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"When they first heard about this thing, it was 'crew expendable'. The next time they sent in marines - they were expendable too. What makes you think they're gonna care about a bunch of lifers who found God at the ass-end of space?"
For all the positive fascination around Alien and Aliens, there is just as much hatred around, Alien³. I'm surprised nobody has made a documentary yet about the making of this thing, considering just how troubled the production was. And most of that trouble was in pre-production, usually it is when the cameras roll that things fall apart. The third Alien movie almost never got started. I think Fox lost count of how many full scripts were written, besides many more versions of those scripts. William Gibson was involved at some point. David Twohy's 2000 movie Pitch Black was born from his unused script for the third alien movie. Ultimately, they started shooting without a finished script in hand. The final director, David Fincher, would basically disown this movie. The Assembly Cut version is not a director's cut, Fincher wanted nothing to do with any DVD releases. Nobody behind the scenes has warm feelings about this thing.
Making this just seems like a bad time all-around. There's ground-breaking energy and excitement you can feel in the productions of Alien and Aliens - not in the third one. This is just a movie that had to get made. That 'bad time' filters down into the movie.
You'd think with all that uncertainty and studio meddling that you'd end up with something generic and safe. Alien³ is not the movie you make if you just want to keep things chugging for an "Alien 4" and then an "Alien 5". The soulless obvious thing is to bring back Ripley, Hicks, and Newt, have them shoot more aliens, maybe bigger aliens, and go home heroes again. Basically that is the Terminator 3 strategy - do the same thing again, but worse. Instead, Alien³ goes back to the horror roots of the '79 Alien and then goes much further. Extreme horror art films are rarely this cruel. Alien³ is consciously an act of franchise suicide.
And I respect the Hell out of that.
We have to start with the controversial choice: killing off Newt and Hicks off-camera between movies, already fan favorites. Killing Newt in particular is brutal, beyond the fact you slaughtered a little girl, breaking a core taboo of cinema. This also destroys everything Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) gained in Aliens, any sense of a new home or new future. Bishop (Lance Henriksen) has been reduced to a gurgling pile of half-melted scraps, and he chooses death after his one scene. Ripley discovers she's the carrier for an Alien Queen, meaning she only has days remaining before the end. Even the cute doggie in this movie gets taken by a Facehugger and dies birthing a dog-xenomorph hybrid. (It never ends well for the dogs this month...)
Now you might ask yourself: wait, when did that happen? The ending of Aliens is pretty dang clear that the good guys won, unmistakably. Alien³ never explains how another egg got on board, causing a fire and causing the computer on the ship to jettison the survivors from the second movie, killing everybody except Ripley. You can further Cinema Sins this by noting that Ripley's tube is untouched so when did a Facehugger get to her? You gotta roll with this or there is no movie. The first time I saw Alien³ I was annoyed for five minutes. Then the rest of the movie happened. I was fascinated. I didn't grow up with Aliens, I first saw Alien³ the night after I saw the second movie. "Franchise betrayal" is not an interesting place to begin criticism in any respect.
The first two movies have a clinical cool color temperature. Alien³ is all yellow. It's the same dark metal corridors but now older, rotting, unclean. Alien³ takes place on the planet Fury 161, an abandoned foundry in the garbage heap of space. It's a dead world full of rotten bastards, surrounded by ten square miles of maze-like tunnels full of high technology but none it works. This was a maximum-security prison with a population of 5,000, now reduced to a cult of twenty-five prisoner cultists and a few grouchy Company men with the unpleasant assignment of watching over them. You can tell whoever gets this assignment are not the best or brightest the Weyland-Yutani as to offer. This is still a prison but there need be no bars, no weapons, since there is no escape off this world. If the inmates ever rise up, the Company can just write off the facility and leave them all to die. Ripley is in good company down here, since nobody has hope of a future. Since xenomorphs are not the only thing eating people, there's also lice, Ripley shaves her head to match the shorn male cast. She's one of the "brothers", just another lost soul in the heap.
