“Alien³”

“I’ve bumped this up a star, but I get why I never dug this one:
It feels like Roger Corman’s Alien.
Let’s do this in one location, reuse the same corridors a bunch of times, and…well, there you go.
I think there’s a great movie in here, but this one commits the sin of action movies: I don’t really know what’s going on during the big sequence.
The movie could be clearer: Which corridors are we trying to go down, how does closing the doors work, and what should we be expecting to happen when it all goes right, and how do we immediately know it’s not going according to plan when it inevitably goes sideways?
And I think that’s the thing: In other great action sequences, I know what’s happening, even when it’s complex.
I’ll use Interstellar as an example: Remember when the ring part of the ship is spinning, and Matthew Aldrin has to match the ship’s spin and re-dock? I don’t know exactly how all that works, but I know what he needs to do, how difficult it’s going to be, how screwed they are if it doesn’t work, and visually, I understand how I’ll know if it works or not.
Alien3 is kind of just a lot of running down hallways, a mix of not really getting it, but also not super caring.
But a bad Alien movie is still a pretty good movie. Plus, Charles Dance should be in everything.”