Entry 50.3: Alien3 (1992)

Alien3 (1992)

Dir: David Fincher

"Three times the suspense.  Three times the terror.  Three times the danger." 




  

After a couple weeks off (well, not "off" off; working and not having time to get to this blog "off"), I'm venturing back down to the Basement of Sleaze to spend a little time with the double-y-chromo rapists and murderers of Alien3.

Immediately following the events of Aliens, Ripley and her makeshift "family" have their voyage interrupted by a facehugger deposited by the Alien Queen.  It cuts itself and causes a fire, which causes the ship to jettison Ripley and company in an escape pod.  Coming out of hypersleep, Ripley discovers that Hicks and Newt were both killed in the crash and the android Bishop was smashed to bits.  Making matters worse, she discovers that the planet she's stranded on, Fury-161, is a Weyland-Yutani-owned prison for male rapists and murderers; she's the lone woman on an island of predators.  There is also little technology here; the prisoners use oxen for transport and torches for light.  Ripley finds some comfort in the arms of sensitive medical officer Clemons (Charles Dance, The Golden Child, The Last Action Hero), but the facehugger has traveled with her and soon a new alien is born.  Complicating matters, a CAT scan reveals that Ripley herself has been "impregnated" and is carrying a new alien queen.  Ripley forms an alliance with Dillon (Charles S. Dutton, Menace II Society, Mimic), the religious zealot leader of the inmates, and they hatch a plan to destroy the beast using the leadworks at the heart of the prison.  With "The Company" closing in to capture the queen she's carrying, Ripley is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice to rid the universe of the alien threat once and for all.

To say that Alien3 was a troubled production is like saying that winter in Minnesota is a little brisk.  After the success of Aliens, Fox wanted a sequel but Sigourney Weaver was hesitant to return to the role of Ripley.  Alien3 initially started as a vehicle for Michael Biehn's Hicks written by William Gibson and to be directed by Renny Harlin.  When Gibson's script proved problematic, Harlin walked and Eric Red (Near Dark, The Hitcher) was brought in to draft a new script featuring an entirely new cast of characters.  Red's script, set on a frontier farming planet, was awful (even by his own admission), and the project once again went into turnaround.  Eventually, Fox was able to lure Weaver back with a major payday and producer credit and young, up-and-coming writer/director Vincent Ward (The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey) was hired to pen and helm the film.  After "creative differences" with producers David Giler and Walter Hill caused Ward to leave the film during preproduction, music video wunderkind Fincher was brought in at the last minute, with Hill and Giler performing rewrites literally daily.

Alien3 is a movie that I admire greatly, even if I have some issues with it.  It is, without question, the bleakest, most depressing film ever to be released as part of a mega-budget, Hollywood summer blockbuster franchise.  In addition to the unceremonious and brutal killing-off of fan-favorite characters Hicks and Newt at the very beginning, the film is basically two-plus hours of Ellen Ripley (a character we've grown to like a great deal by the end of Aliens) being abused: she's locked up, disbelieved and disrespected, beaten, very nearly raped, literally spit upon and finally forced to commit suicide.  Through it all, Ripley maintains her inner strength and grim determination; say what you will about other aspects of the film, but Sigourney Weaver is absolutely riveting, and this may be her single best performance.  On the negative end, the new alien is a quadruped (it's born of either a dog or ox, depending upon which version you watch) and in order to achieve the effect of the creature running on all fours, effects house ADI used a new "Go-Motion" technique that looks REALLY dodgy and involves some extremely lousy compositing.  One of the novel aspects of the script is that the planet Fury-161 is infected with lice, forcing all of it's inhabitants to shave their body hair (Weaver received a huge up-front cash bonus for shaving her head).  This results in the supporting cast being made up almost entirely of bald, white British guys, making it very difficult to tell the prisoners apart and care about who's being killed.  The chaotic nature of the production and the ever-changing script also results in the film (especially the shorter, theatrical version) having no strong story; it's just a loosely-connected series of events linked by strange religious imagery and an ever-increasing sense of doom.  As a sequel to Aliens, this doesn't really work at all, and I can't blame audiences who were expecting more Marines vs. aliens action for coming away disappointed.  In fact, the film doesn't feel like either of it's predecessors; it's never genuinely scary like Alien, nor does it contain any of the thrills and suspense of Aliens.  Really, it's sort of quiet, sad, mournful and imbued with a sense of inevitable doom.  Honestly, though, I think that might be the beauty of Alien as a franchise; each film is so unlike the last that you never really know what to expect going in.  I discover something new every time I watch this movie and I have come to like it a lot, but there's nothing I like more about it than this: Ripley, alone once again against the Company and the alien (whose threat is internal rather than external this time), biting her lip and slamming shut the fence that separates her from the men who could save her (but would take the alien for research), then calmly throwing herself into the pool of molten lead at the heart of Fury-161, giving her life to complete the task she began all those years ago.  What a fucking way to end a character!  Alas, it was not to be...

Like the previous two films, Alien3 is available in two versions: the original theatrical release and an "assembly cut" put together by Ridley Scott protegee Charles de Lauzirika for the 2004 Alien Quadrilogy DVD release, then further refined for the later Alien Anthology blu-ray release.  I prefer the assembly cut; it's the closest we'll ever get to Fincher's original vision for the film and restores a couple of key plot points that make for a richer, more complete viewing experience.  If you've only seen (and judged) the film based on it's original release, check out the assembly cut and give it a re-evaluation.