57 years after the events of the first film, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is found and awakened from hyper sleep to discover that a terraforming colony has been set up on LV-426, the planet wherein she and her fellow crew of the mining cargo spaceship Nostromo first encountered the titular aliens. When Earth-based communications loses contact with LV-426, a band of marines are sent to investigate, taking Ripley and a representative from the company that financed the colony, Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) along for the ride. For the difficult job of following up Ridley Scott's excellent Alien, director James Cameron decided to go a completely different route--to make a fast moving, slightly tongue-in-cheek, boisterous action extravaganza. Remarkably, he was able to do that while still maintaining a stylistic and literary continuity that melds Aliens seamlessly with the first film.
Ripley is much more fully developed in this film, although unfortunately, some of the most significant scenes were deleted from the theatrical release (if at all possible, watch the 2-hour and 37-minute director's cut instead). Cameron fashioned Aliens into a grand arc where Ripley's actions at the end of the film have much more meaning as she's not only fighting monsters, but also fighting to retain a semblance of something she lost due to her 57-year hyper sleep. As in the first film, she is still the most intelligent, courageous and resourceful member of the crew, but she has much more colorful company. We also get a cigar-chomping Sergeant, a crazy, butch Private, and a complex, pensive Corporal as main characters, and a mysterious, bright young girl (played in a terrific performance by Carrie Henn). Much of the center section of the film hinges on the interrelationships of these characters, despite the action trappings going on around them. Cameron carries over the crypt/labyrinth motif of the first film, and adds a metaphorical descent into the bowels of hell in the climax. The action throughout is suspenseful.
Throughout all of the varied action sequences, as well as the important early scenes of colonists on LV-426, Cameron is able to clearly convey the logistics of very complex sets, so that viewers remain on the edges of their seats. Part of what makes the monsters so effective is that we're not told too much about them. We only get glimpses into their physiology's, their behavioral patterns and their intelligence. Cameron gives us just enough to become wrapped up in the film, but not so much that we become overly familiar with the aliens, or start to question the logic behind the film.
He also smartly carries over some devices from the first film that were abandoned to an extent, such as the acidic blood of the aliens, and he supplies answers to the few questions that the first film raised, such as why the blood doesn't corrode instruments and objects when a dead alien is examined. Aliens is yet another example of a sequel that is just as good as an original film in a series. There are so many more brilliant aspects to this film there simply isn't enough room or time to type them all here, it's my favorite film of all time and probably always will be. The Director's Cut version is just awesome, and as James Cameron says himself before the movie starts on the Director's Cut version - "It's 40 miles of bad road and the ride we intended you to take." Our rating - A perfect 10 out of 10.
Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is unintentionally crash-landed on Fury 161, a remote, maximum-security prison planet. The prison, which was also a work camp in the mining industry, has been reduced to a bare-bones inmate population and staff, with the inmates--murderers, rapists and such--consisting primarily of those who have converted to their own brand of religious sect. No one at the prison has seen a woman in years, and they have never seen what Ripley has accidentally brought with her to the facility--a hostile alien, intent on killing them all. This may be the most "difficult" film of the Alien franchise. Although it has some stylistic elements from the first two films--everything from claustrophobic pursuits down dark, crypt-like corridors to the feeling (if not accoutrements) of big action blow-outs--director David Fincher has created the Bleak House of the series. In a personification of the films, Alien 3 covers the later adolescent years, when the series has decided to become a nihilist and write doom-laden poetry.
And that is the deciding factor regarding whether one is likely to enjoy this film or not. Fincher has abandoned the breakneck pacing of the second, James Cameron-helmed film, and returned to a slow, complex dramatic pacing more akin to Ridley Scott's first Alien. Alien 3 trades traditional horror material (the first film could be seen as an almost Gothic haunted house story), gunfights and explosions for a constant dark, dingy atmosphere, both literally and figuratively in terms of the characters and their relationships. The film is imbued with brown tones, with a bluish-gray for contrast. Everything and everyone is dirty, beat-up, bruised and bloody. There is threatening machinery everywhere you look and infestations of overgrown lice. Imagine Clive Barker supervising the set design of a bloated subway system merging with the inside of an Egyptian pyramid, and you get the idea. (That is a more literal analogy than you may think--the climax could easily be seen as basically a Mummy film set in Egypt due to the environment and the structure of the action.) Alex Thomson's consistently remarkable cinematography is also worth noting in contributing to the delicious, gloomy atmosphere of the film. I love that atmosphere, and the regularly graphic grimness of this film (especially in the director's cut, or "special edition", which you should be sure to watch rather than the theatrical release), but it may be difficult for some viewers to take. Add that Fincher has made the film primarily about the intricate relationships of a relatively large cast of prisoners and their trying to deal with the sudden presence of a woman in their midst, and you lose another gaggle of viewers, but again, some of us still love it. Of course, there is alien-fighting stuff here, but we're back down to a single alien, and our heroes have to fight it with whatever is at hand, including weapons like axes and the machinery at the prison. The villain in Alien 3 is just as much "man against himself" as it is "man against monster".
Fincher also wisely continued the plot thread from Aliens about Ripley's daughter, and her motivation towards the end of that film based on the loss of her daughter, in conjunction with the adoption of a functional surrogate. That aspect continues to supply the motivation for her actions in this film, where she undergoes a number of crises, and where in the end, she becomes a much more mythical figure. A lot of people dislike both the ending of this film and the fact that two primary characters are killed off without so much as a peep in the beginning, but it's important to remember that the underlying theme is nihilism, and the remote possibility of overcoming it through sacrifice--for example, with the prisoners finding a highly questionable religion, complete with "celibacy", with the hardships experienced by Clemens and his subsequent decisions, and with the final acts of redemption at the climax of the film. In that context, the plot points that tend to be disliked do not only make sense, they're absolutely necessary if we're not to completely ruin the tenor and subtext of the film.
It is again worth noting the influences that the Alien series has had on other films. A prominent example is the Matrix series, which took power loaders as weapons of war (used in The Matrix Revolutions (2003) from Aliens, and much of the atmosphere, production design, costume design and even some character structure from this film and used it in the early scenes aboard the Nebuchadnezzar in The Matrix (1999), as well as parts of Zion (in The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions). While I can easily see how Alien 3 would not be for all tastes, it is as a gourmet meal to me. It is at least recommended viewing if you are interested in experiencing later films in the series. Our rating - A well deserved 8 out of 10.
