 |
| Someone around here sucks at math. |
You could do a whole documentary on all of the proposed ideas for Alien 3, as they are numerous and varied, so many different writers and directors attached. First, you had producers David Giler, Walter Hill, and Gordon Carroll coming up with the idea of a two-part story that would've been shot back-to-back to keep production costs down and Hicks the central character, with Ripley only having a brief appearance in the third film before returning to the front in the fourth. They approached Ridley Scott to direct but he couldn't do it because of scheduling conflicts. (I've also heard that they also considered doing an Aliens vs. Predator movie around that time, something he wasn't interested in at all.) They then went to William Gibson as writer and Renny Harlin as director. Harlin, I feel, if nothing else, would've made a movie that was more of a crowd-pleaser than what was actually made, as he knows how to make entertaining movies, be it A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, which is what got Fox's interest in him, Die Hard 2 (which I think is a really worthy sequel), Cliffhanger, and Deep Blue Sea. Plus, in not wanting to copy Scott or James Cameron, he had ideas as to where to take the series, either by going to the Aliens' home world or having them come to Earth, both of which sound entertaining. But, Gibson's script, despite being considered to have been the best idea they could've had for the movie, was deemed not interesting enough and lacking in a strong, human element, so he was let go. Harlin then brought in Eric Red, who wrote The Hitcher and Near Dark, but because he deviated too far from the pitch that the producers originally came up with, he was let go (he went on to call that script he wrote complete garbage that came about because of too much interference and a rushed schedule. After then abandoning the two movie idea, the studio then hired David Twohy and he came up with the initial concept of a prison planet, although by this point, Harlin decided he'd had enough, and felt that Twohy's idea wasn't going to be different enough to get him interested, so he left. Around that time, studio president Joe Roth insisted that Ripley be made the star again, referring to her as the centerpiece of the series, and so they struck a deal with Sigourney Weaver, to where she not only got a fair amount of money but was also made co-producer on the movie and insisted on there being no guns, as she had a big problem with that in Aliens (that attitude of hers makes me roll my eyes, but whatever).
One of the more interesting ideas for the movie came when they brought on Vincent Ward to both come up with the story and direct (David Twohy was not happy when he learned that they'd went behind his back Ward and angrily left). On the making of documentary, Ward, who's quite a surreal visualist filmmaker, judging from his movies The Navigator and What Dreams May Come, describes his idea, which was for Ripley to end up on a wooden planet inhabited by an order of monks and for them to think this is a type of spiritual trial for the bad things they've done, with Ripley's presence being a test of their vow of celibacy. The monks also come to see the Alien as the devil and, most significantly, Ward had Ripley become impregnated by it and decide to ultimately sacrifice herself at the end (Weaver was, by this point, ready to move on from the series and would only do it if Ripley died). Opinion on Ward's idea has been varied among fans of the series, with some seeing it as too weird and out there, departing from the established more grounded science fiction of the series, which was the problem some of the people at Fox had with it, but I think it sounds pretty cool, especially based on some of the concept art Ward came up with that was shown in the documentary. But, Ward left because he claimed that, even though the studio originally approved of his idea, and with money having already been spent on beginning production designs based on his story, which was being refined into a screenplay by another writer, they had a meeting with him and demanded a list of changes, which he refused. Since the final film, which was ultimately written by Giler and Hill, does follow the basic structure of Ward's story (ultimately being a combination of it and Twohy's prison planet idea), he retains some credit on it.
Before we delve into the movie itself, starting with the characters, let's call out this elephant in the room right now: killing of Hicks and Newt at the very beginning. No matter what your personal opinion of Aliens is, and I say that because I know someone who doesn't really care for it, you have to admit that was a really dumb and dismissive way to go. I must confess that I didn't really dwell on it that much when I first saw the movie but, the more I did think about it and read what others felt about it, I came to realize that it wasn't a good idea. Not only is it a complete waste of two really likable characters but it's also a slap in the face to fans of the previous film, as it makes everything they went through, especially Ripley's going back to get Newt and defending her from the Alien Queen, rather meaningless in hindsight. I still enjoy Aliens a lot, including the climax, but whenever I watch it, the beginning of this film is always in the back of my mind. If they wanted to make Ripley the main character again, going on Sigourney Weaver's idea that she's a solitary, aloof character at heart, they could've at least had Hicks and Newt live, maybe by coming up with a story where they went back to Earth, while Ripley has to either deal with another Alien threat somewhere else or is sent to Fiorina 161 as punishment by the company for seemingly completely wiping out their chances to acquire one of the Aliens as a weapon, not knowing that one has somehow ended up there. I'm grasping at straws in coming up with a scenario like that but I would much rather have them be alive and well somewhere than be killed of unceremoniously at the beginning here, particularly given what becomes of Newt's body after her death. What's more, according to Michael Biehn, he overheard while he was on another movie that they had a fake body of Hicks with a big hole in his chest, as if the Alien had come out of him (this must've been before they came up with the idea of the Alien being a different type of creature than its predecessors). Biehn, who was already irritated when he heard Hicks wasn't even in the movie, called his agent about it and they threatened to sue if they went ahead with that. After refusing to accept any money to allow them do it (I love how Biehn, in the documentary when he's talking about this, then mentions, "Boy, I was really stupid back then,"), they then asked if they could his photograph on the computer screen and Biehn said, "Now, you can pay me." It was just a bad situation all-around and it's small wonder why people have been hoping to retcon this movie ever since it was released solely for that reason.
As bad as their fate is, though, Ripley's is far from better. After having been through what can only be described as a couple of different levels of hell in the previous movies, she's then dropped into the lowest level imaginable and remains there for the entire film. For me, Ripley's story ended with Aliens, as she went back to LV-426, literally conquered her demons, and ended up with a surrogate family to replace the one she'd lost after having been drifting out in space for decades following the events of the first film. To have her then wake up on this awful prison planet, full of a bunch murderous, vile men, and to learn that the others are dead seems ungodly cruel to me, and it just gets worse because she spends the first part of the story full of fear over what might have happened to cause them to crash. Literally, that's how it unfolds for her: she regains consciousness after the escape pod crash, feels awful due to being jolted out of hyper-sleep in such a way, is told that the others didn't survive, learns of the gruesome details of their respective deaths, and then, finds evidence that there might've been an Alien aboard. Fearing that Newt may be carrying an embryo, she has to examine her corpse, which you can tell is soul-crushing for her, as she silently says, "Forgive me," to her for failing to protect her, and then, to be sure, reluctantly asks Clemens, the doctor there, to perform an autopsy. Once that's done and no embryo is found, and after she has Hicks and Newt's bodies be cremated (again, she's absolutely destroyed at having to do this, with tears running out of her eyes and her nose bleeding from anguish), her fears should be put to rest, but she still has to deal with being stuck on a prison planet with a bunch of murderers, rapists, and child molesters. Fortunately, she finds one friendly, empathetic soul in the form of Clemens, whom she becomes very close to rather quickly. I've heard some criticisms about her sleeping with him so soon after Hicks and Newt's "funeral" but I've always seen it as her having had time to grieve, as it isn't made clear how much time passed between then and when we see her again, and I think at that point, she needs some warm affection from someone since, as she says, "I've been out here a long time." When she overhears Aaron, the assistant to the prison's superintendent, tell Clemens over the intercom that something's happened to one of the inmates, her fears start to flare up again and she tracks down what's left of Bishop so he can access the escape pod's flight recorder. He then confirms her worst fears: there was an Alien aboard the ship and Weyland-Yutani knows all about it, as everything was transmitted back to the company. And when she overhears another prisoner, Golic, raving about a "dragon" that killed two others, she knows for sure that the Alien is on the planet with them. But, like before, she's disbelieved by the one in charge, is confined to the infirmary, and is reluctant to tell Clemens for fear of him thinking she's crazy too (you'd think she'd know that she can at least trust him). Too bad, too, because the Alien then makes its presence known by killing Clemens as well as Superintendent Andrews and Ripley, once again, has become the reluctant leader for those around her.
