Is Alien 3 worth watching?

I would recommend you watch the making of documentary of Alien 3.

@nnickers: Not plot synopses. I just looked at some reviews. Unfortunately, it's hard to avoid some spoilers for movies this old, but reading and watching are different experiences. It's ultimately up to how the material is handled.

Thanks for all the replies and votes, guys! Didn't expect this much of a reponse :o

All the stuff people are saying about it screwing with Aliens kind of worries me since that was definitely my favorite out of the 2, but I think I'll go ahead and watch it, probably sometime next week. I can always throw it in the non-canon pile if I wind up hating it.

Thanks again! :D

Anyone else see Alien Covenant? I saw it on Friday and seriously loved it

It's a pretty decent movie. Not my all time fav, but if you have some spare time it's worth a watch.

Aliens 3 is not nearly as good as Alien or Aliens. The way they deal with Newt and that other guy from Aliens is pretty lame for one HOWEVER, it still is worth seeing. It does some good stuff in its own way and worth seeing, but yeah totally not as good as the first two, and has a lot more weaknesses. Actually prob one of the most famous pictures from the film I see when people talk about Alien/Aliens is actually from Alien 3 I think [Or am I mistaken?] The one from your first post. The only big crime Alien 3 commits is once again was how Newt and the guy[Was it Hicks?] was handled.

Alien 4 man though that is one of those sit down and make your own MST3K commentary track over that one. The new Ripley clone I think actually had a lot of potential, but man they made Sigourney Weaver say some of the most stupid lines I can imagine that undercuts a lot of what potential she had. There are some lines in that which are just SO bad she has to say. I liked a few parts about the aliens working together in that but that was about it. I think Alien 4 is totally worth watching though. You have already seen the others and it is fun to watch for the first time to be shocked at how they could have messed it up that bad.

Prometheus I actually really enjoyed. It wasn't perfect, but I think it added a lot to the franchise, and left me wanting to see more of what they would do.

I just saw Covenant in the theatre a day or two ago, and I enjoyed it a lot too. It took the ending of Prometheus in a pretty good way which I liked, but had some things it could have done better plotwise. My main complaint about Covenant was the crew. Other than the Michael Fassbender [sp?] roles the crew was mostly forgettable to the point I couldn't really tell who was actually dying a fair bit of the time. Like Alien/Aliens/Prometheus yeah I never really got on a name bases with most of the characters, but they gave me enough that I cared for them [as far as you can in an action movie where you know all but one is gonna die] and their personalities were interesting and ya felt more tension because you kinda rooted for them to win and live. Covenant as far as I remember there was the religious guy and his wife [that could have been more interesting but wasn't much], Cowboy hat guy, and short hair main girl [that is about all I even remember about her and she was the main lady, and I saw this like yesterday].

Heck they had one guy with a big cigar, and that could have been great in this space truckin' world but I wasn't even ever able to figure out at what point he got killed [but he did].

Also, and maybe this is because of what I said about the crew, the alien scenes never really felt that intense in any way to me in Covenant. But to be honest....The aliens were NOT the villains of Covenant really, or the main one anyway, David was, and he I thought did a great job as a villain. Still would have liked a bit more "Alien" tension in it though

Fassbender was good though and there were some good plot elements even if I wish it would have answered a couple questions in Prometheus that just were not bothered with here.

But yeah, Alien/Aliens, total classics in their own way. Alien 3 an enjoyable movie that won't hold up to the previous, but interesting and enjoyable in its own right.

Well, I watched it.

It was ok, I guess?

This felt like a different franchise to me. Ripley felt completely different (Just freaking tell them there's a monster after you, Ripley! And what about your current situation makes you wanna sleep with this random doctor?), the new characters were dumb as bricks, every single death was a telegraphed horror movie one, there were several continuity errors (How did the facehugger lay 2 eggs? Wasn't it one and done in the first Alien? How did it get on the ship in the first place? The Queen left her eggs behind, right?) and some of the writing was just plain stupid (Why did that one prisoner suddenly believe the xenomorph was some kind of vengeful god? That wasn't even hinted at. He knew it was a monster before. And that first group death, ugh. There's a door like a foot away! Don't stop to stare at the body! Freaking run!!!!).

Also you would think Ripley of all people would realize the xenomorph could just freaking crawl out of the piston trap. Pretty big hole in your plan there.

And what the heck was with that attempted rape scene? Out of place rock music coupled with a dude corny enough to strap on goggles before doing the deed, complete with him randomly screaming at the sky? Is this still an Alien film? 0_o

Overall, it just felt like a standard dumb horror movie. That's all well and good for people who are horror fans, but the reason the first Alien and its sequel stuck out to me was because they weren't just some stupid horror films. They had brains, they had heart, they had real suspense.

