3. Alien 3
I almost feel a little bad picking on Alien 3 in this list. It may be a worthy entry, but its a film that has received so much criticism over the years, even being disowned by director David Fincher. But no matter how they try and re-edit it to put focus on religious overtones (because thats what Fox were really concerned with in 1992), at its heart Alien 3 is just aping the previous two movies. After a genre defining sci-fi horror followed by a genre defining sci-fi actioner, the Alien francise had little elsewhere to go. It looks like the intention with the third one was to do a sci-fi drama, but it just kept falling back into one of the previous genres. To be fair to the film, its predecessors were so influential to sci-fi that they were bound to be referenced at some point. But what happens here is ridiculous. This is the point where the once creative franchise had studio wariness set in. It tries hard to be fresh, with a bald Ripley, no guns and a dog Alien, but going beyond these superficial elements, looking at the slow killing method, the failed trap and final shock confrontation, its the same model as the previous two.