Every time I think of Alien 3, the first thing that comes to mind is Ripley with a shaved head, which she does because of the planet's lice problem. Not only is it a memorable image and only that definitely gets your attention, as it did me when I saw first saw the old VHS box when I was a kid, but it accentuates the weariness and emotional drain that the character is going through by this point. After Clemens has been killed and she's forced to help Dillon rally the other inmates to fight the Alien, Ripley's life has been all but destroyed and I could imagine that she wants to kill it not for her own survival or for these prisoners but rather just to keep Weyland-Yutani, whom she now knows is sending a ship for "her," from getting their hands on it. In fact, in the Assembly Cut, there's an added bit of dialogue where, after Morse suggests killing her since she's the one who brought the Alien, Ripley says she'd fine with that. She has nothing to lose. And when she confronts the Alien by herself later, she says, "You've been in my life so long, I can't remember anything else." But, amazingly, this still isn't the worst of her situation, as she continues to fill horribly ill and decides to scan herself in the escape pod to search for signs of internal bleeding, only to learn that she herself is carrying an Alien embryo; what's more, it's a Queen. Definitely not wanting the company to get their hands on that, Ripley attempts to dissuade them from coming to the planet and when that doesn't work, tries to get the Alien and later Dillon to kill her, since she's doomed anyway. The Alien, however, won't harm her since it can sense the Queen inside her, and Dillon decides to use that fact as a way to trap and kill it, promising to take care of her as soon as it's been dealt with. In helping to rally the other prisoners to help them in fighting the Alien, Ripley tells them, "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? You really think they're gonna let you interfere with their plans for this thing? They think we're... we're crud. And they don't give a fuck about one friend of yours that's... that's died! Not one!" After a lot more deaths, frustration, and Dillon having to sacrifice himself, Ripley manages to kill the Alien, only to be confronted by the team Weyland-Yutani sent, including a Bishop lookalike who claims to be the man who designed it after his likeness. He promises to take her back, remove the embryo, and destroy it, but Ripley, knowing full-well that she can't trust the company, refuses and sacrifices herself along with the Queen, dropping backwards into the blast furnace.
A massive problem with the inmates who make up the supporting cast is that, when things really start going down and the Alien is chasing throughout the tunnels in the foundry's basement, I have a major problem telling who's who. They're all bald men, most of them are British, and a lot of them look alike, making it very hard to keep track of who they are. A few of them do stick out, though. After Dillon, the most notable one is Morse (Danny Webb), mainly because he comes across as the most violent and aggressive, even amongst this group. He's very antagonistic towards Ripley, at one point suggesting they kill her in retaliation for her bringing the Alien with her, and he's also the one who really enforces the "85" thing towards Aaron. After their plan to catch the Alien has gone horribly awry, Morse is panicking and yammering on about the Alien, and when Aaron tells him to stop causing panic amongst the others, he snarls back at him, "Panic? You're so fucking stupid, you wouldn't know how to spell it!" and says that they should panic. According to Dillon, he apparently made a deal with God to live forever, and he's also the one who first turns over to the final plan, exclaiming, "Fuck it! Let's go for it!" Most notably, though, he's the only who's left alive by the end of the movie, having helped Ripley kill the Alien and, despite being shot in the leg, assisting her in committing suicide. Another memorable one is Golic (Paul McGann), the one who's accused of killing two other inmates and ends up confined in the infirmary with Ripley and Clemens to keep him from causing panic with his raving about a "dragon." In all honesty, though, while he's significantly the first one to see the Alien and live, there's a lot more to him in the Assembly Cut, which I'll go into when we talk about it; in the theatrical version, after the Alien kills Clemens, Golic completely disappears and is never seen again. You do get an idea that, despite his seemingly benign and simple-minded nature, he's one of the more vile and unstable of the prisoners, with Andrews saying that he's committed some brutal murders in his time, to which Golic smiles, and even Dillon calls him crazy. And when Ripley is sitting across from him in the infirmary, he starts going on about pretty girls that he used to know and that they once liked, giving disturbing hints as to the nature of his crimes. But, again, that's virtually all you get in the theatrical version.
As for the others, there are some who stand out, albeit only vaguely in the case of some. Frank (Carl Chase) is the sneering guy who enters the escape pod to investigate after it's crashed and finds that Ripley is the only one inside who's still alive. When they're trying to drive the Alien out of the facility's air tunnels with explosive chemicals, its killing him causes the explosive chain reaction that gets a lot of people killed. Murphy (Christopher Fairbank) is the guy whose dog, Spike, becomes the host for the Alien and, fittingly, he's the first one to be killed by it when it attacks him while he's cleaning one of the air tunnels (I also remember him for singing like a really bad British rock star). Boggs (Leon Herbert) and Rains (Christopher John Fields) are two whose deaths are blamed on Golic since he was down there with them: Boggs is the tall black guy with the deep, gruff voice who, when being admonished for swearing, says, "It's alright to say 'shit.' It ain't against God," and Rains is another one of the many British guys running around. Fortunately, he wears a hat, which makes him stand out a little bit. Gregor (Peter Guinness) is one of the prisoners who attempt to rape Ripley and, as a result of badly botched attempt to trap the Alien that results in a massive explosion, spends the rest of the movie with his head bandaged. He's one of the last ones to get killed after he and Morse slam into each other while running through the tunnels in a panic during the climax. I recognize Junior (Holt McCallany) because of the tear-drop tattoo under his right eye and that he's the leader of the group that tries to rape Ripley. Eric (Niall Buggy) is the one who almost ruins their chances of trapping the Alien within the lead mold by panicking and attempting to throw the lever that activates the piston; Ripley manages to stop him. Jude (Vincenzo Nicoli) is another hat-wearing inmate who also has a pretty unique look to him. Arthur (Deobia Oparei) is the only other black guy in the group. Clive (Clive Mantle) is this big, burly, mean-looking guy. And finally, I'm able to keep track of David because he's played by Pete Postlethwaite), who I know and like from other movies and also because he had a pretty unique look about him as well. He's the one who tells Ripley that they call Aaron "85" because it's his IQ. There are some other inmates but your guess is as good as mine as to who they are, what they do, and when they get killed, and their similarities and the rapid editing and camera movements often cause me to lose track of even those I do know (God, talking about the action scenes, especially the climax, is going to be a nightmare).
Finally, you have the return of Lance Henriksen, who actually has two roles. First, he voices Bishop when Ripley temporarily reactivates what's left of him to find out what happened on the Sulaco. While he's obviously in a lot of pain during these scenes, he still manages to have a sense of humor, calling himself a "glorified toaster" and commenting her on her new haircut. He not only confirms for her that there was an Alien onboard with them but that Weyland-Yutani knows all about it. Being in so much pain, Bishop asks Ripley to disconnect him permanently, citing that since he's so badly damaged that he'll never top of the line again, he'd rather be nothing. Ripley grants his wish, effectively killing him (see, everybody from the previous movie is dead by the end of this one). Henriksen turns up again at the end as a character listed as "Bishop II," the leader of the team sent to retrieve her who says that he designed the Bishop android after himself. He promises to take Ripley back, remove the Alien Queen embryo inside her, and destroy it, saying that he agrees with her that it's too dangerous to be kept alive. Ripley, of course, doesn't buy this baloney and, when she separates herself and Morse so she can kill herself, Bishop II tries to make her reconsider. He becomes very upset when one of the soldiers shoots Morse in the leg, saying that there was no reason for it, and when Ripley's preparing for her jump, he reveals his true purpose by pleading with her, "Think of all we could learn from it. It's the chance of a lifetime! You must let me have it! It's a magnificent specimen." But, his pleas fall on deaf ears and he leaves empty-handed. A big controversy surrounding this character is the question of whether or not he really was an android, as Aaron calls him one before he bashes him in the head with a pipe but, in the Assembly Cut, there's a line of dialogue where he says he isn't. Given that he's bleeding red blood and is clearly in pain from being hit, it looks pretty clear that he is human, although the way his ear is hanging off the side of his head after he gets hit looks a little inhuman to me (I've never been hit that hard in the ear, though, so what do I know?) Ultimately, who knows whether or not David Fincher intended him to be human, and since his ideas were separate from the makers of the next film, where androids still have white blood, we can only continue to speculate.
