Alien 3

Brilliant work, yet again

This is the movie I did not remember as well as the first two. I know I have seen it at some point but after listening to the first three books, now I really want to watch it again.

The great part about these novelizations is that I can already see the characters. I know them and have know them for years. This book made me have all the feels. The beginning was tragic, yet again, and Ripley is set on another quest to kill aliens. Thank goodness she is more determined than ever but the beginning of this really made me feel for her.

Not having an idea of this book made it all the more scary. I was on the edge of my seat wondering where there danger was going to come from. Surprisingly there are quite a few characters in this that are heroic and even outshine the marines! I was worried at times but at others so glad that Ripley had some of these individuals around her. Although, she gets herself into quite a few messes in this one. Being on a prison world filled with me, what else would Ripley do?

This book held up to the first two, which is surprising. The second is still my favorite but the plot twists and the things that happen in this one were not foreseen. Brilliant work, yet again, by Peter Guinness. His voice lets the listener fall into the story and forget that there is a real world around them. The terror is really felt when the alien shows its ugly head!

Not my favorite of the three but still on par with the first. Great storytelling and very good narration.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

[If this review helped, please press YES. Thanks!]

9 of 12 people found this review helpful

Ripley has been ended

But the story doesn't end, great series and I recommend the series for any aliens franchise

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Better than the theatrical release.

It's essentially the rare (until recently) assembly cut of the film, with a few surprises and additions along the way. Considering the film went through production hell, I'm impressed it ended up as cohesive as it did, and the book only serves to help fill in the gaps even the assembly couldn't fix.
As a side note, the narrator sounds almost exactly like Warden Andrews from the film. Awesome! :D

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

If you're seen the movie, you're good.

Peter Guinness's performance was the best part of the book. He makes the story interesting.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

My least favorite movie, book was better.

As with many fans, I think this movie was kinda a waste of time. But I am an avid fan of the series, so I will read all the books. The book version was a bit better than the movie, but still has some inconsistency with the storyline that was created. It has also been awhile since I seen the movie and I thought the alien came from a dog not an oxen so that just goes to shows how much I paid attention. Any who if you made it this far in the series this one isn’t the worst book in the series so give it a try. Narrator was good.

Plot Holes Propped Up by Writing/Narration!

I have roundly criticized Foster's lackluster novelization of the near-perfect Aliens movie (the second in the franchise) but he really does a great job with the much-maligned third entry in the series. I have always liked the premise, aliens preying on XXY killers imprisoned in an abandoned mineworks and kept in check by asceticism. But (sigh) it is VERY hard to get past the meaningless deaths of Newt and Hicks in the first chapter, which steps on all the work the writers did in Aliens 2 to develop more characters for the franchise. Also disappointing is how the appearance and behavior of the aliens radically depart from the earlier movies in Aliens 3. The new developments/changes are both illogical and implausible. To complete this roller coaster ride, Guinness does and AMAZING job reading Aliens 3. So there are things to like and things to hate. I think most of us who love the Aliens movies (at least the first two) have made our peace with this one. If you have, you will enjoy listening to it. Some things make more sense in the hearing. (The various characters and their social dynamic are especially interesting.) Other things remain glaringly odd and frustrating.

2 of 4 people found this review helpful

Gotta Love Those Double-Y Chromo Boys

This is the least popular movie in the series but I, for one, always found it to be a stand out and a worthy component. It brings to the table a return to the gothic horror of the first movie and introduces the fans to a bizarre planetary prison setting and quirky characters. It is the Science Fiction equivalent of a closed-door mystery; smaller in scale to raise the suspense. This novelization closely follows the director’s cut of the movie, and will have some differences to those not familiar with that alternate version.

Peter Guinness reprises his efforts from the first book in the series and submits a passable performance.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

Much Better Than I Remember

I scooped up Alien and Aliens as soon as the audio versions were available. But I held off on this one, Alien 3, because I remember being disappointed when I saw the movie. The third installment didn't live up to its antecedents.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just on an Alien kick. But this book is much better than I remember the film being.