There is the ever-present threat of sexual violence, one that nearly comes to pass. Ripley barely escapes a gang rape. Even the most heroic prisoner, Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), the true leader of Fury 161, is a rapist and a murderer by his own confession. There's this curious plot detail wherein we're told that the prisoners are "double-Y chromos". That is a real genetic condition, mostly harmless, most who have the syndrome don't even notice it. In the Alien universe this is treated as a dangerous overflow of testosterone and violence. Soon enough, with a creature the prisoners nickname "the Beast" taking down a lot of characters through long alien-POV shots, gender is the least of anybody's problems.
Andrews (Brian Glover) is the thug-like Company warden, blaming everything that will go wrong on Ripley's feminine presence. Andrews is lot of bluster and bullying, since what other powers does he have? Aaron (Ralph Brown) his second, is just a weak-little toady, nicknamed "85" after his IQ score. Dillon and Ripley take command once Andrews gets devoured - if anything the alien does everybody a favor getting him out of the way. Fortunately, Dillon, who is a magnificent character, full of power and charisma. He's a big man and rules a room. Charles S. Dutton might give a series-best performance in Alien³.
Interestingly we have a consensual, most un-romantic hook-up between Ripley and the "medical officer", Clemens (the future Tywin Lannister, Charles Dance). Charles Dance is not an actor who overwhelms any performance with affection, but it is purely adult interaction, two people who have been floating through space for decades (or maybe centuries at this point for Ripley) who have a need to be served. Clemens does not last long, only barely getting the time to give his tragic backstory before he's one of the first victims. Dillon takes his place as the main company for Ripley.
Alien³ is as hopeless as this series ever gets. The only way off Fury is worse than the alien. Once again the Weyland-Yutani Company has become this faceless, distant, terrifying force. The "rescue" team they're sending is not here for Ripley or the prisoners, they're here for 'Ripley's daughter'. The military team coming down will probably slaughter all the witnesses and take the creature in, finally achieving their goals. That gives a ticking clock to the plot, the prisoners have to kill the quadrupedal monster before the Company gets here. They have no weapons, just a few old drums of explosives which fails in terrible fashion, then there's baiting the creature into the forge. What's bait? Well, there's a couple dozen of bipedal snacks, only one will make it to the credits.
Alien³ is not a movie I need to defend anymore, the discourse around this one has changed rapidly. I'm far from alone in loving this thing. On the right day I'll tell you that Alien³ is better than Aliens. As bleak as this movie is - there's not a lot of jokes, there's no big fight scenes, no "get away from her, you bitch" - Alien³ is never depressing. It could so easily be miserable yet here's a powerful hope at the center of Alien³, represented by Dillon. He is triumphant against the oblivion represented by the Beast and the Company. He demands Ripley live every single second she has left. He sacrifices himself to save her for just a few more minutes. And there's something powerful to that. Ripley dies for the sins of the universe, but not in defeat. Death is her last chance to say "fuck you" to the powers that be, capitalism and science lose out to faith and brotherhood.
There's a final appearance of a human(?) Lance Henricksen working for the Company as a high-level scientist (this is just confusing, one of several elements of Alien³ that feel unfinished). He gives a last desperate plea to let the Company have it. He might as well have saved his breath. Ripley goes out Terminator 2-style, diving into lava, just as a xenomorph bursts out of her, making her both the Christ and Madonna at the same time. This fiery late-term abortion is the second child she's lost this movie, but at least, it concludes her story. "You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else.", says Ripley, as her life has been completely consumed by this beast she has been fighting over and over. In the end, she never lets them win.
I mean, there's no way you're coming back from full incineration. Right? It would make no sense for Sigourney Weaver to come back after this. Right? If Ripley were to be reborn that might just over due the Christ metaphor, I think.
Next time! Sigourney Weaver comes back. What are we, some kind of Alien Resurrection?
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