What do you think of Alien 3?

Watching it now and loving it. I know everyone complains about killing Hicks and Newt, but whatever. That took balls and Fincher has them in large quantities.

Also, Alien Cubed.

It's terrible.. watch Aliens and then watch 3. The CG Aliens look awful aswell. It was becuse Aliens was a different class to other sci-fi films at the time and then with such high expectations for 3, it just completely failed.

I've yet to find anyone who agrees with me, but it fights for my top spot with the first one.

Counterpoint - Watch Alien and then watch Alien 3. 3 is much closer in tone to the original film and I love it for that. Dutton is pretty much stellar in everything he's in and the rest of the cast were not slouches, either. 3 has atmosphere coming out it's ears. No, it doesn't compare to Aliens, but I still love it and always have. It would have made an awesome capper to Ripley's story if they'd let her die.

A not very good movie from a guy who spent the first part of his career directing music videos.

Awful.
 
A bad Alien movie, and a bad movie period.

@Barsh said:

I've yet to find anyone who agrees with me, but it fights for my top spot with the first one.

Brother! though Aliens will always be my favorite,

Not nearly as bad as everyone says it is.

@PhilipDuck said:

The CG Aliens look awful aswell.

This, along with other conversations I've had, makes me think people often conflate 3 and 4. Because there's only one alien in 3. And four does not exist in my mind, Ripley is dead.

I absolutely adore all 3 films. They're all very different films, not even really sticking to the same genre in the main, but I think they are all excellent films. I can see why people dislike Alien 3, as it's obviously not a groundbreaking film like the first 2, it bins two popular characters from the start, and some of the plot is a little wonky due to all the production problems. Despite all that, it still has a couple of my favourite parts from Alien films - in particular a couple of Dillon's speeches, and I've never thought that my appreciation of Alien 3 somehow detracted from enjoying the first 2 either. That's why I don't really have a favourite - I think they're all great films in their own right.

@BionicRadd: /agree on all points except Aliens. I remember watching Roc and liked to see Dutton get to stretch a bit from the TV dad role.

Aliens, is certainly an enjoyable movie, and one I liked a lot when I was younger. The 80's action movie trappings, to me, means it has not aged at all well and it turns out I have less affection for it as time goes on. Plus Scott & Fincher direct much more to my tastes than Cameron.

@Barsh said:

@BionicRadd: /agree on all points except Aliens. I remember watching Roc and liked to see Dutton get to stretch a bit from the TV dad role.

Aliens, is certainly an enjoyable movie, and one I liked a lot when I was younger. The 80's action movie trappings, to me, means it has not aged at all well and it turns out I have less affection for it as time goes on. Plus Scott & Fincher direct much more to my tastes than Cameron.

Totally understandable. I'm an action guy and I've come to revere Aliens as my favorite action movie, ever, over the years. Watching it now, in the age of slapping CG on everything and overblowing all your action scenes, Aliens stands as one of the last great, big action films before CG overtook everything with Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park.

the thing i love about the alien films, is each film is it's own animal. none of them are really alike aside from ripley and the aliens.

i love alien 3. i think its a great film.maybe not oscar caliber stuff but still a solid flick. that movie has style and atmosphere to spare.

Alien 3 is one weird film. Space British.

It was stuck in development hell for so long I kind of give it a pass, but I'd like it anyway if I didn't know that, obviously doesn't hold a candle to the first two, but a hell of a lot better than resurrection.....Don't even get me started on that

@mercutio123:

yeah,ressurection is just kinda...i dunno. i think alien 3 is a great film with a few flaws but ressurection is just.. awful. they have all the parts there for a solid film. it just, fell apart.

Alien3 has a place in my heart, but after multiple viewings (including the longer studio cut) I can't say it's a good movie. The dialogue is borderline awful, particularly in the second half when it devolves into a swear-fest. The action is incomprehensible as the movie moves on, too. Hey, the alien just ate a bald British guy! Which one? Who knows, they're all poorly fleshed out anyway and the only interesting guy besides Dutton gets killed halfway thru.

Still, like a said, there's a strange attraction there. Weaver is excellent and the overall grim tone makes the movie stand out. Costumes, special effects all work pretty well together, and the industrial/prison setting feels unique. It's a weird movie and ultimately not a great one, but at least it's an interesting failure.

Resurrection, meanwhile, is godawful w/ no redeeming qualities. Would love to see Cameron go back and make a real sequel to pt. 4 (Weaver has always said she'd be on board w/ a good script) and i think fans would jump at it, like they probably will for Prometheus.

@DoctorDanger99: The aliens just had no menace in 4, like the way they were kept in cages mad them seem so trivial, and they were killed off too easily

I bought the Blu-Ray set. Is Alien Resurrection good...at all?

@birdflu777:

kind of. the actors are interesting to watch. its one of those so awful it's fun to watch kind of things. just watching it and enjoying the shit that it is.

@birdflu777 said:

I bought the Blu-Ray set. Is Alien Resurrection good...at all?