When the movie begins, you see the 20th Century Fox logo and hear the fanfare, as usual, but then the penultimate note suddenly descends rapidly, transitioning into the film's opening piece of music and setting the tone right off the bat (yeah, this movie is so downbeat and cynical, even the Fox fanfare doesn't survive it). That's why I think this movie didn't do that well in theaters: the tone. Everything about it is so depressing and nihilistic. It starts with Hicks and Newt, these two beloved characters from the previous film, being killed off immediately, with the latter's corpse having a grisly autopsy performed on it before they're both tossed into a blast furnace for cremation; Ripley, once again, has lost everyone she cared about and is plagued by the soon realized fear that the Aliens had something to do with it; she's stuck on this horrible planet, having to stay inside a rundown, nasty prison-turned-foundry, where she's the only woman amongst a bunch of men who are either hardcore criminals or just assholes; the one man she feels she can trust and confide in is killed early on; she knows that Weyland-Yutani is sending a team that'll be more interested in the Alien than rescuing anyone; and finally, she discovers that she's carrying an Alien Queen within her, which she definitely can't let them have. Again, it's all so relentlessly bleak and depressing, and it's not helped by the visuals, which consist of an overcast, cold planet, where the temperature drops far below zero when the sun goes down, the aforementioned foundry, which has to be the most uninviting setting in this whole series, and the populace of all these bald murderers and rapists, with barcodes on the back of their heads and who constantly say the word "fuck." Seriously, when I first saw this movie, I thought it was the most vulgar film ever, as I'd never heard the f-bomb dropped so many times before. Granted, at that time I hadn't seen any movies by Quentin Tarantino or Rob Zombie, which often make this movie look downright wholesome in terms of its language, but the profanity still adds to the tone. As if that wasn't enough, you have Ripley herself shaving her head due to the planet's lice problem, the sight of what's left of Bishop tossed into a junk pile, Ripley almost getting gang-raped by some of the convicts, and so on. Aside from bits of humorous, witty dialogue and exchanges, there isn't a single bit of levity to be found here (Lance Henriksen does not like this movie because of its tone and has admitted he was only in it as a favor to Walter Hill). Now, I'm not someone who's opposed to movies that are dark and downbeat. Like I said, David Fincher has since become one of my personal favorite directors and his films are often akin to this in terms of tone, as are those of another favorite of mine, David Cronenberg. Hell, my favorite horror movie is John Carpenter's The Thing, a movie that's well-known for being far from warm and fuzzy, right down to its ending. So, I feel there is a place for these types of films but, coming off of Aliens and its satisfying climax, this is not only sad to see but falls downright mean-spirited and misguided to me.
Aside from its bleakness, the film also isn't entertaining to watch for several reasons. For one, when you combine such a downbeat, depressing and story with a slow pace and a lot of low dialogue scenes, it gets to be rather boring for me. It wouldn't be that big a problem if I was really invested in what's going on or the characters but, because so many of them are unlikable and look and sound virtually identical, it's very hard for me to do that. And again, instead of being suspenseful and exciting, the chase sequences through the tunnels are confusing as I'm trying to keep track of who's been killed and who's still alive. That leads me into another problem: the story feels stale and rehashed. Once again, we've got a lone Alien prowling around, stalking and chasing people through claustrophobic corridors and picking them off one by one; Weyland-Yutani again wants to capture it for the bio-weapons division, something that Ripley has to stop them from doing; and by the end of the movie, there's only one member of the original cast left. Finally, the movie falls victim to predictable horror film tropes. When you see Murphy cleaning an air tunnel by himself, Rains going off by himself to check on what's going on with the trail of candles he, Boggs, and Golic have left behind them, and when the prisoners are preparing to flush the Alien out of the tunnels, you know that they're about to get attacked and killed and, sure enough, that's what happens. There's even a moment during the montage where they telegraph the Alien's presence before it attacks one guy, when it could've been much better not to reveal that it's there until you get the close-up of its snarling face before it attacks. In fact, other than Clemens' unexpected and sudden death early on, nothing about this movie surprised or shocked me when I first saw it. And need I mention the parallel with numerous other horror films where you have a bunch of underdeveloped characters who you don't care about being stalked and taken out one by one? Didn't think so.
The best way to describe the foundry on Fiorina 161 is take the interior of the Nostromo from the first film, transfer it into a large complex, and make it even more battered and grimy than it was before. Like I said, it's by far the most miserable-looking setting in any of these films. Some of the sets are impressive due to their size, like the large, vertical room with chains hanging from the ceiling that Andrews assembles the prisoners in at the beginning, the large hangar past the blast furnace where the Ripley's escape pod, called an EEV is kept, the enormous room with the walkways above the furnaces, and the leadworks and interior furnaces down in the basement, but the interior of the place is still very claustrophobic and maze-like, as well as unpleasant-looking. Other than the cafeteria, which looks pretty spotless and shiny, and the okay-looking shower, the rooms are mostly dirty, dim, and downright primitive, like Andrews' office, the infirmary, and the cellblocks where the men sleep. Some of the most depressing areas are the junkyard in the middle of the place where Ripley finds what's left of Bishop, which is exposed to the planet's cold, miserable weather (given how everyone dresses, it doesn't seem like the inside is insulated that well from the cold either), and the morgue, which has a very uncomfortable, cold and clinical look to it. Seeing an autopsy performed on Newt was already upsetting enough but its occurring in a place like this makes it all the worse. The planet as a whole has a big lice problem, forcing everyone there to keep their head shaved, as well as with bugs in general, as you see when Murphy flings his coat off at one point and when Ripley smashes open a pipe, mistaking it in the dark for the Alien's head (that shot is pretty damn disgusting). Of course, the darkest and creepiest parts of the place are down in the basement, which is full of long, dimly lit tunnels, which are wetted down and have lots of cobwebs, big air tunnels with enormous fans, enormous, dark rooms, such as the one where Boggs and Rains meet their end, and the base of the leadworks where the Alien is finally killed. All of these areas in the basement have a nasty, yellow-brown color scheme to them, which adds to their skin-crawling feeling, and, again, it's such a maze that the prisoners very easily get lost during the climax when they're trying to lure the Alien into the lead mold. Besides the way it looks and feels, the place is just barely functional. There are security camera strewn throughout but the video system doesn't work, they have a bunch of flashlight but few functioning batteries (in spite of what Aaron says about them having none at all, they do find some that work), forcing them to make use of these sparking torches and candles to see where they're going for the most part, and the door controls barely work, as does the piston in the leadworks. Aaron explains that they simply don't have the resources to fix this stuff. Worst of all, the place has no weapons of any kind, aside from simple knives and axes. (The latter was, as I mentioned earlier, imposed upon the film by Sigourney Weaver, who despises guns and had a big problem with all of the weapons in Aliens. To paraphrase something that a wise man once said, if you're fighting Aliens, what are you going to use, harsh language?)
Alien 3 was made right on the cusp of CGI and digital compositing becoming prominent, so a lot of the effects work that you see was still done through the use of good old-fashioned miniatures and matte paintings. While clearly dated, most of it does look pretty good, especially the miniatures and compositing used to bring to life the planet and the foundry, such as in the shot where you see the EEV descending towards the planet (accomplished with a 3.5 foot miniature of the vehicle in front of a blue screen that was replaced with a matte painting of the planet), the shot on the surface as the EEV crashes into the nearby water, the miniatures of the cross-shaped structure (which, I have to confess, makes me go, "Subtle, Fincher,"), the crane arm moving the EEV towards the foundry, with a couple of men being projected as silhouettes atop it, the blast furnaces inside the foundry, which are shot so well that they look like real, full-scale furnaces, and the big dish when it aligns. The interior shot of the EEV detaching from the Sulaco and the camera panning through the opening to see it floating out into space also looks pretty good, and the same goes for the Sulaco miniature, the exact same one that was built for Aliens, which they borrowed back from Bob Burns and painted it brown to fit in with the film's overall visual aesthetic, and the matte shots of the planet itself, including when you see the Weyland-Yutani ship approaching it. Some have said that the blue screen shots of the furnace behind Sigourney Weaver as she falls into it at the end don't look good but I've never had a problem with them myself. The x-ray-like bio-scans that you see on monitors inside the Sulaco and the EEV are pretty impressive for the time as well, as they have a lot of nice detail in how the different layers of bone, organs, and flesh overlap each other. There are some tiny bits of early CGI in the film, like the debris flying through the air during the aforementioned crane shot and, most notably, the very quick shot of the Alien's head as it cracks before exploding at the end of the movie. Overall, save for the big wide shot of the EEV floating towards the planet where information captions about it appear onscreen, which has some very noticeable blue-screen work, as do some of the miniatures in certain shots, and a really bad one involving the Alien itself, which we'll get into shortly, the film's effects hold up pretty well and, like its predecessors, were nominated for an Oscar (didn't win this time, though).
