So Ripley and the convicts spend most of their time hanging around ducts blaming one another or listlessly discussing how to battle the alien without weapons (the penal colony, the warden explains, is "on the honor system"). The plan they devise is as drab and murky as everything else on the planet, featuring a lot of running around shot from gratuitous and confusing camera angles.
More exciting are the developments within Ripley's own body: it seems she's been eating for two lately, and the bundle of joy she's expecting is none other than the queen alien herself. Should she allow the rescue team rushing to Fury to remove the beast and save her life, or should she destroy herself and ensure the end of her wicked spawn? Should she fulfill her biological destiny of reproduction and death or defy fate and put an end to it all? After all the dreary fuss and bother, Alien3 confronts the true horror -- the purpose and meaning of human life -- and finds it alien, all too alien.
Film Strips, compiled by Charles Taylor
Movie of the Week: Alien3 (1992). You think the T is a pain! Poor Sigourney Weaver just can't manage to get home in this third installment of the slimy, crawly sci-fi series. In this one Ripley (sporting Sinead O'Connor fuzz) crash-lands on an abandoned mining site that's now a facility for violent criminals. But guess who else is coming to dinner? Yup, and to make matters worse, there's no technology to fight the nasty things. David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson wrote the screenplay; rock-video director David Fincher makes his feature debut. Charles S. Dutton (from TV's Roc), Charles Dance, and Lance Henriksen co-star.
