ALIEN 3 (1992)
"Think of all we could learn from it!"
Director: David Fincher
Writers: David Giler, Walter Hill and Larry Ferguson
Cinematography: Alex Thomson
Editor: Terry Rawlings
Music: Elliot Goldenthal
Notable Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles Dance, Brian Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Ralph Brown, Danny Webb, Paul McGann, Holt McCallany, Lance Henriksen, Leon Herbert, Pete Postlethwaite, Peter Guinness
The troubled history of Alien 3 is a tale told many times, so no need to rehash the particulars here. At the end of the day, all that matters is the movie. Who really gives a shit about the behind the scenes? Maybe as a curio, it can be interesting and edifying, but it says nothing of the quality of the film itself.
One can have a smooth as silk production that produces an absolute piece of shit, while a tumultuous set with script changes arriving daily can produce something sublime and timeless.
And it is most certainly the latter with the third entry in what was at the time a newly christened trilogy, of which this film was to be the final chapter.
It feels like a final chapter.
It ends like a final chapter.
But when it comes to the suits and the bean counters, “final chapter” is just a marketing ploy.
The Alien series would become a quadrilogy by the end of the ‘90s, and to be honest, I’ve lost count after that. Ridley Scott returned for 2 or 3 prequels, I think, only one of which I actually watched, and for the life of me can’t remember the title. But it was the one with Charlize Theron and some buff bloke they called The Engineer, and it was fucking terrible. Even for a Ridley Scott movie, it was bad. Which is saying something, cause that limey fuck pumps out terrible flicks like it’s his job, and I guess it is his job. Primo studio hack who delivers for the suits, but hardly ever the audience, unless you’re a slop loving NPC normie! I kid, I kid, but do I kid?
Much like the director of Alien 3, Ridley Scott started out fairly great, then slowly morphed into the boring filmmaker he is today. After a forgettable movie about fencing and duels in 1800’s France, he made the quintessential horror/sci-fi flick, Alien, which turned into a franchise harder to kill than the titular xenomorph.
It’s amazing to watch the film now, knowing what has become of Ridley Scott.
Alien is so quiet and measured, creating an indelible mood as it portrays a sci-fi world we’d not really seen in cinemas to that point, namely, a grimy, dirty future, with spaceships and their crew resembling more truckers on a long haul than scientists on an exploration mission.
Only a child at the time of its release, I can only imagine how mindbending it was to see a sci-fi film like this back then.
And while the alien suit was a masterful design by the genius H.R. Giger, whoever the fuck they hired to be INSIDE the suit was a total fucking idiot. I try not to let it effect my enjoyment of the film, but effect it, it does.
The way the alien moves, and the way they shot it, looks terrible. Embarrassingly so.
Which is a criticism that could also be levied about the 3rd film.
Alien and Alien 3 have lots of parallels, some good, some not so good, but one thing that is clear, despite the surface similarities of an inexperienced commercial or music video director, some shitty effects work, and only one xenomorph as the antagonist, the films could not be more different.
One of the things I really dug about the original Alien trilogy was just how different each film in the series was, and how bonkers it is they even belong to the same series of films. While all are sci-fi, the first one was a horror film, the second an action film, and the third… well, hard to say what exactly it was, but it certainly was not horror or action.
It’s almost meditative.
A rumination on death itself from one of the most nihilistic film franchises to ever exist.
And that’s not even getting into the whole AIDS allegory of a hostile, foreign “disease” infecting and killing a population of men.
Alien 3 was a singular film, in a singular series. How easy it would have been to just piggyback on the success of Aliens and make another action flick with quasi-Space Marines doing battle with an endless stream of xenomorphs.
Which is exactly what they did with the next film, the execrable Alien: Resurrection, with extremely tepid results (one thing I do dig about the fourth film is that it is the only one to feel like one of those old Dark Horse comics they used to make about the Alien universe).
