Alien 3 (Collector's Edition)

Rating:
Summary: This film had acid for blood...
Review: And that's not a good thing. The movie wasn't actually all that bad, it was just completely pointless. There was no plot, no horror, and no great advancement in special effects. It added nothing to the franchise other than serving as the first step downhill.

Rating:
Summary: An Amazing Production, Years Ahead Of It's Time.
Review: Alien3 was, at the time of it's release, trashed and defiled by many critics and audiences. This is for many reasons that I shall point out.

- ALIENS made everyone think of ALIEN differently, and people still, to this day, don't see how poor ALIENS actually is, and how different ALIEN is. This movie came out and was nothing like ALIENS (David Fincher decided that he didn't want to suck up to the critics), thus ruining everyone's expectations.

- The film looks at christianity negatively, appealing an Athiest ideology.

- A dog gets savagely killed (death of animals isn't treated to well in Hollywood unless it's slow, graceful, the animals can talk, and they're evil.)

- The lead character's a woman who shaved her head and doesn't wear make-up.

There's no cheesey Hollywood character development, and there's no fluffy, wonderful characters that you can get attached to, just real people (despite what the middle-class may think real people are like).

- Religious symbolism suggests that Ripley's the Christ, but she's a woman (female Christs are loathed by Hollywood).

- It's dark, gloomy and horrible. An amazingly constructed atmosphere, but it's not cute and cuddly, so people turn sour to it.

But, aside from the negative commentary, this movie is utterly amazing. It's moody, atmospheric, symbolic, and a very good watch. It's an all time clinical achievement and I really suggest that you buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Alien 3 - perfect as-is
Review: I don't know what any of you are talking about. This movie was awesome. I saw it in the theater when it first came out, and I was floored. Fighting an alien in a prison facility with NO WEAPONS makes things much more interesting. Having the alien emerge from a dog not a human again makes things more interesting, as it moves differently. This movie was so different from the others -- and that's a GOOD thing.

BTW, the special edition SUCKS. Maybe you morons would do better keeping your mouths shut. All you did is give them an excuse to charge $20 instead of $15. Some of you complained that the original version didn't make sense. Well if you couldn't figure it out, you sohuldn't be writing a review in the first place. As it turns out, the special edition INTRODUCES plot gaps. For example -- who or what is that guy who eventually gets diced by the fan talking to when he says "Spikey, hey Spikey?" In the original, Spikey is the dog. In the special edition, there is no dog.

Oh yeah, you idiots also weren't content with the character development, so they gave us 30 extra minutes of utterly corny, useless dialogue, some of which needed to be subtitled because of poor audio.

So listen people, if you're thinking of buying it, save a few bucks and get the original without the special edition.

Rating:
Summary: An unfairly maligned film
Review: "Alien 3" has been attacked since it came out in 1992 for its downbeat mood and bleak plot twists. When I saw it in the theater I wasn't overwhelmed by it, but gave it 3 stars. Since then the film has grown in my estimation.
I think the main reason many, if not most "Alien" fans hate this movie is that they are really "Aliens" fans; that is, fans of the second film, not the series as a whole. They went to the theater in 1992 looking for more of the same stuff they saw in "Aliens": more and bigger guns, even more Aliens, a bigger Alien infestation (Earth for example). They didn't want a new film, just a rerun of the last one. But they were biterly disappointed. Where "Aliens" is an action movie, "Alien 3" is a mood piece. Where "Aliens" had wall to wall blazing action, "Alien 3" was mostly one grim plot development after another, with the humans mostly helpless against the Alien threat. And where "Aliens" ended on an optimistic note, "Alien 3" ended with the death of the main character from the previous movies. Pretty big changes!
I myself was happy to see something new, instead of just a tired rehash. Why should "Alien 3" have just been an "Aliens" clone? Sure, I loved "Aliens" too, but it's not the last word in sci-fi. When judged on its own merits, "Alien 3" is a very good film. Its mood is a return to that of the first film, with basically helpless characters just struggling to survive. The religious spin of the story makes it unique, with the themes of sacrifice and redemption running through the whole movie.
A common complaint is that no one in the movie besides Ripley is sympathetic since they are all convicted violent criminals or stupid, arrogant Company employees. But this complaint doesn't hold up. Many of the convicts end up showing real selflessness in their actions to destroy the Alien, illustrating the film's sacrifice/redemption theme. This is particularly true in the Special Edition of the film on this DVD, where one of the convicts who tried to rape Ripley deliberately sacrifices himself to trap the Alien in the vault. And Aaron, the slow-witted Company man, sees the company's duplicity by the movie's end and tries to help Ripley. This is character development, folks. If you want cartoon characters, see a Superman movie.
I highly recommend this DVD. The interface is superb, the commentary and special features are informative, but best of all, it containd the Special Edition of the film mentioned earlier. This is the 1991 first cut of "Alien 3" and is superior to the theatrical version, in my opinion, with much more character development. It makes a 3 star film into a 4 star one.
As for the complaints about how an Alien egg got on board the Sulaco, the answer is the Alien Queen, of course. Just because she lost her egg sac doesn't mean she couldn't lay eggs at all without it. Not mentioned in either version of the film is that early on in script development, the queen embryo-carrying facehugger is a "super facehugger" that contains both a Queen embryo and a Warrior to guard her; it has the unque ability to impregnate two hosts before dying. The concept was left unexplained in the final filmed version(s), but goes far to clearing up the plot holes.
Watch the film with an open mind and enjoy an unfashionably bleak sci-fi experience.