One of the first images you see during the opening credits is an opened Alien egg attached to a wall somewhere within the Sulaco, followed up by brief glimpses of a facehugger trying to get at Newt in her hyper-sleep chamber, which eventually leads to the EEV being ejected from the ship down to the planet. It's the very basis of the story, but it also brings up a big question: where did that egg come from and how did it get aboard the ship? The most logical answer is that the Alien Queen laid it sometime during the climax in the Sulaco's hangar, but when we would she have had time to lay that thing and how could she have done it in a way that nobody knew? I suppose you could say that she laid it on the underside of the dropship she hung onto the underside of but that doesn't appear to be where the egg is in the brief shot of it. And what's more, how could she have laid an egg when she was detached from her ovipositor? Does she have another egg that remains hidden inside her body as some sort of failsafe? As for the facehugger, which we only get some very brief glimpses of (the best shot of it is a scan of it attached to a human face), how could it have impregnated both Ripley with a Queen embryo and later, Murphy's dog with the embryo of the main Alien? Did that egg hatch a special type of facehugger that contained two embryos, one of which was meant as some kind of protector for the Queen, or did two different facehuggers come out of it? Again, it's never explained and seems to fly in the face of what we, by now, know of the Aliens' life-cycle, but since the Queen was only introduced in the second film, who really knows how she works (or how any of it works, since we're talking about fictional creatures)?
The Alien was brought to life through two different methods. Like before, it was often played by a man in a well-designed suit, in this case Tom Woodruff Jr. himself, who was a veteran monster suit actor at this point and would play more Aliens in the next three films. The overall body of the suit, which was a slight redesign of the bodies in Aliens, looks good and was shot and lit really by David Fincher and his cinematographer, but the best part of it is the wonderful animatronic head, which really looks alive and threatening when it's snarling and covered in slime, as in the popular shot of it right beside Ripley's face. The other technique that they used for wide-shots of the Alien running through the tunnels or across the ceiling was a special rod-puppet of it that they composited into the shots of the live-action sets. I originally thought it was early CGI, which I know many other people have mistaken it for, but nope, other than the shadow underneath it when it's upside down on the ceiling, which was done digitally, it was a practical puppet. Unfortunately, while using it in the manner in which they did was very ambitious and, as you can see in the documentary, was very exhausting, some of the shots of it haven't aged well. Sometimes it looks good, like in the shot where they matted it in with Sigourney Weaver in the infirmary, as well as when you see it attacking some of the other actors, but other times, especially when you see it on the ceiling, it looks badly composited and is the biggest visual effect failure of the movie. More successful are the POV shots of the Alien as it chases the prisoners throughout the tunnels, where you can see that it's whipping across the floor and effortlessly clinging onto and running across the walls and ceiling.
One last piece of Alien creature effects is the Queen embryo that's gestating within Ripley, which you see twice. The first time is when she uses the EEV's bio-scanner and an image of it nestled right beside her heart is seen on the monitor. While you don't get the clearest look at it because of the damaged, scratchy nature of the image, you see enough to know that it's another good piece of work by Gillis and Woodruff, a nicely-done puppet with what has to have been a practical, beating heart next to it given the limitations of digital technology at the time. And, naturally, the other time you see it is at the end when it comes out of her chest as she's falling into the blast furnace. It's another well-done chestburster effect and they were able to make it feel like a real, squealing creature and actually develop some sympathy for it as she holds it to her chest, dragging it down to its death with her just seconds after it was born.
While the previous two films had instances of gory violence, particularly in the case of the two chestburster scenes, but they weren't overly gory movies. Not surprisingly, since it was directed by the man who would go on to do Se7en, Alien 3 is a much more visceral film in terms of its violence. Very early on, you have the autopsy on Newt's corpse which, even though they don't show you big, graphic shots of her body being cut open (the original cut of it, however, was so gory that it made makeup artist Greg Cannom physically ill when he saw it), is very cringe-inducing with the sound of the scalpel cutting her skin, the cutaways of blood mixing with running streams of water, her ribs cracking from this hideous instrument that Clemens uses to open her chest, and a brief shot inside of her chest when he pulls it open. The chestburster scene with Murphy's Rottweiler, Spike, is extremely gory as well, much more than the scene in the original Alien, as you see it bursting its way out of the poor dog, blood flooding the floor, the chestburster itself being completely covered in blood and body fluids, which slide off of it as it raises up and sticks its tongue out, and you see the aftermath of the dead dog with a big, bloody hole in his chest. The Alien's attacks on the characters, although edited quickly for the most part, are also pretty bloody, as Murphy gets acid sprayed in his face, causing him to tumble backwards and get shredded apart in the fan at the other end of the tunnel he's in; Golic gets sprayed in the face with Boggs' blood when he gets killed right in front of him and the Alien can be seen snarling at him with blood around its mouth; Clemens gets a chunk of his head sliced off by the tongue and you see part of it land in some nearby water; and during the climax, throats get torn out, heads get stabbed clean through, more people get munched on, and Morse gets sprayed with Gregor's blood. And that's to say nothing of the nasty-looking fate of Hicks, the bloody gunshot to the leg Morse receives, Aaron getting to shot to bits, and the Queen chestburster ripping a nasty hole in Ripley before they fall down into the blast furnace. Pretty gruesome stuff all-around, and ironically, the Alien's own death, which involves its head bursting, is one of the least gory onscreen deaths in the movie!
As the opening credits roll, we keep cutting back and forth between them and the Sulaco as it travels through space on its way back to Earth. We see Ripley and the others in their hyper-sleep chambers, a hatched Alien egg somewhere aboard the ship, a facehugger approaching and crawling up the side of Newt's tube, cracking the glass and cutting itself in the process, its acid blood burning through the floor and shorting out electrics beneath it. Smoke seeps up into the room, setting off the alarm, while a computer monitor shows an image of the facehugger attached to a human skull. A female, computerized voice warns of a fire in the compartment and tells all personnel to get to the Emergency Escape Vehicle, or EEV, which will detach from the main ship in twenty seconds. A louder, emergency alarm begins blaring, as Ripley is jolted out of hibernation, while something explodes and fire whooshes throughout the interior of the Sulaco. Her cryo-tube is sent down into the EEV with the others and the lifeboat is detached from the ship, floating out into space, where it then drifts towards Fiorina "Fury" 161. Upon entering the atmosphere, it shoots down like a meteorite and hits the ocean just across from the foundry. A report on the crash is displayed on a computer screen, and after the EEV has been found, with Ripley still alive inside it, we see Clemens preparing to nurse her back to health in his infirmary, giving her oxygen, and removing her clothes to continue cleaning her, while Hicks and Newt are shown to be dead and Bishop smashed up beyond repair. While the EEV is being hoisted to the foundry on a crane, Murphy's dog, Spike, is shown barking at the inside of the vehicle, and a shot shows a facehugger crawling down from the ceiling, approaching him. The sequence ends with the sun setting behind the planet, blanketing it in darkness: the nightmare has begun.
Upon awakening and hearing that she's the sole survivor, Ripley has Clemens take her to the EEV and when she sees the aftermath of the crash inside, he tells her exactly what happened to the others. Distraught over it, Ripley notices a telltale burn on the side of Newt's cryo-tube and asks to be taken to the morgue so she can inspect Newt's body. Elsewhere, Murphy angrily finds Spike, who's been missing for a while, only to see that he's hurt. Walking up to him, he sees bloody marks on his face and asks if somebody did this to him. He then wonders who would do such a thing to a dog (to which, even though I know he's wrong, I think, "Well, think of the types of people who live here with you,"). At the morgue, Ripley is shown Newt's body and asks for a moment alone with her, which Clemens allows. Once alone, Ripley closes Newt's eyes and, after quietly saying, "Forgive me," feels and presses into her neck and chest and opens her mouth to look inside. When the inmate assisting Clemens asks what she's doing, he rejoins her and asks if it's okay. Ripley then says that they must do an autopsy to be sure of how she died, citing a possible contagion of cholera. Even though there hasn't been a reported case of cholera in 200 years, Clemens reluctantly agrees to the autopsy. In the next scene he, offcamera, cuts through Newt's skin with a scalpel, exposing the interior and showing Ripley that everything's in place and that there's no indication of disease. She then asks him to open up the chest and he takes a wicked-looking, bladed instrument and jams several times into Newt's chest, cracking the bones. Tossing the bloody instrument onto the tray, he pulls open the chest to reveal a brief shot of her lungs, which are filled from fluid due to her drowning in her cryo-tube, as he said. Clemens then asks to know what Ripley's really looking for, but before she can answer, Superintendent Andrews and Aaron come through the door. When he asks what's going on, Clemens tells Andrews that his autopsy has shown no sign of contagion, while the superintendent then berates him for allowing Ripley to "parade in front of the prisoners" and for not keeping him informed of any change in her physical condition. Ripley then says that they have to cremate the bodies, and while Andrews is at first reluctant to allow it, when Clemens tells him that they can't be absolutely sure there's no sign of disease without proper laboratory tests and that an outbreak of cholera wouldn't look too good on a report, he agrees. After warning Ripley of the prisoners and how dangerous her presence could make them, Andrews and Aaron depart, the former tells Clemens that he'll leave the details of the cremation up to him.