No, thankfully the suits at 20th Century Fox weren’t too drunk on the smell of their own farts when they greenlit Alien 3, a positively experimental follow up to the gonzo, action heavy 2nd film. They didn’t have a finished script, but they DID have Sigourney Weaver back as Ripley, and new wunderkind director, David Fincher, soon to fulfill his kid genius label before squandering it all to become the very same studio hack his predecessor, Ridley Scott, became.
James Cameron wisely avoided such a fate, only to get lost in a sea of blue bullshit with those fucking godawful Avatar movies. Much as I despise those video games, at least Cameron always stuck to what he wanted to do as an artist, and writes his own fucking movies.
It’s what sets him apart from Scott and Fincher, and prevents one from using the studio hack label to identify him. Yeah, Cameron’s movies have basically stunk since 1995, but at least they’re HIS movies, not just some screenplay he picked up from a stack of shitty scripts.
But we’re not here to talk about Aliens, which has its moments, and we’re not here to talk about Alien.
No, we’re here to talk about the best Alien film that has ever been made.
Yes, frens, Alien 3 is the best Alien film and it’s not even close.
While I love Alien and Aliens, nothing, not in this series or any other, feels quite like this film. We’ve since seen flicks like Alien and Aliens.
We have NEVER seen another movie like Alien 3.
But this begs the question we’re always finding ourselves asking, how were the 1ST 5 Minutes?
1ST 5 MINUTES
I have no idea if this is the first film to do such a thing, but it was my first experience with anyone messing with the fucking studio logo, more specifically, the instantly recognizable 20th Century Fox Fanfare.
I remember sitting in the theater, and being bowled over they’d allow the filmmakers such latitude. It was very bold, and a huge honking sign post for what kind of film we were in store for. This was not going to be the same old shit, or a retread, or anything of the sort.
No, you’re about to see a wholly original and positively brash film from a major studio for the third film in their wildly successful science fiction franchise.
And not only that, this was to be a summer tentpole for the company! Seriously!
No idea what the execs were smoking or snorting, but I wish they had some of that shit these days as we are sorely missing that kind of risk taking in today’s cinematic landscape.
Great sign right up front.
I love that, despite how different this film is from the previous two, it begins in largely the same way as Aliens, that is, picking up right where the previous film left off, with Ripley floating in space. But unlike Aliens, which picks up with Ripley after 60 years of floating aimlessly in space, this film picks up seemingly moments after Aliens ended, with Ripley, Hicks, Newt and the damaged android, Bishop, on the Sulaco, the ship the space marines used in Aliens.
Unfortunately, SULACO is written on the ship in white, and not black as in the previous film. This kind of thing usually irks the shit out of me. Yeah, it’s a small detail, but it shows a certain laziness. Can they not just watch the previous film before embarking on the new one?
I remember in one of the special features on the DVD, Fincher said he was painstaking with continuity in this film, because unlike most movies, this film will be pored over and studied for decades due to its place in one of the most iconic and storied film franchises of all time. Whereas other films could withstand some continuity gaps, it was important to get the small details right with Alien 3.
Clearly, this one got by him. It happens. But no less aggravating.
One could point to the cryo-tubes as another continuity error, as these tubes do not look like the ones in Aliens. But apparently, Fincher didn’t care and wanted to use ones like Ridley used in Alien.
Ok. Sure. Whatever. It is a testament to the greatness of this film that such details don’t derail one’s enjoyment, or at least, my enjoyment.
What unfurls next is a great opening credit sequence, expertly intercut with the Sulaco jettisoning the part of the spacecraft housing Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop, due to a fire caused by a facehugger’s acid blood, all set to Elliot Goldenthal’s BRILLIANT score.
Cannot overstate Goldenthal’s contributions to this film. His score is easily one of my top 10 scores of all time. A fantastic piece of work that enhances each scene the music is deployed in.
Jerry Goldsmith’s Alien score was one of his shittier ones, whereas James Horner’s Aliens score is an absolute stone cold classic of the genre, used for years afterward in movie trailers whenever they needed to amp up the tension.