No. It feels incredibly stupid next to the other movies.

Terrible

@birdflu777: Well I don't think it's a good movie, but you should see it just to see what everyone is talking about when they mention that movie. And I honestly believe it wouldn't have been recieved so badly if it didn't have the Alien franchise attachment. If it would of have been a pretty high-budget sci-fi movie with weird creatures, a very French direction and Ron Pearlman, I think more people would have been on board. I could do without Winona Ryder and Wormtongue though. I haven't watched it ages myself, but having just seen the Nostalgia Critic review, I ordered the Blu-Ray and will see how it holds up to how I remember it.

I liked the workprint version of Alien 3 better than the theatrical one. Felt more fleshed out. I also appreciated the theory of bringing it back to horror and a single Alien after Aliens, but as others have pointed out, too many cooks in the pot.

Also much better than the wooden planet idea they originally had. Yeah. A planet made out of wood. Look it up.

Alien 4 is a travesty best forgotten.

Doesn't Alien 4 have Ripley fucking an Alien queen?

@L44 said:

Not nearly as bad as everyone says it is.

Pretty much that. What's quite remarkable is that it had a troubled production which should by all rights have made something only marginally coherent.

Yeah, the alien looks like shit, there are some plot holes, there's some odd pacing, etc., but look at it this way: It was from a first-time movie director who had to organize all of the shit that everyone else had left behind. Put under those circumstances, what should have been a turd came out as a fairly decent monster movie.

Resurrection, however, isn't very good at all. It had one good twist - Call is a robot - that it did almost nothing with, everything else about the movie is a turd.

Oh shit, Brad Dourif is in Alien Resurrection. Everything that guy does is gold. "Gracious me. Was I raving? Please forgive me. I'm mad."

@birdflu777: There's some amusing ridiculousness in Resurrection but it's by no means a great movie. Alien 3 on the other hand? knowing what we know now about it's troubled production and how parts that were hacked out have been added back in over the years it's hard to convey how deeply flawed and lacking the original theatrical release was but personally I think that as time has passed it's made itself fit in the series quite well.

I hated the camera work in the first half. All these annoying low shots. And the bad dialog and boring characters.

.....but Alien: Resurrection, you guys. Remember that?

Alien 3 is an okay movie actually. Solid acting and good atmosphere.

Love the story, love the atmosphere of it, love the prisoner planet vibe, and the director's cut is especially good. The ONLY bad thing about the film really, is the CG is shit today and doesn't hold up. That's about it. 

It's awful but not as bad as Alien Resurrection or the second AVP movie. I'd say it's about as good as the first AVP which is not high praise. I admit I am one of those people who holds a grudge against it for killing off Newt and Hicks without just cause. I remember the excuse at the time was because the director wanted to return to the horror aspect created by the original Ridley Scott movie. The film doesn't have any of the originals tension though. I found many of Ripley's actions to be implausible and whose only purpose is to further the plot along. I don't like it but if I had to chose between watching it and AR or AVP2, I'd pick it. Of course, that like saying if I could choose between getting hit in the head, gut or balls, I'd choose gut. Either way it's going to be painful.

I think one of the reasons I do hold a grudge is because I read the Dark Horse comic Alien Earth War back in the early 90's. It was the sequel to Aliens at the time and starred Newt and Hicks. After Alien 3 came out, the reprints of the comic mini-series were changed and the characters of Newt and Hicks were renamed something else. There's another reason for my enmity, I guess. They took a good book and fucked it up just to jive with the crap movie.

i like it, its my second favourite after Aliens, just out of curiosity are the people hating on it American? i can imagine a lot of hard british accents being a thing that would put you off a film that has parts that are kind of a mess.

i would love someone to make a perfect cut of this film, i love some of the additions from the directors cut (the stuff with Gollik, the slower build up at the start and the alien coming out of Ripley at the end) but i hate the fact they replace some scenes with footage they didn't end up using in the theatrical cut (the cow bit is bullshit, and i like the way they cut the scenes of the Dog chestburster with the "funeral" scene, probably one of the most striking scenes to me in the entire series, to change that for the directors cut is criminal) but for now ill just have to keep watching the cuts separately and imagine them together :-(

@Barsh said:

I've yet to find anyone who agrees with me, but it fights for my top spot with the first one.

Seriously? It's pretty bad......................

@StingerMK2 said:

i like it, its my second favourite after Aliens, just out of curiosity are the people hating on it American? i can imagine a lot of hard british accents being a thing that would put you off a film that has parts that are kind of a mess.

i would love someone to make a perfect cut of this film, i love some of the additions from the directors cut (the stuff with Gollik, the slower build up at the start and the alien coming out of Ripley at the end) but i hate the fact they replace some scenes with footage they didn't end up using in the theatrical cut (the cow bit is bullshit, and i like the way they cut the scenes of the Dog chestburster with the "funeral" scene, probably one of the most striking scenes to me in the entire series, to change that for the directors cut is criminal) but for now ill just have to keep watching the cuts separately and imagine them together :-(

Two things:

1) I have never met an American who has an issue with British accents, and since I'm American I can safely say that I've met a lot of them. No, this has nothing to do with disliking Alien 3

2) You say this is your second favorite Alien movie. Certainly you're entitled to your opinion, and certainly Alien 3 isn't that horrible, but... are you certain you've seen the masterful original movie?