In the next scene, the blast furnace is fired up and the bodies, after being wrapped up, are prepared to be tossed down into them from a walkway above. Everyone gathers and Andrews begins reading a prayer for them, while nearby, Spike is pacing back and forth nervously. As the prayers go on and the inmates prepare to toss the bodies, Spike's pacing accelerates and he begins to growl and bark. Once Andrews is finished, Dillon makes his presence known and begins giving a more sincere, meaningful eulogy: "Why? Why are the innocent punished?" Spike begins to convulse violently and falls over onto the floor, whining in pain. "Why the sacrifice? Why the pain?" Spike's growling and whining grow more intense, as he rolls back and forth on the floor. "There aren't any promises. Nothing certain." Spike continues to snarl and growl. "Only that some get called, some get saved. She won't ever know the hardship and grief for those of us left behind." Spike's chest punches forward rapidly. "We commit these bodies to the void with a glad heart." They're then dropped off the walkway and disappear into the furnace, Ripley shedding a tear, as Spike's chest is pushed and stretched near its breaking point. "For within each seed, there is the promise of a flower...", Spike's chest explodes and sends blood splashing on the wall and across the floor, as a newborn Alien drops down to it as well. Ripley's nose bleeds from her grief, as Dillon continues, "...and within each death, no matter how small, there's always a new life. A new beginning." The Alien rises to its feet, blood and innards sliding off of it. "Amen." The Alien's tongue sticks out of its mouth and it gurgles, skittering off into the depths of the foundry, while the "funeral" concludes.
Later, in an air tunnel with a large, spinning fan at the end of it, Murphy is scraping grime off of the walls while loudly singing, when he steps on something wet and sticky. Looking down, he sees and picks up a wet, flimsy piece of material that, unbeknownst to him, is the Alien's shed skin. Disgusted, he drops it and is about to get back to work, when he notices movement in a small hole in the wall down by the floor. Thinking it to be Spike, he leans in for a closer look, calling for him, when the Alien stirs and slowly sits up. Before Murphy knows what happened, he's in the right eye with acid, sending him tumbling backwards into the wall behind him and rolling through the tunnel yelling in pain. He tumbles right into the fan and is immediately sliced into hundreds of bloody pieces.
Outside in the cold and rain, Ripley fetches what's left of Bishop from a junk-pile and starts to head back in, only to be confronted by three of the inmates. Knowing exactly what's going on, she turns around, walks back outside, and heads to another entrance, the inmates following her. The inmate with a teardrop tattoo beneath his eye, Junior, pops up there and smiles at her. Ripley then tries to walk past him but he blocks her path, and when she tries to force her way past him, he shoves her back and she hits a bit of railing behind her. Hanging over it, she's jumped by the other inmates, who tell her to shut up, and hold her in place as she struggles. Junior whips out a knife and cuts into the back off her outfit, as Ripley struggles to get free, with Gregor clutching her chin and shushing her. Junior puts on a pair of red goggles and lets out a ferocious yell as he prepares to have his way with her. But, he's then pulled around and punched in the chin by Dillon. The other inmates immediately let Ripley go and try to run for it, and after asking her if she's okay, Dillon proceeds to brutally discipline them, beating them with a metal pipe, bashing one numerous times with it. He tells Ripley to take off while he "reeducates" them on some matters of spirit. Before she leaves, though, Ripley doles out some punishment of her own by punching Gregor right in the face when he tries to crawl away in front of her.
Down in the basement, inmates Boggs, Rains, and Golic are standing around in an enormous, dark room, at the end of a long line of candles, using electric torches to further illuminate their surroundings. (I used to not know what they're doing but I've now learned that they're using the number of candles to figure out how big the compartment they're standing in is.) As they stand there, Rains points out something strange: drafts of air coming from back through the tunnel, causing the candles' flames to flicker and, in some cases, blow out. Boggs figures that it must be air blowing from the closest vent shaft and then realizes that if they all go out, they're not going to know where they are. Rains volunteers to go back and relight the ones that have gone out and borrows Golic's torch to see where he's going. Walking up to the entrance of another hallway on the right, Rains hears a metal drum get knocked over and follows the noise, asking, "Okay, who're the comedians?" He walks quite a ways down the hall before stopping and the camera then pans from a close-up of his feet to liquid dripping on the floor right next to him. Seeing it, he illuminates the spot with his torch and the Alien rises up in front of him and lets out a screech before attacking. Hearing both it and the sound of Rains struggling, Boggs and Golic peek around the corner and when they see what's going on, they run for it. They head for the nearest air tunnel, taking the grating off, and Boggs gives Golic his torch, letting him lead the way as they scramble through, as the Alien continues to have its way with Rains. After running through the tunnels and rounding some corners, they end up in a room with a slightly ajar, large door and finds Rains' brutalized body slumped against the wall to the left of it. As Golic tries to process what he's seeing, Boggs scans the room with his eyes and torch, when he hears a clang above him. Peering up, the Alien then swings down at him from a ledge and pulls him up. Boggs struggles in its grip, dropping his torch, and screams for Golic to help him. Grabbing the torch, Golic then looks up right as the Alien rips Boggs' throat out, splashing him in the face with his blood. After a moment of shock from this, Golic looks up and sees the Alien snarl at him, causing him to panic and run out through the door.
In the infirmary, Ripley manages to reactivate Bishop and learn from him that an Alien was onboard the Sulaco with them, as well as that Weyland-Yutani knows what happened as everything that was recorded got sent back to their headquarters through the computer. Bishop, being in pain and knowing that he's too far gone to be brought back to top of the line, asks her to permanently disconnect him, which she does. Behind her, Clemens and Dillon carry a raving, blood-covered Golic into the room, followed by Andrews and Aaron. As he goes on about a dragon killing Boggs and Rains, Andrews pronounces him as completely mad and orders Aaron to keep him separated from the others in order to keep him from panicking them. Dillon continues trying to get him to tell what happened to Boggs and Rains but as he continues raving, Andrews comes to the conclusion that he murdered them, an accusation Dillon doesn't appreciate. Ripley then makes her presence known and asks to talk to Golic about the dragon, but Andrews isn't having it, telling her he's not interested in her opinion since she's unaware that Golic is a brutal murderer, a fact that Dillon does confirm. She then decides to take to Andrews, who says he'll be delighted to have a little chat once he's finished with his duties... and you already know how well that goes.
Later on in the infirmary, after Clemens has confessed his tragic backstory and how he ended up on Fiorina to Ripley, he decides to give her an injection of one of his "private cocktails." As he's injecting her, Ripley looks away for a minute and then looks behind Clemens to see a dark silhouette behind the plastic curtain separating them from Golic, who's beginning to become hysterical at what he's seeing. Ripley pulls away and Clemens swings around as the Alien rips through the curtain and grabs his head. It pulls him, ripping the curtain and slamming him into a dish of instruments, with Ripley backing away across the floor in the chaos and Golic continuing to writhe hysterically. Holding him in place, it then rips a chunk out of the right side of his cranium with its tongue and drops his body, which is wrapped up in the plastic. Ripley backs up against the wall, as the Alien crawls towards her and gets right up to her face, snarling when she gasps in fear. It opens its mouth and sticks its tongue out towards her face, but instead of killing her, it inexplicably retracts its tongue and pulls away from her. It grabs Clemens' body and takes it up into the air shaft in the ceiling. Ripley rushes down the halls towards the cafeteria, where Andrews is holding another rumor control meeting, mainly to organize a search party for Boggs and Rains' bodies. Ripley then runs through the doorway, yelling, "It's here! It got Clemens!" Andrews tells her to stop raving but when she continues insisting, Andrews orders Aaron to take Ripley back to the infirmary, when the Alien drops down from an open vent shaft above him and drags him up into it. This immediately panics the inmates, who begin scrambling over their seats, as blood rains down onto the floor from the shaft and Andrews' stress ball falls out onto the floor. Morse, who's brandishing a chair as a weapon, sums up everyone's feelings perfectly when he yells, "Fuck!" Before the next scene starts, Jude can be seen mopping up the blood on the floor, all the while keeping an eye on the air shaft.
