It's David Fincher. And a really good cast that got railroaded by the execs. I was a little disappointed in '91, and glad a directors cut came out. Bravo, great addition.

"Alien 3" is a rather frivolous sequel that went in such a stupid direction, had an incredibly stupid ending, didn't really bring anything interesting or cool to the table, and only had some kind of okay action. This is one of the weakest and dumbest sequels I have seen. Avoid it and stick with "Alien" and "Aliens".

How many times will this franchise keep fighting the exact same alien, in the same way, for the same reasons, by the same person.And how many times will Ripley keep bouncing around space, and landing everywhere but earth, and yet, everywhere she lands is always a place filled with people nonetheless?3 films, and still, nothing is known about anything. Alien is about fighting something we don't know or understand. Aliens is about fighting the same something we don't understand, and its family. Alien 3 is about fighting the very-same-something-we-don't-understand-like-in-Alien, except this time, instead of it growing in Kane, it's now growing in Ellen.The twist was cool, and I feel I would've seen it coming, had this film just not been such a bore, because of it being NOTHING MORE, absolutely nothing more, than its 2 predecessors.Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 is the same thing, over, and over, and over again... The 3rd time around was just too brutal to experience. Had it not been for the twist, this movie would've easily been a 4, but that twist helped quite a bit. 5/10.

David Fincher's Alien 3 is like the troublesome sibling, the antisocial, un-cinematic black sheep of the franchise, and I'm sure that's exactly what he intended it to be. Mean spirited, desolate and callous towards the characters who just came triumphantly riding in off the victory of James Cameron's Aliens, it's a bleak, hopeless vision that plucks Sigourney Weaver's Ripley our of the frying pan and plunges her right into the fire, namely a scary hellhole of a planet that's pretty much one giant maximum security prison home to folks who are almost as menacing as that persistent Xenomorph who, naturally, has followed her there. Sporting a new buzz cut, Ripley contends with hostile inmates including Charles Dutton, Holt Mccallany and Pete Postlethwaite, sparks a romance with one of them (Charles Dance) encounters the remains of heroic Android Bishop (Lance Henriksen in a couple sly cameos) and continues her ill fated, never ending crusade to destroy the hostile extraterrestrial beastie. Fincher's vision is a grim one, bereft of warmth, hope or humour, but he's always injected his films with that kind of nihilism, which infects every frame and beat of this one. Admittedly, it's the weakest in the initial quartet of Alien films, but in a franchise so consistently good, even the odd one out is still well worth seeing.