In the third article, Ripley woke up in an all-male prison after surviving a shuttle crash. A parasitic alien tagged along and implanted an embryo in an inmate’s dog. The embryo breaks out of the animal and begins killing people until everyone figures out what’s going on, then they hatched one of the dumbest plans I’ve ever seen in cinema. After that, Ripley begins feeling sick. She goes to her still fully intact cryobed and scans herself. She finds that the parasitic alien has also planted an embryo inside her.

The fact that Ripley had an embryo in her the entire time is ridiculous for a number of reasons. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, her cryobed wasn’t broken, so there was no way the alien would’ve been able to attach itself to Ripley. Also, this is inconsistent with the previous films where the alien is shown to break out of the host after only a few hours. It’s established that a rescue team from the Company is being sent to fetch Ripley, and they’ll land on the prison planet in about a week. This team arrives before the end of the film, so we can infer that approximately a week has past since Ripley was pulled from the shuttle’s wreckage. Furthermore, the dog was implanted after Ripley, yet the alien inside it “hatched” first. The continuity is shot, and we can only assume that Ripley is alive only because the plot needs her.

Once Ripley realizes that an awful death awaits her, she tries to convince the last jailor to send the rescue team back to Earth. He refuses because he wants someone with guns to handle the alien. That’s right. The jailors don’t have any guns. . . on a prison planet. The movie tries to mitigate this stupidity by showing Ripley’s chagrin at the idea, but this did nothing to suspend my disbelief. There’s no way a prison filled with murderers wouldn’t have armed guards, but that’s what the movie wants us to believe.

Anyway, Ripley knows that the Company isn’t going to kill the creature. They wish to weaponize it somehow. So, Ripley goes to find the alien, hoping it will kill her. After an irritating hallucination sequence that goes nowhere, she finds the alien, but the creature refuses to end her life. Ripley then goes to one of the inmates named Dillion and asks him to kill her. She tells him that the embryo inside her is a queen, and she must die because the Company can’t be allowed to have it.

It’s unclear whether Ripley knew the embryo was a queen because of the cryobed’s scanner or because the alien wouldn’t kill her. Personally, I don’t see how either the scanner or the alien’s actions would tell her anything, and this plot point matters because if it was a queen, and Ripley knew it, then her choice to kill herself makes more sense. In her mind, it would be better for the Company to walk away with a drone rather than a queen. If the scanner didn’t tell her what the creature was, then Ripley was simply killing herself out of despair and didn’t care whether the Company retrieved the other alien or not. But if she doesn’t care, then why would she wish for the jailor to send the Company away? Arguably, the Company would have the technology to remove the monster and save her life. If her goal was to make sure the Company the didn’t have an alien period, and the scanner didn’t tell her what the alien was, then she would’ve been more determined to kill the alien, and only when the deed was done, would she try to kill herself. This is an example of the writers moving from plot point to plot point without thinking about the character’s motivations.

Thankfully, Dillion isn’t a moron. He refuses to kill Ripley because he realizes that if the alien won’t murder her, then they can use her as bait. However, the inmates turn into cartoon characters again because they hatch a second plan which utilizes Ripley in the worst way possible. Their new idea is to lead the alien to a mold where they’ll pour molten lead on the thing. Ripley is supposed to stand in the mold long enough for them to release the lead. But the problem is the inmates are the ones baiting the alien to the mold in the first place. Why didn’t they use her as bait the whole way? For that matter, as I’ve mentioned before, THEY HAVE A FURNACE! You know what would’ve been simpler? Use Ripley to lead the alien into the giant pit of fire! Why sacrifice the rest of the inmates, who are just going to mess the plan up anyway?

Things go as the viewer would expect, as the inmates lead the alien to the mold, they’re picked off one by one until only the jailor, Dillion, Ripley, and a guy named Morse, who we don’t even see until the last half of the film, are left. Finally, after Dillion pretends to be hurting Ripley — again, he could’ve done that all the way to the giant pit of fire—they lead the alien into the mold. Dillion makes Ripley climb out of the mold and wrestles the alien himself until Morse pours the molten lead on top of the beast. In case you were wondering, Dillion doesn’t make it. Then the alien jumps out of the mold and is thoroughly annoyed. But this doesn’t really matter because Ripley turns on the sprinkles, instantly cooling the lead. This causes the alien to explode . . . for some reason.

By that time, the Company shows up with a human who looks like Bishop, and he tells Ripley that they can save her, and once they’ve removed the alien queen from her body, they’ll destroy it. Ripley doesn’t believe them, of course, and has Morse move some platform to where she can stand over something. While this is happening, the last jailor chooses to hit the second Bishop with a pipe, for some reason, and the Company’s guards shoot him. I guess, he decided they were bad guys, and chose to attack the Company’s leader in the dumbest way possible. By the time the second jailor is dead, Ripley is ready to make her curtain call. She throws herself off the platform, and can guess what she’s jumping into? That’s right! The furnace, the giant pit of fire they could’ve used the entire time!

The queen bursts for her chest, and Ripley cradles it like a child rather than screaming in agony/ The two of them are engulfed in flames. Alien 3 ends with Ripley’s final transmission from the first film. Oh, and Morse lives. Not sure that matters since he was scheduled to be executed anyway.

I hate this movie. Not only is it incoherent from a plot standpoint, but it does everything it can to mitigate what was accomplished in the second film. I suspected there was some veiled messages against motherhood and family and all things decent in the world. And by the end, I was wondering if it would really be so bad if the Company actually got a hold of the alien. Ripley spends the entire movie jaded and defeated. And the way they treated Newt’s death really ticked me off. The inmates are unlikable when they’re not acting like buffoons, and even when they were impersonating the three stooges, I still found them annoying. In short, don’t watch this film.