Ripley and Aaron come up with a plan to drive the Alien out of the ventilation shaft it's lurking in and trap it in a toxic waste disposal unit that it can't possibly get out of. They then take out barrels of quinitricetyline, a volatile, explosive liquid and, with Dillon and the other inmates' help, begin coating the tunnels and the air shafts with it. While working in the airshafts, David notices a torn bit of grating dripping with slime, while Aaron shows two of the inmates a flashlight signal he'll use to tell them when to light the fire. Elsewhere, on a ladder in one of the airshafts, Frank drops his mining flare on the edge of an opening below and, putting his gas can of quinitricetyline on the ledge above him, climbs down to get it. Unbeknownst to him, the Alien peers over the ledge down at him as he grabs for the flare, and once he's got it, he climbs back up the ladder. That's when the Alien strikes, grabbing him and causing him to drop the can in his struggling, followed up by the flare. As Ripley and Dillon hear his screams, a slow-motion shot shows the flare heading right for the spilled quinitricetyline, which the inmate Arthur seems to notice but he's unable to say anything before it hits. It sets off a massive explosion instantaneously, and Aaron screams, "Wait for the fucking signal!", when the blast shakes the tunnel in front of him and causes him to drop to the floor. The blast then causes a chain reaction in the tunnels coated with the chemical, sending a wall of fire at Ripley and Dillon that they just barely manage to dodge, as well as searing the airshaft, immolating one guy. Ripley and Dillon try to find the sprinklers, as another man is sent flying, his back on fire, and Aaron and the others run for it. The burning man stumbles amongst some barrels, while more men fall out of the airshafts and control panels across the wall spark and short out, contributing to more explosions, as a man with the entire right side of his back and arm burning stumbles into a tunnel. Dillon smashes open the panel containing the button for the sprinklers and the sudden shift in temperature causes the now empty cans to split open. After a dissolve, Dillon, Morse, Ripley, and Aaron find another body brings the death count to ten.
During the heated conversation between the four of them, Ripley, feeling ill, slips away to the EEV and, stripping down to a tank-top and shorts, prepares to use is its bio-scanner to search for signs of hemorrhaging. Aaron tracks her down as she gets into place and she asks him to run the keyboard for the scanner. Crawling inside, he takes the keyboard and Ripley tells him what button to push. As the scanner goes over her, they wait for it to run a cycle, and on the monitor, Aaron sees a scratchy, x-ray image of Ripley's insides. She tells him to hit "Enhancement" and the scanner runs back over her. Ripley tells Aaron to keep looking at the monitor but he's not exactly sure what he's supposed to be looking for, nor does he know how to read what he's looking at. Ripley tells him hemorrhaging will look like but, as she talks, the view of the monitor goes through her ribcage to reveal what looks like a baby Alien nestled beside her heart. Noticing the look on his face when he sees this, Ripley asks him what he sees and he tells her that he thinks one's inside her. Horrified and unable to comprehend what she just heard, Ripley asks what it looks like and Aaron, watching the computer scan the creature's tissue and DNA, unable to find a match, simply says, "Horrible." Per her requests, Aaron reluctantly freezes the image and when she sees it, all she can do is break down in tears.
Knowing that she's doomed, Ripley heads down into the basement by herself to try to find and confront the Alien. Walking in, armed with only a flashlight, she finds no sign of it upon investigating the sound of metal creaking and laments, "Where are you when I need you?" Hearing something in the corridor to her left, Ripley illuminates the creepy, cobweb-filled, wet tunnel, and says to herself, "Don't be afraid. I'm part of the family," before grabbing a nearby pipe and heading on in. Making her way through the darkness, she rounds a corner and, again hearing something, she shines her flashlight deeper in and also illuminates a shaft up above her. She then sees it laying on the floor in front of the nearby wall and slowly approaches it. Telling it, "Now do something for me. It's easy. Just... just do what you do," and then jabs its head with her rod, only to punch a hole in a pipe that dumps out hoards of disgusting insects. Her mind was playing tricks on her (although before that, the real Alien suit was used to complete the illusion). Dropping the rod, she frantically shines her flashlight around the room, trying to find the Alien, when it's revealed to have been lying on a shelf behind her, sleeping. Waking up, it hisses at her and drops to the floor in front of her, when the scene cuts. (The studio wouldn't allow David Fincher to film this sequence, but he did it anyway!)
Ripley comes across Dillon in a cell and reveals to him that the Alien won't kill her and that she's carrying another inside of her, a Queen. Dillon is skeptical, asking how it could've gotten inside of her, and she figures it happened while she was in hyper-sleep. Unable to work up the nerve to kill herself, Ripley asks Dillon to do it for her, explaining that she's dead anyway but that the Queen in her will be able to create thousands more. Dillon then agrees and Ripley takes off her coat and presses herself up against the bars, extending her arms outward, and tells him not to waste time on any speeches or prayers. Dillon then steps into position behind her, holds up his axe, and prepares to swing it, but when he does, it clangs against the bars instead. Confused, Ripley looks back at him and Dillon, dropping the axe, explains, "I don't like losin' a fight. Not to nobody, not to nothin'. That damn thing out there's already killed half my men and got the other half scared shitless. As long as it's alive, sister, you're not gonna save any universe." Enraged, Ripley grabs Dillon by coat collar and calls him a coward but he lifts her up easily and slams her against the wall. Face-to-face, he tells, "I wanna get this thing, and I need you to do it. And if it won't kill you, then maybe that helps us fight it. Otherwise, fuck you!" He then drops her to the floor, picks up his axe, and is about to head out when Ripley asks if he'll take care of her once the Alien is dead. He agrees to give her a quick and painless one.
Following Dillon's rousing speech to the inmates, they prepare their plan to lure the Alien into the leadworks and drown it in molten lead. Dillon explains to Ripley how the plan is to work but also warns her that there's no guarantee that the piston will work and if something goes wrong, they won't have time to reset it. The inmates, despite some reservations on David's part, prepare to act as bait for it, although Morse runs into trouble when the door he closes gets stuck halfway and he shouts that they might want to rethink the plan. But, they then hear the distant sound of someone screaming and one inmate (I do not, for the life of me, know his name) goes to investigate and finds the Alien attacking someone on the floor in one hallway. It turns to look at him and begins chasing him down the corridor; Dillon hears the commotion in the leadworks and knows that it means the chase is on. Morse closes a door and yells that the Alien's in Channel B and, walking through and closing another, shouts that it's probably heading over to Channel A. The inmate makes it through a door after being chased quite a distance and closes it just in time, as the Alien bashes into it from the other side, prompting him to yell, "This thing is really pissed off!" The others run through the passages, already starting to get lost, while Jude peeks around the corner behind the Alien and yells at it to get it to chase him. It speeds after him and he leads it through the corridor and another door, which is closed behind him, and then runs through a door that he closes behind him. He declares it safe and then looks through the window in the door, only for the Alien to smash its hand through and try to get at him. Jude runs to the end of the hallway and, meeting up with the first inmate who acted as bait, he yells for everybody to head for Channel E. After a shot of the Weyland-Yutani ship preparing to land outside, we see everybody scrambling to Channel E, while David comes around a corner and finds the Alien lying in wait on the ceiling. He throws his torch at it, which gets its attention, and it's soon hot on his heels, running across the ceiling, as he frantically yells at the others about what's happening, while Morse is running through the corridors in another part, trying to find Kevin and Gregor, and ends up back in Channel A. David makes it through a door but the thing is so rickety that he has to press the button repeatedly to get it to close, with the Alien almost making it through when it finally does close. Seeing it run back down the corridor through the door's window, David yells, "Door 3, F Channel closed!" There's a brief moment where Morse and Jude run into each other and the former admonishes him for running around with the pointy end of the scissors he's carrying sticking out, and then, another inmate stalks around a corner, only to get jumped by the Alien. Frustrated, Dillon heads off into the corridors to see if he can help the situation, telling Ripley to stay in the leadworks with Eric.