And yet, I don't hate it, because there are places where I see what they were going for. The scenes with Ripley trying to goad the Alien and later Black Preacher Guy (can't remember his name) into killing her were nice, and the ending complete with the callback to the original was the best part of the whole film.

So yeah, it was just ok. I'm glad I watched it to see for myself, but this ain't something I'd ever consider canon. Thanks again for all the feedback!

@nicksmi56: All right! That seems to be what most people walk away thinking about Alien 3. Alien Resurrection is best avoided, unless you think you can laugh at it and/or you just want a dumb action movie.

The ending is what makes that whole movie work for me, it was the perfect way to wrap of that series -- which of course was made pointless by Alien Resurrection, but whatever. Ripley's ultimate fear is not that she'll be killed by the xenomorph, it's that they might eventually spread to Earth and wipe out humanity. It's the reason why she's reluctant to tell anyone about the alien for a while, because she knows the company will just arrive and try to take it. And it's what makes her decision at the end so powerful to take her own life to prevent another queen from birthing.

As to Ripley acting out of character, I think it can be explained by the fact that she's basically drowning in grief over the loss of Newt and Hicks. The beginning of Alien 3 is the first time she is truly alone -- even in the first movie, she had that cat with her in the end. The alien has taken everything from her, and she meets Charles Dance (giving an incredible performance), and she desperately needs to make some kind of human connection with someone. I completely buy that she would sleep with him in that situation.

I like Alien 3 a lot. It's gorgeous to look at, it contains great performances (including Lance Henrickson who absolutely kills it in his appearance at the end), and it acts as a fitting conclusion to the story. But I can understand if you don't want to consider it canon, hell I'm trying my best to forget that Prometheus exists, let alone Alien Covenant.

I'll hand it over to Jim:

I found it slow and pretentious. Resurrection at least wasn't (as) boring. But I wouldn't add either of them to my collection.

James Cameron wasn't happy with them killing off his characters either. It was a disservice. That story was a dead end. Ripley and the marines killed them all. I know how important Weaver was to the franchise financially at that time and that it was impossible not to bring her back in the third movie. But I don't think it was necessary to kill off her only family (again) and throw her into another nightmare immediately after being frozen. It doesn't make any sense for her to age thirteen years from Alien to Alien 3 when she's been frozen between the three movies (and then to have her clone age another few years in Resurrection). I would have set Alien 3 six to ten years later and have it build off the mystery in the first movie. It would have been 63 to 67 years since the Nostromo found the crashed alien ship. Mankind would no doubt have ventured far deeper into that sector of space and possibly discovered more of their dead civilization. The movie could have started with an exploratory drone eyeing an unknown planet from space. The drone is not from Weyland-Yutani. Maybe a private organization funded by a competitor. Perhaps Newt, now almost in her twenties, is one of the researchers, or an assistant, stationed in the sector. Ripley has raised her as well as she could, but she is still troubled about what happened and by the loss of her family. She wants to make sure there are none of them left. Her boss keeps her because of the information she has provided of the organism and the crashed ship she saw on LV-426. Maybe he acts as some kind of manipulative father figure. Maybe it's he who attracted her to the idea originally, suggesting that facing whatever it is that's there might end her nightmares. To give plausibility to their search, the film could inform through their dialogue that artifacts have been found by colonists and miners on nearby worlds, perhaps a few light years from LV-426. Anyway, what the drone has found appears to be an ancient outpost, but it's difficult to tell through the atmosphere of the planet. Newt joins a manned expedition with her boss. Once they get there, we see dead "engineers" and their experiments, only they do not resemble man and aren't their creators. The tricky part is now placing Ripley in the story. This was always tricky, and it's one of the reasons Alien 3 opened by undoing much of Aliens. Maybe the helmsman informs the team down on the planet of an approaching, unidentified ship; and in the second act of the film, after all has gone to hell and the team has to deal with the new aliens, along with a revived engineer who has shot down the two ships with a supergun, the team runs into Ripley and her gang of... smugglers? Bishop is with her, somewhat decrepit looking, but on two feet, repaired. Ripley and Newt's boss have a history and she has been spying on his organization through her contacts. She resents him for using her adopted daughter. Towards the end of the film, Ripley dies and Newt escapes the planet on an engineer ship, with Bishop piloting.

I know there are holes and the character motivations could use some work, but the idea of a sequel that continuous the stories of the previous characters and expands on the civilization seen in the original Alien is more appealing to me than what we got in Alien 3.