# Why don't (many) people like Alien3? (spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 7, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791 "2003-07-07T16:01:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Short\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Short\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Short_Guy)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/21 "2003-07-08T11:52:05Z")
As someone who didn’t care for _Aliens_, I have to say that _Alien 3_ is definitely my favourite of the four. I wish I could back this up with evidence, but I simply disagree with all of the bad things that are being said about this film, to such an extent that I start to wonder if we’re all talking about the same movie (I know we are, but still). Alien 3 was a departure from James Cameron’s testosterone-driven, brainless shoot-em-up video game adaptation and a (welcome) return to the space-thriller of the first film, but with an even darker, grittier, and a lot more low-tech atmosphere. A lot of people might call this a ‘pretentious art flick’, but it _works_. Call me biased towards Fincher for making _Se7en_ and against Cameron for making _Titanic_, but there you have it. ---
**Author:** ![godzillatemple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@godzillatemple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godzillatemple)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/22 "2003-07-08T12:22:03Z")
**Short Guy** : Well, it’s nice to know that I’m not the _only_ person who liked the movie. Although, to be fair, I also liked _Aliens_. Yes, I was saddened at the deaths of Hicks and Newt from the previous film, but I didn’t let that ruin my enjoyment of the film. Instead, I felt that their seemingly pointless deaths added a new layer of grief to Ripley’s character and provided her with additional motivation throughout the film. I was absolutely stunned when she killed herself at the end, but in the context of the movie it made perfect sense to me. Yes, it was depressing, but who ever said that horror movies need to have uplifting endings? Again, I can certainly see why people might disagree as to whether the film was good or not, in terms of the acting, direction, special effects, cinematography, plot, what have you. What works for me might not work for somebody else, and vice versa. It still seems to me, however, that a lot of people simply refuse to give the movie a fair chance simply because they felt “betrayed” when their favorite characters from the first film were killed off-screen before this film even begun, or the fact that the third movie had to rewrite history a bit (the presence of an egg onboard) in order to set up the plot. As has been shown by the numerous people who keep joking that there was no such film, the problem seems to be a refusal to accept the movie as being good, since that would constitute in your mind a betrayal of all you hold dear in the previous movie. As I said before, people – you just need to get over it and enjoy the movie on its own merits (or not, as the case may be). Barry ---
**Author:** ![kingpengvin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9dc877/32.png) [@kingpengvin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kingpengvin)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/23 "2003-07-08T12:25:47Z")
Yeah I pretty much hated the way Cameron destroyed teh scare factor of the Alien by making sure we got to see as much of the creature as possible. I think Newt and Reese… er sorry Hicks removal from teh equation was necessary. Newt’s character was not going to add anything to the story except be a screaming victim, being nothing but a replacment of the old screaming woman stereotype of the 50s sci fi films… (Oh yeah Cameron already did that). Sure Hicks could have been there to … what take charge, also offer advice to the prisoners? I mean yes, people feel cheated that the two characters died quickly, but seriously, they were pretty much cyphers in Aliens She, the damsel in distress that Ripley needs to save and he the only marine to listen to her and make the others do what she says and maybe show she might actually like men too? Both seemed designed to soften her image (Mom). Why did Ripley need softening? I don’t know ask Camoron. Also at least Alien 3 had a decent dialogue. Many of Aliens lines are pretty hackneyed and cringe inducing. Alien3 also had something Aliens lacked and that was atmosphere. Sure Cameron had a look but not a feel. There really seemed to be no mood except in the first scene the marines enter the station. ---
**Author:** ![godzillatemple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@godzillatemple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godzillatemple)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/24 "2003-07-08T12:31:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by kingpengvin \* > **Also at least Alien 3 had a decent dialogue. Many of Aliens lines are pretty hackneyed and cringe inducing.** Heh. Anybody else catch the bit after the APC crashes where Burke is trying to cheer people up and says something like “hey – why don’t we build a campfire?” But I digress… 😉 Barry ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/25 "2003-07-08T13:28:01Z")
I dislked Aliens 3 on its own merits. Killing off Newt and Hicks was a cheat, but the movie itself consisted of a bunch of sweaty bald guys (except for Ripley who might as well be a sweaty bald guy) running around in corridors and stuff getting picked off by the Alien. Visually dull, poor plot, no dramatic tension … ecch. What a wretched excuse for a movie. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/26 "2003-07-08T14:26:30Z")
