Hulu Watching Experience: Species III

There are obviously a lot of awesome franchises in history. None of those revolve around a third installment that goes directly to video. However, the Species franchise is a perplexing series of films that start from mediocre to bad to worse, as is the case with Species III. Species III is in itself almost symbolic of the franchise in its three acts.

Act One is an installment with a decent bit of gore and a lot of random sci-fi mumbo jumbo that's ultimately insignificant, but there's nothing especially bad in these scenes. Plus, there's nudity.

Act Two is stiflingly boring, with a ridiculous amount of half-breed suited strangeness and ridiculous amounts of gore for the sake of itself.

Act Three is hilarious and then crappy and then a hilariously stupid cop-out makes it hilariously crappy.

Might as well earn my nonexistent keep and explain further. Species III opens with a lovely sequence involving the military and Natasha Henstridge's (apparent) dead body. Henstridge is still portraying Eve from Species II, and that creature comes back to life, has a weird baby and then some fat kid is involved. This all would've been so awesome if an arty guy took hold of this and just added more random abstract screwed up things, but instead, we're left to our own devices as far as good filmmaking goes. Anyways, a scientist takes the baby home, and that baby quickly grows up to be a girl and then through some more weird circumstances, a naked woman appears. A couple of deaths happen, but only because, as we all know, men are pigs.

That particular message is one thing the Species franchise has attempted to do from the beginning in that they establish that man's desire for sex is so so irrational that nearly all of them would violate such a right when graced by the beauty of some odd half breed alien who looks like your average GAP model. In a way, it's objectifying to both males and females. The females' only purpose in this film is to have sex and create life, and even when Sunny Mabrey's blonde Sara learns about chess apparently from just touching a book, this information is irrelevant to her. Her whole "purpose" is sex. But she also has the excuse of being a half-breed, where apparently, reproduction is the only thing that matters. The males in this movie not only don't have that excuse, but barring three characters, the male race is treated as if sex is their only goal. Rape is pretty much an action on everyone's mind. Even the half breed attempts to rape her in a sequence where both I and the goofy Dean (played by Robin Dunne) both yelled that he was trying to rape her.

This isn't even bringing up the fact that the blonde Sara is viewed as perfection whereas the suddenly introduced brunette Amelia is the film's villain for whatever reason. That might be a bit of a poor comment on America's love for blondes.

And now I realize I'm overthinking one of the more dumb but entertaining movies I've seen in a while. Though, it's just dumb. You can't describe it any other way.

Rating: REALLY BAD

Next time, I'll cleanse the palette of horrible direct to video movies and review one of the most beloved sequels of all time...ROCKY III!