But Goldenthal takes things to a whole other level. While Horner delivered a good action score, Goldenthal serves up a deliciously dramatic score, almost melancholic in spots, while still delivering the pulse pounding notes when necessary. I probably melted the soundtrack CD back in the ‘90s I played it so much. A timeless classic that even now, over 30 years later, has lost none of its power or beauty.
Much like Fincher, Goldenthal became my favorite composer after this, and much like Fincher following up this brilliance with the brilliance of Seven, Goldenthal gave us another all timer with Michael Mann’s Heat. Talk about eclectic! From sweeping orchestras to electronic guitar riffs, Goldenthal can do it all.
Unfortunately, and similar to Fincher himself, Goldenthal kind of fell off after the ‘90s. But boy, did he deliver some stellar work in that decade. Of which Alien 3 is the tops, the best, the one you can’t live without.
Unfortunately for Ripley, the closest planet she can crash her EEV unit on is a “Double Y Chromosome-Work Correctional Facility” known as Fiorina “Fury” 161 (or as they refer to it in Alien: Resurrection, Fury 16, which at least in that movie, the error could be chalked up to hundreds of years passing between this film and that one).
I love the double Y chromosome detail. Is that a thing? Too good to look up. It’s a cool concept, having Ripley crash on a prison planet filled with rapists, child molesters, and murderers.
Remember, this is supposed to be a summer tentpole with blockbuster aspirations in a major studio’s most important franchise! Fucking hilarious.
If only for that reason, this movie is amazing.
Thankfully, there’s a shit ton more that makes this movie what it is.
We see Ripley’s EEV unit crash into the water on what looks like an absolutely inhospitable, desolate planet, ravaged by perilous rain and gale force winds.
The 1ST 5 Minutes ends as some of the prisoners remove the hatch on the EEV unit to see if there were any survivors.
I love this opening 5 minutes. From the Fox logo to the Goldenthal score to the editing and sound design of the credits and the compact way it sets up the main plot, not a wrong foot has been taken.
Sure, Sulaco is written in white and not black, and is on the wrong side of the ship, but it’s a minor flub in an otherwise stellar film. You’ve seen Alien and Aliens, are you really taking this flick off so soon?
Please.
The rest of the flick
Mood. That one word can sum up this entire flick. From the music to the production design to the wardrobe to the makeup to the cinematography to the direction, it’s all about establishing a very particular mood, and enveloping you within it.
You really disappear into this flick for 2 hours, it’s so all encompassing.
The plot itself is the standard Alien fare. What sets this film apart is the setting, and the aforementioned mood. Setting the film in a male penal colony is a choice. Dropping Ripley into this all male population is a choice. And killing off Newt (and Hicks) is most certainly a choice, one a plurality of fans, at least at the time, viewed as sacrilegious and the main reason the movie sucks.
“After everything Ripley did in Aliens to save Newt, how could they do that?!” asked these absolute simps.
How could they do that?!?
Have you watched the first two movies? The xenomorph takes EVERYTHING from Ripley. Killing off Newt, and to a lesser extent, Hicks, is perfectly in line with the nihilistic ethos of this franchise.
I, for one, couldn’t stand Newt. Yes, I enjoyed Aliens, but it was mostly despite her, not because of her. Much like Short Round in Temple of Doom, I found her annoying and a lazy plot device to put our heroes in further peril. Yes, I get the whole thing about Ripley’s daughter dying of old age while she was lost in space between the first and second films. But that bit was only included in the extended Aliens cut. The theatrical cut is the controlling precedent and mythos here. And when you consider that, Newt is even more annoying.
I had zero issues with them killing her off. And really, do you want to see a little girl thrown into a prison with a bunch of rapists and child molesters who haven’t seen a woman in ages? I certainly don’t (it’s hard enough seeing Ripley thisclose to being brutally gang raped)!
Killing off Newt was the right thing to do.
The alien takes everything from Ripley, full stop.
And that theme continues here, as the alien not only takes Newt, Hicks and Bishop from Ripley, it also takes her new love interest, in the form of the great Charles Dance, essaying one of his rare good guy roles.