For all you yahoos bitching and moaning about “How’d the egg get on the ship? It made no sense!” I say, take your **Aliens** videos/DVDs, pop em in, fast forward threw the credits, crank up the volume, and in that little bit of black after the final credit rolls, listen… You can hear an egg hatching. Cameron went and gave the go-ahead for the sequel right there. So shut up. And how’d it get on board? Simple. An animals survival instincts also spread to protecting its offspring. The Queen was surrounded by eggs (Ripley did not destroy all of them), and she followed Ripley, not necessarily for revenge purposes, but because she knew she needed to get out and following an escaping rat seems like the best way to go. You never get a good look of the queen until she climbs out of the ship, so it’s very possible she could have easily brought two eggs with her on board in that _extra pair of arms_ she had. For all the nitpicking you people are doing, how’d you miss such a simple explaination? Personally, I’m in the camp of people that enjoyed this movie. I didn’t like it much at first for many of the same reasons, but the more I watch it, the more enjoyable it gets and the more I notice. Unlike **Aliens** , which has just turned into background noise for me (except for the final fight…that’s still cool as shit). I originally had an issue with Hicks and Newt dying at the beginnning as well because I liked the characters, but as the movie progressed, I completely forgot about them. The funeral scene was a great bit, and edited well with the birth of the new alien, and fit really well. (As an aside, their deaths weren’t between movies, they were at the beginning of the film. You see the face hugger screw up Newts tube, and start the fire. The computer didn’t eject the unit because of the fire, it ejected them because it noticed the alien infestation, and in order to prevent the spread to the rest of the ship, ejected the capsul. The fire wasn’t the problem, just the reason Newt’s unit failed). I also liked the atmosphere. You do see quite a lot of the alien in the movie, but the setting did a good job of giving it places to hide and sneak around. It was the perfect habitat for the thing. As for the characters, there were plenty of enjoyable guys. It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, so I don’t remember all their names, but you had the Preacher, the dimwitted second in command (What’d they call him? “80” because of his IQ?), and you had the really pessimistic angry guy who happened to be the only survivor. I really would have loved if the next movie used him as a focus instead of using that lame ass cloning plot. Oi. **Godzillatemple** said most of it better than I can, so I’m not going to go much further. Again, it’s all a matter of opinion. I liked the setting, the atmosphere, the dark and dirt, the bald heads, and the concept. I couldn’t imagine being stuck in a place like that with a creature killing indescriminantly and having no way of defending myself outside of a few carving tools and blow torches. Sure, there were a lot of unnamed characters that served as nothing but alien chow, but that was an example of how deadly these things were. The aliens in **Aliens** were terrifying because of their sheer numbers…this was getting back to the roots to show just how deadly and terrifying one of these things is, and I feel they pulled it off very well. And Ripley’s death, though a little sanctimonious, was a nice touch that fit well (especially for a conclusion to Ripley’s adventures…which is EXACTLY what it should have been. Sorry, not all heroes have happy endings). ---
**Author:** ![godzillatemple](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/49beb7/32.png) [@godzillatemple](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/godzillatemple)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/27 "2003-07-08T14:59:43Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Evil Captor_: > **I dislked Aliens 3 on its own merits. Killing off Newt and Hicks was a cheat, but the movie itself consisted of a bunch of sweaty bald guys (except for Ripley who might as well be a sweaty bald guy) running around in corridors and stuff getting picked off by the Alien. Visually dull, poor plot, no dramatic tension … ecch. What a wretched excuse for a movie.** Well, I happen to disagree with you 100% about the plot, the visuals and the tension, but if that’s what you really felt when seeing the movie then I certainly can’t criticize you for not liking it. Of course, a lot of critics thought the original _Alien_ was a schlocky B-movie when it first came out, so to each his own I guess. As an aside, I originally watched the movie totally cold with no idea of what was going to happen. When it was revealed that Ripley had an alien implanted inside her, I was totally pissed off; not because it meant that Ripley would die, mind you, but because I “knew” that the filmmakers would never kill off the main character and would therefore have to cheat their way out of Ripley’s seemingly inevitable fate (“And with a mighty leap, Jack was free”). Imagine my surprise, then, when Ripley actually _did_ die at the end! I was shocked and saddened that she died, of course, but I was also deeply relieved and satisfied that the filmmakers remained consistent to the rest of the film and didn’t weasel their way out of the setup in order to have a happy ending. As I said in a different thread, I see the entire Alien saga as