The sounds of the men echo through the corridors as Dillon walks through, while back where David is, he's too busy looking through his door's window to notice the Alien drop down behind him. He turns around upon hearing it and lets out a scream before it puts its tongue right through his head and the window behind him. Back in the leadworks, Ripley and Eric listen to the sounds of the commotion, when the Alien suddenly runs straight through the room from one door to another. Panicking, Eric runs for the lever to start the piston but Ripley is able to run him down and stop him against the wall, calming him to the point where he finally stops reaching for it and leaves the room. Outside, the ship has landed and the crew is making its way to the foundry, while back down in the basement, an inmate, Kevin, creeps through the corridors and through a door, only to look up and find the Alien on the ceiling right above him. It immediately swoops down at him and Dillon follows the sound of his screaming to find it pulling and munching on him on the ceiling (he actually says, "What the heck?", which is quite a change since we've been hearing "fuck" yelled constantly through this whole sequence). Dillon grabs ahold of his legs, telling him not to struggle, and manages to pull him free of the Alien's grip and drag him back to the leadworks. Predictably, the Alien begins following them and Dillon warns Ripley and Eric that it's coming. Ripley yells for Eric to take the lever for the piston, as Dillon drags Kevin, who's bleeding profusely out of his mouth, into the room. Dillon tries to help Kevin but it's clear that he's a lost cause, when Ripley hears a hiss behind her and turns around to see the Alien peek its head through the doorway. Telling Dillon to forget about Kevin, as he's obviously dead, Ripley and he back away from the body, attempting to lure the Alien in. Looking around, the creature lunges in and grabs Kevin's body, prompting Eric to throw the lever, but it ducks back out as the piston activates. Ripley asks how much time they have and Dillon says maybe four or five minutes before the piston seals the room off. They all run into the corridors to try to find it, when Ripley comes across Kevin's body. Elsewhere, the Alien is now chasing after Jude, while Ripley takes a torch from another body hanging from the ceiling. Dillon, heading back to the leadworks, yells for Jude to run as fast as he can and he almost makes it through the door, but the Alien grabs him at the last minute and pulls him back through. The piston is now rapidly sealing off the room, while up top, the Weyland-Yutani team reach the foundry and meet up with Aaron, who tells them where Ripley is.
In one part of the corridors, Morse and Gregor run into each other and joke about they scared each other, as they thought the other was the Alien. But, it soon becomes no laughing matter when the Alien rushes down the corridor from the side and instantly tears out Gregor's throat, spraying the top of Morse's head with his blood. Gregor's body slumps to the floor and the Alien takes it, preparing to have its way with him. Morse, crawling away, comes across Ripley, who tells him to move, as she tries to lure the Alien out of the alcove it's crawled into as it eats Gregor. She swings her torch at it but it's more interested in its meal than in chasing her and simply swipes at her. Dillon warns Ripley that they're running out of time, while she continues trying to get the Alien out of the alcove, to the point where, when her torch burns out, she grabs its tail and tries to pull it out but it manages to throw her off. Yelling for Dillon to help her, Ripley becomes more frustrated that the Alien won't cooperate, when Dillon comes up behind her, grabs her, and pulls her back. She initially struggles against him but when she sees that they now have the Alien's attention and it's following them, she goes along with it. It stalks them through the hallways, as they try to get it ahead of the piston, closing off other doors it might go through, while Morse follows behind it. Eventually, they manage to lure it back into the leadworks in front of the piston and they yell for Morse to shut the door behind it. Morse hesitates, seemingly in shock, and the Alien turns around and sees him. Ripley and Dillon frantically yell for him to shut the door and, at the last moment, he does, trapping it. With nowhere else to go, the Alien turns its attention back to Ripley and Dillon in the lead mold, as Morse heads up to prepare to pour the lead, while upstairs, Aaron is leading the team through the cafeteria.
Enraged, the Alien crazily smacks against the walls of the mold, closing in on Ripley and Dillon, as Morse climbs up to the controls high above them. Ripley and Dillon back into the end of the mold and she tells him to get out, saying that she's staying. Dillon, however, isn't going to let her get out of the deal they made about the Alien dying before her and he makes her crawl up the side of the mold, following behind her. Dillon then sees at the Alien is climbing along the wall after them and he drops down, with the Alien following him, and tells Ripley he has to keep it in the mold. He tells her that God will take care of her now and she, reluctantly, leaves him to his fate. Dillon takes his glasses off and faces the Alien, which then charges and is on him within seconds, relentlessly biting and clawing at him. Yelling, Dillon tells Ripley to pour the lead, while yelling and cursing at the Alien the whole time. Ripley signals at Morse, telling him to pour it, and he hits the switch, as the Alien finishes Dillon off and looks up as tons of molten lead rain down on it, completely covering it. Ripley and Morse recoil from the heat and the steam, but once it clears, they see that the mold is completely full of bubbling lead and that the Alien has apparently been vanquished. Morse laughs and yells, "Alright, bug!", when the Alien suddenly explodes out of the lead and jumps up down the ledge that Ripley's on. It fiercely tries to shake the lead off of it and then turns its attention to Ripley, who scrambles upwards for safety. Appearing determined to kill her in spite of the fact that she's carrying a Queen, the Alien fiercely climbs up after her over the pipes and chains, when Morse tells her to turn the sprinklers on it. Reaching the top, she swings on a chain connected to the sprinkler pipe, her weight activating the sprinklers and sending water down on the Alien. The sudden shift in temperature from scalding hot to very cold causes the lead coating it to expand and crack, with the Alien's entire body then exploding, sending pieces of it flying everywhere. Morse then triumphantly yells, "Gotcha!", while Ripley exclaims, "Yes!" and then swings on the chain to the moveable walkway Morse is on.
Taking her coat off, Ripley and Morse walk off the walkway onto the main platform, when they're confronted by the Weyland-Yutani team, who surround them on both sides. Ripley tells them to stay back, while Aaron tries to convince her that they want to help. Bishop II then reveals himself by taking off his dark glasses and says that he's the man who designed the Bishop android. He insists that they want to help her by taking the Queen out and killing it, saying that he agrees that there would be no hope if it were allowed to live, and that she could still have a life. Ripley, however, knows she can't trust the company and backs back onto the walkway where Morse is, closing the door on Bishop II. Morse pulls the walkway away from the platform, as the team of soldiers take positions on other parts of the platform. Suddenly, one soldier shoots through the gate and hits Morse right in the leg. Bishop II angrily tells him to stop, while on the walkway, Ripley asks Morse to help her, as she gets him up as best as he can. Bishop II tries to convince them that what just happened was a mistake, when Aaron, enraged, grabs a pipe and hits him on the left side of the head with it, calling him an android. The soldier next to Bishop II shoves Aaron away and shoots him repeatedly in the back, sending him tumbling over the platform and falling to his death below. Meanwhile, Ripley prepares to do what she must as Morse wheels the walkway into position, while Bishop II implores her to let him have the Queen. Ignoring him completely, Ripley walks to the end of the platform and stands in front of a gap in the railing, motioning Morse to set it in place there, which he does. As everyone watches from across, Ripley slowly falls backwards off the platform, heading down to the blast furnace below, with Bishop II futilely screaming, "No!" On the way down, the Queen chestburster explodes out of her, squealing and screaming. Ripley holds it firmly against her and then disappears into the flames. The blast furnaces are then shut down, as the sun comes over the horizon of the planet, signifying that the nightmare is over, and the facility is locked up. The team leaves empty-handed, accompanied by Morse, the lone survivor, who takes one last look around before being forced out, his last word to the soldier, of course, being, "Fuck you." The last bit is on the EEV, as Ripley's final report from the end of the first Alien is heard playing in a very scratchy manner. (I never liked that, as I thought it was kind of corny and made no sense as to why it would be playing.) The last image is a computer screen reporting that the facility has been permanently closed and the equipment is to be sold off as scrap.