Though this being Chucky Dance, his good guy is not that good, as his character of the prison doctor, Clemens, has a similar barcode on the back of his shaved head (very cool little detail how all the prisoners are catalogued by a tattooed barcode).
As he later recounts to Ripley about his incarceration, he developed a morphine addiction, which led to him prescribing the wrong dosage of painkillers to workers injured by a boiler explosion, causing 11 of them to die! And even after serving his sentence, he was so despondent he decided to STAY on Fury 161 instead of heading back home. Rough shit. Dance is naturally fantastic in this, as he is in near everything he does. He has real presence.
One of the knocks on the film is that most of the prisoners are indecipherable from one another as they all have shaved heads due to a lice problem at the facility, making it difficult to care about any of them.
Ok, and? Who gives a shit? I couldn’t tell half of the Space Marines in Aliens apart, big deal.
We get to know a few of the prisoners here, in particular, Morse, played by the great Danny Webb. Webb makes an immediate impression in the film. A shame he didn’t have a bigger career after this. His triumphant cry of “I hate bugs!” when he mistakenly thinks he and Ripley have vanquished the alien is amazing.
He also has my Favorite Line in the whole movie, when the alien is picking them off one by one and they all meet to try to figure out what to do despite having no weapons to fight with.
“What 85 is trying to tell you is that we ain’t got no entertainment center, no climate control, no video system, no surveillance, no freezers, no fucking ice cream, no rubbers, no women, no guns. All we got here is SHIT! Oh, what the hell we even talking to her for? She’s the one that brought the fucker. Why don’t we just get our head and shove it through the FUCKING WALL!”
His delivery is on point. His frustration with the situation mixed with his psychopathy is so good. As is Sigourney Weaver’s response to him, where she doesn’t give even the tiniest of shits.
Weaver is great here.
While she was nominated for Best Actress for Aliens, I feel this is the harder performance, considering she has to carry nearly the entire movie on her shoulders, without the benefit of a true ensemble.
And not for nothing, she looks fantastic with the shaved head.
Really puts a focus on her face, and what a face it is. She has amazing bone structure and you can really see her beauty, which is sometimes obscured by that awful haircut Ripley had in the second film.
She brings just the right amount of toughness and tenacity, while never losing her humanity in the face of this creature.
Speaking of which, how great does the xenomorph look here? I’m not talking about the dodgy VFX shots, which can look really added on, I’m talking about the actual “man in suit” aspect. Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. designed and created the alien effects for this film, based on H.R. Giger’s brilliant creation, and Tom Woodruff, Jr. actually donned the suit for this flick, and he hits it out of the park.
Compare how good the practical alien effects are here versus the original Alien and even Aliens. In the original film, whenever the creature had to move, it looked like absolute dogshit. Just awful, and kind of takes you out of the film. The only time it looks really genuinely effective and “alive” is when it reaches its arms out to scare the shit out of Tom Skerritt.
In the second film, they moved better for the most part, especially the Queen, but still had awkward, uncomfortably goofy movements as well. Specifically referring to when the Marines first enter the base and come upon the aliens and one of them jumps out of the wall to grab the female Marine. It looks stupid.
So while the VFX in Alien 3 wasn’t really up to the challenge of a “dog” alien, the practical alien effects are the best in the series, bar none. It just looks fantastic, and moves like a real creature. When you’re watching the movie, it’s hard to believe some of those shots are a guy in a suit. It looks incredibly scary and realistic.
One part of the movie where the VFX looks incredible is part of my Favorite Scene in the film. Ripley has convinced Superintendent Andrews, the guy in charge of the prison, to cremate the bodies of Newt and Hicks, after ginning up some fake cholera scare with the help of Clemens.
I love the spiel Andrews gives, “ashes to ashes, dust… to dust!” and really love the speech by Dillon, played by the great Charles S. Dutton. All of this is intercut with the birth of the alien after gestating inside a dog belonging to one of the prisoners. This flick introduced the idea that the alien takes on the characteristics of whatever host the facehugger was able to implant within.