Like the first two books, author Alan Dean Foster (working from a screenplay) opens by introducing us to dreamers. In this instance, we have the sole survivors of the alien attack on colonial planet LV-426: Ellen Ripley, Newt, Corporal Hicks and the android Bishop. They are in cryonic stasis aboard the dropship Sulaco en route to Earth.

But, of course, this is an alien novel. So something has to go wrong. And that something is an alien facehugger that has hitchhiked and is now attempting to break into the passengers' cryotubes. A fire erupts and the escape pod crash lands.

Ripley revives on a refinery planet that doubles as a penal colony. She's the only woman these men have seen in years, and she's alone. For some reason, her fellow passengers didn't survive. Ripley has to find out why, and the evidence she finds aboard the pod suggests that she hasn't escaped the predatory alien nemesis after all.

Her doubts are soon put to rest when prisoners start disappearing.

Alan Dean Foster keeps a tight control on the storyline and the many characters. He, unlike poor director David Fincher who had to deal with numerous rewrites and studio interference while making the movie, knows where this drama is headed and knows how to ratchet up the tension. The scares aren't as big in the third book, but Ripley gets an alien encounter that's a real screamer.

British narrator Peter Guinness is back from Alien: Book One and he's a winner. Aliens was narrated by an American. He's good too, but I like having a single reader narrate a series.

A Surprisingly Good Adaptation of a Dull Film

I know this is a review for the novel of Alien3, but the book is based on the movie, so I unfortunately have to provide insight into both.

So, I remember seeing Alien 3 back when I was much younger. I had seen and fell in love with Aliens 2. The military/commandos storming the rogue planet of LV426, from the drop ship, just left me enamored. I went back and watch the first Alien movie, it was good, more suspense, but at that time there was something about the tactical marines with the assault rifles, and gear that just "made" aliens for me. So that being said I went to watch the next installment...Seems logical, yea?

Boy does this film garner a lot of hate. Back then, I just couldn't get into it. It looked, felt, and just came off as being sub-par to the last movie. The cgi (or attempt there to) of the alien, made me cringe, and I came away bored, uncaring about the characters, and weirded out by the sudden ending decision. Overall? 15 year old Chris wanted nothing to do with it...

Fast forward to where I am now 28...I was in the mood for a good sci fi book that wasn't something too new but had some history. So I was sifting through Barnes n Noble aimless in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section and came across an Aliens Omnibus. While this thick book is a collection of non-movie stories, it got my wheels turning, that I should read the alien series.
Well figuring that the movie that I've seen the least of, should be what I read. Since I'll go into it with less cinematographic references. So...I chose Alien 3.

Now here is where the great divide between the written word and film comes. The book/novelization of Alien3 is a well written book. It's not winning any awards, but the author creates a very creepy, world and given what he has to work with, makes one hell of a good attempt to flesh out the characters around our lead, Ripley. The great thing about the book is that the author allows for a bit more grieving period for her and her inner thoughts about the death of Newt, Hicks and even Bishop. The book really makes good use of this, as even prisoners introduced are given much more character in the novel than they are in the book. And because I hadn't seen the movie in so long, it was almost a new story to me. I knew what the basic plot was, but it left me so dry that I pretty much blanked the details out of my mind. So reading this was a much needed breath of fresh air to the story.

I got a bit too ahead of myself. I figured, oh let me go back and watch the movie again...Maybe I don't remember it right...or maybe with some years on me, I can appreciate it more... Um..no it's still as awful as I remember it. The music is cool, that's about it. The book of alien 3 fills in what the movie just couldn't / didn't do. It paints a much better "scene" to alien3 and allows the reader to fill in the gaps him or her self. The movie gives us a very raw film that is so distracting, it takes away from the story and just leaves me pondering how this film followed up Aliens 2. Honestly the whole story line of the egg on the drop ship puzzles me, and is such a stretch, that it already feels like alien3 is a big "what if" scenario. In fact in the book, I don't even believe the author touches on the 'how' of the alien being aboard.

Any who, the book is a good read. Seriously, if you're going to do the alien movies...skip 3, and read the book of it. You'll get a much better appreciation of the story and what the setting and world should have felt like. The visual crap fest that was the movie, was too much for me..

0 of 1 people found this review helpful