**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Brian Glover, Ralph Brown, Danny Webb, Paul McGann, and Lance Henriksen.
Directed by David Fincher & written by Vincent Ward, David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson, based on characters by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett
1992 R
I will probably be undecided about “Alien3” for the rest of my life. On the one hand, it is well-made and well-acted, and set in a beautifully-designed hellhole, a gorgeously-envisioned dungeon. It is well-directed and well-written, paced languidly to match the somber resignation of its protagonist, save a few bursts of energy wherein her determination breaks free. On the other hand, the first and last ten minutes are unremittingly cruel, not just to its characters, but to the audience that has invested emotion in them, because they destroy so heartlessly in order to reward the supposed cleverness of the filmmakers.
Were this film created in a vacuum—if there were no “Alien” (1979) or “Aliens” (1986)—if the emotional investment we have made in the survivors of “Aliens” were not present, then I suppose I would have fewer complaints about this picture. But this is not the case. Ridley Scott’s “Alien” was named one of the ten “Most Heart-Pounding American Movies of All Time” by the American Film Institute, alongside “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Psycho,” “Jaws,” and “The Exorcist.” James Cameron’s “Aliens” was named one of the one hundred greatest movies of all time by “Entertainment Weekly,” and also tentatively granted the epithet “best pure action movie ever.” At the end of “Aliens,” (SPOILER ALERT) there are four survivors, for whose survival we have yearned during the two-and-a-half hour run time of “Aliens.” In the end, they are alive and safe, the chief protagonist’s character development has come full circle and she is whole and human again. It was a hard-fought nightmare, and the nightmare is over.
“Alien3” begins with three of those four survivors dying. The last hour of “Aliens,” which was a desperate battle between Sigourney Weaver (as Ripley, a name somewhere behind Captain Kirk and HAL 9000 among famous sci-fi characters) and extraterrestrial viciousness to save the life of a little girl, is negated, thrown away, trashed, stepped on, spat upon, made redundant and pointless. In the last hour of “Aliens,” three of the survivors could have escaped and left the fourth behind, but they do not. They returned to the jaws of death with no thought for themselves, only for their missing comrade, and not just Ripley, but Bishop the android as well. The best aspect of humanity—of all living creatures, selflessness—was rewarded. All my viewings of “Alien3” have been darkened by a sense of betrayal, as if the makers of this movie were sitting in the room with me, wanting me to congratulate them on how clever they are, for going over to the other side and favoring the monsters over the people.
After partially overcoming this momentous obstacle I’ve been able to appreciate and sort of enjoy “Alien3.” Ripley is now the sole survivor of “Aliens” and finds herself stranded on an all-male prison planet. The convicts—all murderers and rapists and so forth—have found Jesus in this awful place. Their faith is treated as more than a gimmick but not quite as much as a complete idea (anyone as heartless as director Fincher and the film’s numerous writers probably think faith is silly anyway). But it is an awful, beautiful place, of rust, shadows, and dripping drains, with candles but no electricity. Here a single alien that stowed away with Ripley stalks the two dozen or so prisoners and guards, and here is where Ripley gradually convinces them to take their stand along side her and face the beast.
The character development is not as sharp as in the previous two films, but does not need to be. The hairless prisoners run together as if Ripley is simply too melancholy and hopeless to bother differentiating them. A few faces stand out, among them the prisoners’ only two guards (Brian Glover and Ralph Brown), their resigned and philosophical surgeon (Charles Dance), and the charismatic representative of the prisoners, played by Charles S. Dutton, as a spiteful man who has found his soul’s nobility in Christ. Although Ripley experiences a brief romantic entanglement with the surgeon, it is in Dutton that she finds strength to persevere; his performance is as powerful as hers.
The mythology of the monsters increases, to some extent infuriatingly, as if we’re supposed to care more about the beasts than the poor little girl and the brave soldier who die before the opening credits even finish. We see how the new alien bursts forth not from a human as in previous films but from a dog, and therefore has the legs and grace of a quadruped, which explains how the aliens can have no male parents but not suffer from inbreeding. The alien drips blood and hate continually, which, unfortunately for the prisoners, looks a lot like the walls of their dump of a home. Action sequences involving the beast and the prisoners, especially the climax, are thrilling and frightening, but still within the style of the film—hopeless, resigned, but somehow determined. This same tone permeates Fincher’s subsequent films, including “Seven” and “Fight Club.” But while in “Fight Club” the action seems to exist in a world all its own, separate from the rest of the film—pure spectacle wherein yuppies pound each other relentlessly with sounds like buildings falling on each other—the action in “Alien3” supports the film’s theme, tone, and story, instead of existing for its own sake.
I hope you can understand my indecision. “Alien3” is thoughtful, frightening, exciting, well-made, and almost a masterpiece of tone. But no matter how smart someone is, you still don’t like it when they kill your friends.
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