Alien Week: Day Two

Let's look at the two 'lesser' instalments of the Alien series- are they all that bad...?
Ridley Scott's Alien franchise has certainly acquired an iconic status the likes of which barely any other science-fiction saga bar perhaps Star Wars has ever hoped to attain. This week, we'll be looking at just whether all of the praise heaped upon this legendary cult series is deserved, with reviews of each and every one of its instalments up to and including the new movie Prometheus. Today, we're rating both the infamous Alien 3 and the final entry in the main series up until now, Alien: Resurrection...
ALIEN 3: Well, if you're going to kill off two of the main characters in a franchise, if there's one thing that Alien 3 teaches us right from the off it's how not to do it. By axing fan favourite protagonists Newt and Hicks from the series in the most undignified way possible during the film's opening sequence, the writers set a dangerous precedent for what quickly descends into an utterly dire third entry. The Xenomorphs are once again back to wreak havoc as one of them stows away in the Sulaco and forces Ripley into a crazed religious prison, leading to an all manner of repetitive confrontations that do their best to rip off the largely more successful Aliens and suffer all the worse for it. Neither does it help that the acting here is downright abysmal- you have to wonder if stars like Sigourney Weaver and Ron Pearlman realised early on that the script was rubbish and so put in the bare minimum amount of effort to earn their hefty paycheck. There are a few fear-inducing sequences of claustraphobia and tension that stop Alien 3 from being a total disaster, but they're so far inbetween that it's hardly compensation for one of the most disappointing third acts in a series in a good while.
2/5
ALIEN RESURRECTION: But if Alien 3 was merely a hint of how low the franchise could fall, then Resurrection sealed the nail on the coffin for the franchise as a whole. Quite why anyone thought it would be a good idea to bring back Ripley from the dead for yet another battle against her old enemies is beyond me, but things are so damn predictable by this point that the whole thing becomes almost unwatchable. It's rare that I can actually struggle to sit through a movie, but this was one of those instances, not helped by the rapidly decaying SFX budget, even worse portrayals of archetypal characters which come nowhere close to their great predecessors and above all a plot that reeks of cash-grabbing nature just as much as the Call Of Duty franchise now so often does. There's an overriding sense of pointlessness to the entire experience, and quite frankly I'm surprised few cinema-goers didn't leave the auditorium out of shame at the time of release. Quite honestly, I would have considered doing so, and that is saying something. It's no wonder that it's taken over a decade for a 'reboot', and even then one which thankfully elects to widen the series mythology with new threats and concepts rather than recycle an old-hash horror plot as Alien: Resurrection so blatantly does with little-to-no grace.
1/5