completly. I don’t even consider that ripley. She was lame. I loved Winona Ryder BTW. i would like to see more Alien movies with her!. The Human-Alien hybrid story was just stupid. I really want to gag when she is “swimming” in baby alien parts!

But sticking with the thread… I do love this movie as well and it get’s a bad rap for not being Aliens 2.

#16

First of all, the Grandma crack isnt’ really warranted.

That is not the problem. What IS the problem is typucally the “pretty girl” (really? do we still use that crap?) is paralyzed because she’s crying & some macho dude has to come save her sorry ass because she can’t save herself because she’s “hysterical”. Yes, Ripley cries a lot, she also gets shit done while she’s doing it. Being strong isn’t about not showing emotion or being the stoic rock that doesn’t let things effect them. People like that are just psychotic. Being strong is about doing what needs to be done despite everything falling apart around you & you being scared out of your mind that you’re next.

#17

Doing Newt, in particular, was unforgivable.

#18

This, absolutely. Aliens was far and away the best of them all for me, and not because it had the most guns and action. It was really Newt and Ripley that most drew me in. I was rooting hard for those two to make it, and enjoying seeing them both comfort each other following their recent respective losses. And what happens in the first couple of minutes of Alien3? Newt’s dead - an unneeded character just chucked out the window. If they’d ended Aliens with a caption reading “Hey, that cryo tube they just put Newt in? Yeah, she’s never getting out of there because we don’t need her anymore. The End.” would anyone have been ok with that? Not me. In my opinion, the series is much better if you leave out 3 altogether. I choose to continue watching the first two and don’t think about the third if I can help it. Sometimes I manage that well enough that the joy of seeing R+N escape alive isn’t completely stifled.

#19

Was that in the DVD extras? :eek:

#20

Well said, Aset! Agreed!

That is not the problem. What IS the problem is typucally the “pretty girl” (really? do we still use that crap?) is paralyzed because she’s crying & some macho dude has to come save her sorry ass because she can’t save herself because she’s “hysterical”. Yes, Ripley cries a lot, she also gets shit done while she’s doing it. Being strong isn’t about not showing emotion or being the stoic rock that doesn’t let things effect them. People like that are just psychotic. Being strong is about doing what needs to be done despite everything falling apart around you & you being scared out of your mind that you’re next.[/QUOTE]