What would you expect? A third Alien. I won't disappoint you. The Third Alien was made in 1992. It has two versions. The first was in theaters when it opened and the second is on DVD/Blu-ray. Each has its pros and cons, but unfortunately David Fincher, who made this film, couldn't resist the producer's pressures and preferred to walk away, so he didn't supervise the final cut and the extended version, which is on digital media, was newly edited by the producers from the director's notes.
I didn't see the 3rd installment in theaters. I watched the director's cut this weekend as part of an Alien history rerun. I liked it. The story is admittedly full of religion. But this faith helps the prisoners survive on a lonely planet where it is the only distraction.
The escape pod from the previous episode fell on this planet full of prisoners. With Ripley, Newt, Bishop, and Private Hicks left over from her protection unit. Unfortunately, only Ripley survives and puts a line through the budget for the prisoners who live only for the faith. The fact that she's a woman is survivable, after all. But the fact that the Alien Egg and the newly hatched Facehugger survived in the escape pod in the undercarriage, unfortunately the prisoners won't survive right away. Not even mentally, let alone physically.
The alien doesn't hatch from a human sacrifice, but takes a cow/dog (depending on the cinematic/expanded version) for its evolution and evolves into a new Alien, faster, more action-packed and, most importantly, smarter.
They gradually kill the planet's people. We learn some details about each of the prisoners/guards before they die, and Ripley also learns that since her last encounter with the Queen, she too is the mother of a Facehugger, this time a "Queen". The alien must be destroyed, burned, killed, and that doesn't come easily when the prison planet has only limited options.
I'm not surprised David Fincher walked away from the film towards the end. The script was constantly being reworked, the producers were constantly advising him, and so in the context of a film that neither the writers nor the producers knew how to handle, the third Alien is a good film. The extended version is much better and clears up a lot of the unfinished business from the theatrical version. So you see the birth of an Alien from a cow instead of a dog, and the members of the prison planet manage to catch and lock up the Alien even at the cost of sacrifice.
Although the quality of Alien 3 falls sadly short of the first two films, it's still one that a fan of space monsters and assassins should have in their collection, considering the first two. It's not such a bad sequel that it's bricked the franchise.
Photos: Blu-ray of Alien ³ & 1992 20th Century Fox
Original release of this article May 18, 2020 – Kritiky.cz