Thus far, we’ve only seen aliens that came out of humans.
This was the first time we saw an alien birthed from an animal, and it moves on all fours like a dog. While the chestburster here seems fairly grown up, I can let it slide because the effect looks so goddamned good. Gillis and Woodruff, Jr. did an insane job here. The alien has never looked better.
Take my Favorite Shot in the whole picture, the shot this film is known by, namely when the xenomorph confronts Ripley for the first time in the film, and we get that iconic CU two shot of the alien and Ripley as it bares its secondary mouth, barely leaving any space between it and Ripley’s terrified face.
It’s so good, and fairly obvious why they used this image to promote the film. In the context of the film it’s interesting, because after doing this, the alien just runs away, it doesn’t kill Ripley.
And why doesn’t it kill Ripley?
Because it is later revealed she has an Alien Queen gestating inside her, and the alien doesn’t want to jeopardize the eventual birth of this Queen. It gets a little wonky if you think about this too much, so best to just go with it. Let’s not quibble over how there were eggs on the Sulaco, or how the facehugger that supposedly implanted the Queen in Ripley is still alive to plant another embryo in the dog.
Who cares, it’s dope!
Yes, I would usually care about this kind of shit, but I just don’t here. I don’t know why, but I just go with it.
Sue me.
I do like the misdirect here where Ripley feeling like shit the whole movie is explained by the violent, unplanned interruption of her hypersleep in the cryotube, when in fact it is really because of the Queen growing inside her.
The tension is ramped up once we find this out, as it is revealed the company, Weyland-Yutani, knows everything that went down on the Sulaco and the EEV, and that Ripley is carrying a Queen because she used the EEV’s scanning equipment, which relays all that info back to the very people she’s looking to hide it from.
As we recall from the previous two films, the company doesn’t give a fuck about its human capital, they only care about the xenomorph and its possibilities as a bio-weapon.
After the prisoners fail to capture the alien in some cargo hold, they eventually devise a plan to trap it in the molten lead works, where they will pour hot lead on the creature, neutralizing it for good.
Here we get our first look at “alien vision” as the xenomorph chases these guys down various shafts and pathways, with doors being closed behind it, all leading it to one place.
The plan doesn’t go smoothly, and nearly all of them die over the course of the effort, including Charles S. Dutton’s Dillon, who “fights” the creature in an attempt to hold it there long enough to get the hot lead in place. Morse is the only prisoner to survive, and he douses Dillon and the creature in the scalding liquid metal, but the alien is not killed by this.
It jumps out, and as it makes its way for our two remaining heroes, Morse notices the sprinklers, and screams for Ripley to turn them on, as the cold water mixing with the molten lead will crack the thing into a million pieces, which it does, set brilliantly to Goldenthal’s genius score.
But while all this was going down, we’ve seen the company getting close to Fury 161 and enter the prison facility just as Ripley and Morse kill the alien.
And who shows up as part of the company’s coterie, none other than Bishop himself! Ripley thinks he’s another android, same model as the Bishop she knew (LOVE the scene with her and a damaged Bishop. Lance Henriksen is FANTASTIC in the role), but this Bishop says he is not an android, but rather Bishop’s original designer, and that he’s here to show Ripley a friendly face, and let her know the company wants to save her and kill the thing growing inside her.
Ripley is too smart for that shit, tells him no, and instead decides to commit suicide, killing her and the Alien Queen who bursts out of her chest mid-fall into the molten leadworks. Love the rack focus from the metal fence to Ripley falling backward with her arms outstretched in a Christ-like pose.
Love the full circle nature of this, how Ripley was first witness to the chestburster in Alien and is now a victim herself. Also love how the main character in a major studio trilogy in a film designed to be a summer blockbuster KILLS HERSELF in order to save the day.
The fucking balls on the filmmakers and the execs at Fox to go this route should never be understated. It’s fucking amazing, and the kind of risk taking we just don’t see from the studios anymore.