Alien 3 is awful. It's boring, very boring, and it's pretty much just a rehash of Alien, but a much poorer quality. Resurrection isn't exactly great, but it's better than 3.

I thought it was good enough.

Hated it the first time being a giant aliens fan but grew to love it. I think they should have dummed Ripley after the second and followed the stories that the books told, much cooler. Same for AvP the books though kind of cheesy where cool, movies not so much.

It's bad, not as bad as Resurrection, but still not good. The only thing I liked was the very ending where the log replays what Ripley said at the end of Alien, and Ripley bringing back Bishop. Only Alien and Aliens are what I like to consider canon when it comes to the films out (here in the U.S.), but I really want to see Prometheus.

I have Alien Anthology, it's fantastic, but I don't think I will ever watch Alien 3 or Alien: Resurrection again, or at least not intend to do so by myself. I'll only do it if someone else wants to see it, since they haven't done so before, even then I'll hesitate, I don't like them at all really. Just a few days ago I watched both Alien and Aliens with commentary all the way through, I liked that a lot. It also explains the should-be-obvious stuff that no one seemed to think about in Aliens, and I hear complaining over.

Like how the Aliens are smarter than the one in the first film, it's because they've been out longer, and the one in the first was just born, so it wasn't as experienced. Oh, and another thing that I kind of liked, was the the prison setting somewhat reminded me of Chronicles of Riddick's, Butcher Bay, but again, only somewhat. As for Resurrection, I didn't like any of it at all. I also really despise the ending.

it's very boring, has a mess of a script and issues abound. but I still find Alien 3 somewhat endearing, it has a weird vibe that no other film has touched for me.

The Alien franchise is a straight downward ramp imo.

It's easy to rank the Alien movies.

1, 2, 3, 4.

@birdflu777: I still haven't watched any of my blu-rays yet. Resurrection is quite a weird film, It has that weird Jeunet-ness to it. It's also quite amusing in places. It has a lot of good things going for it, like its visuals, but it isn't even in the same league as the first three... Yeah, including Alien 3

It is also the most violent of the four, insanely violent at times and features one of the best deaths in a movie very near the end. The DVD I own of it is brilliant it has the words "from the director of Amelie" on the cover

I love Alien 3 just as much as the first one. Can't really stand Aliens at this point, it has some good action but everything else about it is absolutely horrible. I was so happy when they killed Newt in the beginning of 3.

Also, Alien 3 had no CG in it, they used a puppet for the full shots of the alien and matted them in.

Alien Resurrection is pretty, pretty, pretty bad, but has the best soundtrack of the series.

Better than Prometheus.

I think the concept of the prison was really cool. However the movie was almost destined to be a disappointment following two of the best sci-fi films ever. At least it wasn't Resurrection, that was awful.

Alien 3 is enjoyable and that's all a movie needs to be.

@believer258 said:

@StingerMK2 said:

i like it, its my second favourite after Aliens, just out of curiosity are the people hating on it American? i can imagine a lot of hard british accents being a thing that would put you off a film that has parts that are kind of a mess.

i would love someone to make a perfect cut of this film, i love some of the additions from the directors cut (the stuff with Gollik, the slower build up at the start and the alien coming out of Ripley at the end) but i hate the fact they replace some scenes with footage they didn't end up using in the theatrical cut (the cow bit is bullshit, and i like the way they cut the scenes of the Dog chestburster with the "funeral" scene, probably one of the most striking scenes to me in the entire series, to change that for the directors cut is criminal) but for now ill just have to keep watching the cuts separately and imagine them together :-(

Two things:

1) I have never met an American who has an issue with British accents, and since I'm American I can safely say that I've met a lot of them. No, this has nothing to do with disliking Alien 3

2) You say this is your second favorite Alien movie. Certainly you're entitled to your opinion, and certainly Alien 3 isn't that horrible, but... are you certain you've seen the masterful original movie?

i wont address my original point, it was just me being ignorant, but...

yes, of course i'v seen the original, very recently actually, its a great film. i just prefer Alien 3, it has a more interesting plot, i originally saw all 3 films when i was about 9 or 10 in the early 90's, and i don't think the original holds up to being rewatched as many times as i have over the years, after knowing where all the alien action is going to be the only really interesting part of the film is the stuff with Ash. the only thing i hate about 3 is the CG, but i can see it was a poorly implemented necessary evil, i think i actually prefer the human drama in the series mostly to do with the company trying to weaponise the aliens, to the actual horror of the aliens slowly picking people off throughout the film,

I watched Resurrection. It was alright, nothing too special but not really awful. Plus we got a little bit of the Chucky voice from Brad Dourif.