Once more (and as far as I’m concerned, for the last time) we follow Lieutenant Ellen Ripley into danger. Alien³ starts as the EVV Ripley and the other remaining survivors escaped in crashes into a mostly abandoned prison planet housing only male prisoners (“double Y -chromosomes” which doesn’t seem to make much sense). This time, the chestburster comes out of a water buffalo, which changes the way the xenomorph ends up moving. It soon starts eating the inmates. For fans of the Alien franchise, the movie proceeds apace.

Although I feel like I must have seen this movie before, I could not remember anything about it, except the last image. As such, it’s not all that surprising. Ripley here doesn’t seem consistent with the Ripley of movies past. The Weiland-Yutani Corporation’s higher-ups finally make an appearance. The movie is a solid addition to the Alien franchise and a fair ending to the trilogy that never got any more movies. Nope. Never. There’s a lot of worldbuilding silliness going on but mostly it’s fine. Ultimately, this movie doesn’t really work on its own and it doesn’t need to be as long as it is but it’s still an enjoyable way of spending a couple of hours.