a tragedy with Ripley as the protagonist who has a fatal flaw, and tragedies just don’t have happy endings, sorry. As a further aside, I have to wonder what people who hated _Alien3_ think about the new _Terminator_ flick (assuming they’ve seen it). I mean, this is another case where a new director took over a franchise previously owned by Cameron, and did some nasty things to the previous movie, to wit: - Sarah Connor, the consummate survivor from the first two films, dies of leukemia between the second movie and this one. - The existence of “Skynet” in the third movie is not consistent with the events shown in the previous movie. - The whole “there is no fate” theme from the first two movies is turned into “you can’t prevent fate.” - The movie ends with the heroes _not_ saving the day. Personally, although I thought T3 was a weaker film than its two predecessors, I still thought it was an enjoyable film on its own merits (aside from a few minor plot holes). Barry ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/28 "2003-07-08T15:22:23Z")
T3 was just okay. It wasn’t terrible, but it was not up to the standards of the previous two. “The Terminator” was a huge sleeper movie and a great thriller; “Terminator 2” was a terrific event movie. T3 had neither going for it. I didn’t like “Alien 3” for the simple reason that the script wasn’t very good. It was inconsistent and didn’t build dramatic tension. The first two Alien movies were well written in that they were THRILLING, albiet in different ways. Alien 3 was not thrilling, as a result of which it was pointless; all the plot, atmosphere and dialogue you can stuff into a movie does not help a thriller that isn’t thrilling. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/29 "2003-07-08T16:24:02Z")
I haven’t watched T3 for just the reasons you outlined. I will wait for DVD. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/30 "2003-07-08T17:14:40Z")
I had no problem at all with the exits of Hicks or Newt. Hicks was pretty messed up at the end of _Aliens_, so it wasn’t like he would have been a major participant in a third movie, anyway. Newt’s schtick was that she survived by hiding from the aliens, and largely existed in the second movie to give Ripley someone to “mother” over, setting up the “Ripley looking after her own vs. alien queen looking after her own” dynamic. Had Newt survived, as mentioned, she would pretty much have been forced to reprise the role of screaming kid which Ripley would _again_ have to defend. And, of course, there’s the issue of a young girl in a prison, which simply would not have gone over well. All things considered, neither character would have worked in a sequel, so why _not_ kill them off? _Aliens_ wasn’t about Hicks or Newt; it was about Ripley. And after _Aliens_, neither character was necessary for Ripley’s story. ---
**Author:** ![unwashed\_brain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/a9adbd/32.png) [@unwashed\_brain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unwashed_brain)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2003, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/31 "2003-07-08T19:25:31Z")
I can’t believe we’ve gotten this far without someone mentioning the similarities between the endings of **T2** (1991) and **Alien3** (1992). That’s the main reason I didn’t like the movie - the “noble sacrifice” ending seemed ripped off from **T2**. ---
**Author:** ![DaPearl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@DaPearl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaPearl)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2003, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/32 "2003-07-09T06:19:23Z")
I thought _Alien 3_ was the second best in the series, after _Alien_ of course. I was more than fine with Hicks and Newt dying. Newt basically replaced the cat in the second movie except was more annnoying and and I didn’t care about the marines at all. I thought there were plenty of good characters, Dillon (Dutton, always cool), the warden, the doctor, the lone survivor. I also hated how _Aliens_ basically reduced the creature to an oversized ant that explodes when shot by a couple of bullets. It was no longer the super monster it was in the first, but the third managed to restore some of the power. Obviously many people aren’t familiar with or dislike existentialism too, otherwise they might’ve appreciated this movie a little more. ---
**Author:** ![Sealemon88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c68b51/32.png) [@Sealemon88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sealemon88)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2003, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791/33 "2003-07-09T20:24:36Z")
Overall, the movie just didn’t have the punch of the previous two films. However, I did like it more than dislike it. I liked the way that Newt and Hicks were wacked at the beginning of the movie. To paraphrase one of the Samuri Cat books (“Not even his adorable cuteness was enough to save him”). Those two deaths made more of a statement of how truly INHUMAN the aliens are than any dialogue could have. I also liked the ending and the fact that Ripley didn’t roll a natural 20 on her save vs Alien Infestations. Most of all, I loved the way the 20th Century Fox theme morphed into a choir singing in a creepy-ass minor key. That was cool as hell. I need to see the movie again. I have the feeling I’d like it more than I did back in the day. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-many-people-like-alien3-spoilers/186791.md?page=1)