In celebration of Alien Romulus, this week we will be looking back at each film in the Alien franchise. Today, Alien 3.

David Fincher’s 1992 Alien 3 is weird. The film was plagued by rewrites, studio oversight, and a director who absolutely hated making the film. Even to this day, Fincher still disowns his own film and will tell you how much he hates it every chance he gets. But that’s not exactly what makes Alien 3 weird. What makes Alien 3 weird is how discredits everything done in the second movie and then tries to create a new film that hearkens back to the original.

Alien 3 begins with Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley once again being awoken from stasis. This time she has landed on a maximum security prison planet and everyone on board except Ripley has died. It’s soon discovered that there was a face-hugger on board Ripleys escape pod, it has implanted a queen inside of her, and there’s a new alien who has emerged from dog stalking Ripley and the inmates around the maximum security prison.

By itself, this isn’t a terrible premise for an Alien film. The setting of a maximum security prison is interesting as it creates the same sense of isolation felt in the first film while also increasing the size and scope of where our characters can go. It also takes away all the guns and heavy weaponry. It doesn’t make a ton of logical sense for a maximum security prison to have zero guns, but the film does its best to explain it. Either way, after seeing dozens of aliens blown away by machine guns in Aliens, going back to one xenomorph significantly lowers the stakes and the film needs to level the playing field. But this is where the film tries to have its cake and eat it too. Mimicking the plot of the first film but with visuals and a world built upon in the second.

The first Alien is so terrifying because the monster is brand new to everyone on board. No one has any idea what the villain is or how to kill it. In Alien 3, this isn’t Sigourney Weaver’s first rodeo. She’s already killed one by herself in the first and taken out a queen and countless others in the second. But here the film has to make up a lot of scenarios to raise the stakes again. Unfortunately, their plan in Alien 3 is to raise the stakes by taking everything away.

The film doesn’t just negate Aliens by taking away all of the tried and true methods of killing an alien, it also negates the entire hero’s journey by straight up killing Newt in the very beginning. You remember Newt? Ripley’s surrogate daughter and the main emotional throughline for the second film. The character that realizes all of Aliens big themes of motherhood and protecting your own at all costs. Yeah, she’s just dead, dies on impact, and creates this colossal bummer that the film has to reckon with for the first twenty minutes.

There are still some interesting and unique themes in Alien 3. Ripley has this alien growing inside of her and that is a really interesting plot line especially when you look at the setting of the third film. Ripley is our hero, the embodiment of good in this world filled with evil androids, evil corporations, and evil aliens. Now, our savior and hero who ended the first film bathed in white has the embodiment of evil growing inside of her. It’s a story of the duality of man. How even the best of us can have evil inside which is mirrored by the prisoners on the planet. The worst people in the galaxy who have been banished to this isolated maximum security planet are now the heroes of the story. There is an odd melodramatic plot line that fully realizes this theme with the prison doctor and Ripley’s love interest, but it’s easy to see the film’s theme without this. Even the best of us can have evil inside and even the worst of us can have good inside. For a film franchise that has spent so much time drawing clear lines between good and evil, it’s a pretty refreshing subtext. It’s just unfortunate that it’s layered under a midtier threequel.

Alien 3 is for all intents and purposes, a fine mid-tier sci-fi film from 1992. It is David Finchers first full-feature film after a short career directing music videos but other than that the film is nothing special. There are some cool themes, some interesting ideas and subtext, but nothing that would make it stand out. The color grading of the film is almost offensively green, the dialogue is stale, and aside from one iconic shot, the alien looks pretty bad in this film. If it wasn’t a part of the Alien franchise there would be no reason to go back to this film. Alien 3 is a 6 out of 10 movie but I have a feeling it’s better than the fourth installment.