Even Fox itself, who a mere 5 years later would hit the reset button on this suicide and bring Ripley back via cloning (lame as fuck) in Alien: Resurrection.
Such a shame, as this ending is sheer perfection, surprising yet inevitable. The alien took everything from Ripley, so of course it will take her life as well, the only thing she still had left to give.
It’s sublime.
As is the final moment, where we hear Ripley’s sign off from the end of the first film as we dolly around her crashed EEV unit and the cryo-tubes in the trash heap at Fury 161.
“Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo, third officer reporting. The other members of the crew—Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash, and Captain Dallas—are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.”
Cut to black.
Roll end credits.
We have just finished watching the best Alien movie ever made.
And it’s not even close.
The One Sheet
First up is this amazing preview poster, featuring a green Queen Alien embryo set against a black background with a wonderful bit of copy. Love the font they used for the title, as well as Weaver’s name and Summer 92. Great poster.
As is the official one sheet. Very similar to the preview poster, but adds different copy and full credits at the bottom. I rocked this poster on my wall for years after the film. It holds a special place in my heart.
There’s a couple of other posters, but they’re not great. One features Weaver just standing there. Boring. And another consecrates my Favorite Shot, but it seems slapdash and an afterthought. I’m totally behind using that image to advertise the film, but the way they did it here is clunky and just doesn’t work. Seems rushed.
And that does it for David Fincher’s greatest film, Alien 3. It is by no means a perfect film, it has lots of issues, but one can’t help but be swept up in its mood. Nothing else quite feels like this film, not any other Alien film, and certainly not any other Fincher film.
It’s quite rare to make such a unique film as this, even rarer for it to be the third film in a franchise.
Perhaps, way back when, as a simple 16 year old film buff, I had a sense of just how special this flick was before I’d even seen it. For some reason, me and my buddy, Altos, who was both my best friend and my movie buddy (we saw everything together), decided ahead of time that we’d sit through the film twice on opening day.
That is, watch the film, then sit and wait for the next showing, and watch it again. We’d never done anything like that, before or since. But did it we did for Alien 3, and I think that’s where the magic comes in. You see, both of us liked the film after that first showing, but we didn’t love it, not yet, anyway.
No, it wasn’t until we sat there and watched it a second time, a half hour later, that the film’s greatness evinced itself. From that point on, it was one of our favorite films of all time, and we took on all haters that argued otherwise.
And we were quite lucky. We saw the film at the Quartet movie theater on Northern Boulevard in Flushing, Queens. It was playing in two theaters at the Quartet. Me and Altos saw it in one of the theaters, while a friend of his saw it in the other theater. Our showing went off without a hitch, but Altos’ friend had a horrendous experience, as the projectionist fucked up and showed the reels OUT OF ORDER!!!
The movie started in the middle, then skipped to the beginning, then the end, then the middle, and was just a complete mash up of the movie from start to end. Nothing made sense. Nothing followed. And as a result, Altos’ friend HATED the movie, thought it was the worst thing he ever saw.
Even funnier, he didn’t even realize what had happened until he spoke with Altos later! He actually thought it was supposed to be edited like that! No offense, Dwayne, but you were never the brightest bulb in the bunch.
No matter, even after seeing the movie in the proper order, he couldn’t shake the fucked up viewing and hates the movie to this day. Can you fucking imagine? Here you are, pumped to see the sequel to Aliens and the fucking projectionist ruins the whole experience?
Nightmare. Fucking nightmare.
Altos and I were VERY lucky we saw the showing we did. I think about this every time I watch the movie.
God was smiling on us that fateful May 22, 1992.
Not only because we saw the reels in the proper order, but because we somehow had the foresight to sit through the movie two times in a row, to really let the genius of the film wash over us and allow it to be absorbed into our very being.
That second showing was like a facehugger implanting the embryo of greatness within us.
Fincher may have disavowed the film, but it shall always be one of my most formative cinematic experiences. And if I ever meet Fincher, I’ll tell him exactly that.
See you in two ripples in the water…
