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Written by: Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett (based on characters by), Vincent Ward (story by), David Giler & Walter Hill and
Larry Ferguson (screenplay by)
Directed by: David Fincher
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, Holt McCallany, Lance Henriksen, Pete Postlethwaite
Rated: R
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Plot
Returning from LV-426, Ellen Ripley crash-lands on the maximum-security prison Fiorina 161, where she discovers that she has unwittingly brought along an unwelcome visitor.
Verdict
This is an interesting idea that never fully develops. It's a bleak world, a prison planet after all, and having to fight an alien without weapons is creative. The problem is that this never develops enough tension. The alien should have torn through this installation much quicker. The bait and trap plan is mired by no sense of space. Previous movies succeeded by creating a sense of claustrophobia and impending harm. Despite the danger, we never really know how close to the edge for anyone is.
It depends.
Review
This was Fincher's directorial debut after commercials and music videos, though he later disowned it claiming studio interference led to a much different film than what he envisioned. Fincher's vision was a sprawling space epic. He followed this with Se7en (1995), The Game (1997), and Fight Club (1999).
This starts immediately after Aliens (1986), when Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) escaped the alien hive. Somehow a face hugger made it onto the ship, causing a fire that in turn sends escape pods to the nearby prison planet, Fury 161. Hicks and Newt don't make it. Ripley is the only survivor, and this is a planet of males only. She might be disruptive.
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| Sigourney Weaver plays Ellen Ripley |
Ripley's first concern is determining what killed Hicks and Newt. She's hesitant to state the reason why, but we know. Telling anyone on this planet would only create panic, but it's easy to predict what's going to happen. We soon see an alien. When everyone else will figure it out is the question.
After a few people die, they know something is up, but they don't want to believe Ripley. Her story is fantastical. Soon they can't deny it, but the alien doesn't attack Ripley. It had the opportunity, and we've never seen an alien shy away from a kill. With no weapons, they're forced to create a trap and lure the alien into it.
There's very little tension for an Alien movie. There's the human threat against Ripley, which the movie never quite captures other than one ham-fisted scene. The alien is present, but what is it doing? I don't know why the alien gives them so much time to prepare. Is it just waiting for when the script says it should appear? While they manage to trap it, a deranged inmate frees it. That's quite convenient for the plot but terrible for the characters.
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| Sigourney Weaver plays Ellen Ripley |
I wanted this to feel claustrophobic. They're trapped with an alien, and while this planet is bigger than a ship, the movie lacks those small, dark moments. Ripley determines why the alien didn't kill her before. Confidant it won't harm her, she begins hunting it.
I don't like the alien point-of-view shots. It robs the creature of mystique. We have these guys running all over the place, but each of them appears to be in the same corridor. They obviously aren't, but it's a muddled mess as we never now how close the alien is to attacking anyone. They plan to trap it, but the specifics remain unclear, and we can't figure out what's going on with no sense of space. A great concept in the second movie were the proximity alerts. It drove tension as we knew when the aliens were getting closer. That or a similar concept would have helped the mood tremendously.
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| Title Card |
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