Alien 3 DVD Review

The Movie

Alien 3 is considered by a lot of people to be the weakest of the four films and many aspects of the movie were a let down for most people. For instance, the fundamental rules of facehuggers is that they die after only infecting one host, but in this film the facehugger manages to facehug two hosts. The biggest weakness of the Alien itself was the appearance of it. The puppets they used to make it move look really bad on screen. There’s no character development like in the first two films and they also killed off Newt and Hicks, the survivors of the last film. As a stand-alone film, Alien 3 would be quite interesting but doesn’t relate to the first two films hardly.

The Picture

The Alien 3 DVD is possibly the best transfer out of all the DVDs in the Alien Legacy set. The picture, along with the sound, is top quality and the colours and shades have great detail. The colours are not too strong and the contrast is also accurate. Apparently some detail is lost in particular scenes in the UK version whereas the American version more detail is present. Even through a lot of the scenes are in darkness or shadow, the image looks clear throughout the film. Overall the picture is in a brilliant condition and the transfer to DVD has been accomplished very well.

The Sound

The sound overall is particularly good and they’re at the right levels when needed. When the characters are speaking, the dialogue is perfectly clear with no interference. The soundtrack has a lot of variety and creates a scary atmosphere. The DVD is good for people with surround sound and this give the viewer the total experience of watching and listening to Alien 3.

The Special Features

-Behind the Scenes Documentary
Unlike the first two films, Alien 3 doesn’t have many extras. There’s one interesting 22-minute documentary about the making of the first three films in the saga which includes a look at the creature effects. It includes interviews with cast and crew of the first two films and there’s a look at the behind-the-scenes of Alien 3.

-Theatrical Trailer
In addition to the documentary, there’s only one trailer in the UK version and that shows a short trailer of Alien 3. At the end the narrator says, “On Earth everyone can hear you scream.” which indicated some Aliens were brought to Earth. This was shown in theatres a while before Alien 3 was actually released. When Predator 2 was released, the writers of Alien 3 changed their minds and found a new story for Alien 3.

Overall

Great expectations were amongst people after the success of Alien and Aliens and for a lot of people Alien 3 didn’t live up to their expectations. The film is a decent sci-fi / monster movie, but it doesn’t go well with the series as a whole. The DVD has hardly any extras apart from a documentary and so isn’t worth buying as a single DVD. The DVD does offer exceptional picture and sound quality but is it worth buying it just for those things? Like Alien Resurrection, it’s better just to get this DVD if you’re a die-hard fan of the genre.