Like his predecessors, working on the music for Alien 3 would be a pretty intense experience for composer Elliot Goldenthal, who spent a year coming up with the music and composing it during the L.A. riots, which he's cited as contributing to its pretty unsettling nature. And as a result of the reshoots that David Fincher was forced into when he and everyone returned from London, Goldenthal had to come up with a new theme for the ending literally over night. But, also like Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner before him, the experience would ultimately pay off with a very good score, one whose awesomeness can't be denied even by people who absolutely despise the movie. The music absolutely compliments the nature of the movie and story: it's bleak, dissonant, downbeat, and utterly hopeless in the way it sound. The opening theme is a very spine-tingling piece, starting with a bizarre, dissonant sound that transitions into an eerie, quiet score accompanied by the distant sounds of women vocalizing and then going into music that builds and builds into a doom-laden horn bit when the EEV disengages from the Sulaco. That bit is heard several times in different variations throughout the film, most significantly when Ripley finds what's left of Bishop in the junk-pile, and it perfectly captures the feeling of hopelessness in her plight of being stuck on this planet. The music is also very creepy at points, like the high-pitched, soft string piece accompanied by occasional, rumbling electronic sounds that plays during the scenes in the morgue and those same dissonant, metallic sounds you hear when Golic, Boggs, and Rains are down in the basement and when Ripley goes looking for the Alien by herself. In addition, there are some other freakish, screeching bits that you sometimes hear whenever the Alien is about to strike, as well as during its birth scene and in the scene where it threatens Ripley in the infirmary; a distinctive, clanging piece when Ripley runs from the infirmary to the cafeteria; and when it's chasing after Jude in the tunnels once they've activated the piston, the music during that sequence is utterly nightmarish and horrifying. And I really like this badass, rocking theme that plays when Ripley gets attacked by the inmates and when Dillon faces off with the Alien in the lead mold. That bit is just freaking metal! It's awesome.
Besides being scary and nihilistic, the score does have a piece of gentleness and warmth in the soft, piano theme you hear during the first scene where there's an attraction between Ripley and Clemens and in the scene after they've made love, which is a variation of a beautiful, religious-sounding piece accompanied by vocalizing. There's also a soft, melancholy theme that you hear when Clemens confesses his unfortunate backstory to Ripley, and that leads me back into how sad and hopeless a lot of this score is, as it never takes it long to get back to that. Even when you're hearing creepy music when Ripley discovers the Queen embryo within her, once she sees it, the music transitions into sounding very sad, as she now knows that there's no hope for her, and the score's most action-like piece, which is this distinctive, pounding theme you first hear when the blast furnaces are being fired up for the cremation and is played several other times in a different variation, has an unmistakable doom-laden sound to it. The piece for the funeral itself, which is essentially a softer version of the ending theme, is also very solemn and touching, accentuated by Dillon's soliloquy for Hicks and Newt and the shot of Ripley shedding silent tears for them when the bodies are dropped down into the furnace. That brings me to my favorite part of the score, which is the awesome final theme. A more hopeful version of it was played when it seemed like the Alien had been killed in the lead but it reaches its full zenith when Ripley sacrifices herself and plays on until the movie is officially over. It's just so dramatic and powerful, and brings a feeling of finality to it all, as she takes the last remaining Alien with her into the fire and, as some hard-hitting, pounding, final chords play, you see the facility being closed down before Morse is led out as the lone survivor. Once that's done, the theme transitions into very soft, quiet notes as it ends. Honestly, other than a part that plays when Morse climbs up the ladder to go for the lead, a little too classical-sounding string piece that you hear when the sprinklers rain down on the Alien, and some horror parts that are little more than generic, there's very little of this score that I don't like. It's by far the film's best element.
There are many deleted shots and scenes in the Assembly Cut, some of them being trimmed bits of dialogue and others far more significant. Also, in the Alien Quadrilogy addition, the audio isn't too good in a few them, as those scenes were deleted before ADR began; in the later Blu-Ray set, they had the actual actors come back in to redub the faint bits of dialogue. There are more scenes where you get a sense of the type of faith the inmates have, as you see them praying more often, describing God as an angry deity, and there's an added bit of dialogue in the cafeteria scene with Ripley where Dillon explains to her that they're waiting on Fiorina 161 for the apocalypse that God will bring about. There's also a moment before the second "Rumor Control" where Dillon angrily asks what's happening to their little community, a moment after they've first seen the Alien where Dillon proclaims that this is a test by God (this was in Vincent Ward's original script), and a tense meeting in the Assembly area during the third act where some of the inmates, particularly David, are revealed as beginning to question the faith Dillon keeps trying to assert and they also talk about how they have no truly effective weapons to use against the Alien. It's during this latter scene when Morse gets the idea for them to head for the furnace area in the basement, since the Alien's hatred for fire may keep it out of there. Besides the scenes with the prisoners, there's more to the tense meeting between Clemens and Andrews, where Andrews acts friendly when Clemens walks but turns nasty once Aaron leaves, blatantly tells Clemens that he doesn't like him because of how he questions everything and says that he wouldn't let him anywhere near the planet if he didn't need a medical officer, and gets him to admit that Ripley told him she was part of a combat team whose mission went horribly awry. Other, small additions include moments when Clemens asks Ripley if Newt was her daughter, which she denies, Ripley telling Morse when he threatens her that she'd be okay with him killing her, some additional dialogue during the love scene between Ripley and Clemens, more of a build-up to the Alien's attack in the infirmary, Ripley theorizing that the Alien is smart enough not to kill her because it knows she's carrying a Queen, her talking about what happened when she encountered it in the basement and a comment about how she gets to be the mother, additional dialogue and different angles on existing shots during the scene where Dillon and Ripley try to get the inmates to help them fight it, Bishop II yelling that he's not an android after Aaron clips him in the ear with a pipe and more shots of him in pain, and so on.
Some of the most significant deletions involve the character of Golic, who, as I mentioned earlier, barely gets any development in the theatrical version. Here, you get a sense early on that he's not well-liked even among the prisoners, with Boggs and Rains telling Dillon that they don't want to work with him anymore because he's crazy and smells bad; Dillon tells them to treat him as an equal. There's more buildup to them heading down into the basement with him, as you can see that he's not getting on their nerves, particularly when he smashes open an old cigarette machine and grabs all that he can. After Boggs and Rains are killed by the Alien, Eric finds Golic, his face covered in their blood, eating some cereal in the cafeteria and is horrified by this, leading into a scene of Andrews, Aaron, Dillon, and Clemens retraining him with a straightjacket. Golic gets more lines and shots when he's restrained in the infirmary, reciting, "In an insane world, a sane man must appear insane," and trying to sneak a peek underneath the plastic curtain dividing Clemens and Ripley from him. He's also the one who sees the Alien approaching and, despite his initial fear, he becomes amazed by it, calling it "magnificent" when it escapes with Clemens' body in the air duct. This ties into the biggest portion of the film that was completely dropped: during the chaos in the tunnels when the explosion occurs, the Alien appears and the inmate Junior has it chase him into the toxic waste containment unit, where it's then trapped. Junior is heard screaming as it kills him inside and there's a very effective, somber sequence afterward where everyone walks away, with the sprinkler system now working, the episode having taken a toll on them emotionally, despite it being ultimately successful, because of all the deaths. Dillon holds a sermon where he says that it's a time of triumphant and those that have died are not really gone, while Ripley and Aaron send a message to Weyland-Yutani telling them that they've captured the Alien and request permission to kill it, which is, of course, denied. (This is part of an aspect of the Assembly Cut that I find to be very egregious: they continuously talk about how the company won't kill the Alien and Aaron is made to look even stupider than he already did because of how he refuses to believe it, despite the evidence that's right in his face.)
Meanwhile, Golic convinces Morse, who's guarding him, to get him out of the straightjacket and when he does, he knocks him out, as he wants to see the Alien again. He walks to the containment unit, kills Arthur, who's standing guard there, by cutting his throat, and opens the unit, walking in and asking the Alien what he should do next (actor Paul McGann says in the documentary that one of the things that excited him about the part is the notion that Golic would try to team up with the Alien to go and kill Ripley). As expected, he gets killed and the Alien escapes. Elsewhere, Ripley is talking to Dillon about the company's plans for the Alien, which he and the others aren't concerned with since all they're concerned with are their own lives and faith. Morse then comes in, telling them they've got a "teeny, weeny problem," and this leads into the footage in the theatrical version where Dillon finds a body on the floor, which is actually the murdered Arthur. They also talk about Golic's death and Aaron angrily admonishes Morse for letting him loose. The removal of this sequence caused a lot of strife and angry differences of opinion amongst those involved with the film. Fox executive Jon Landau argues in the documentary that being able to contain the Alien makes it lose some of its power, while editor Terry Rawlings, who worked on the first Alien and had great admiration for Fincher, felt that the sequence made the latter part of the movie more powerful because of the suspense it generated in the anticipation of the Alien inevitably getting loose. (He had strong words for the unnamed person who made the decision to cut it, calling him an idiot; I don't know for sure but I have a feeling he was referring to Landau.) For me, I don't agree with either of them. While it's nice to see Golic get fleshed out more than he was in the theatrical version, I felt like this section stopped the movie dead in its tracks for a while and didn't have either of the effects those two claimed it had.
As for the scenes that were completely reshot for the theatrical release, they, fittingly, have to do with both Ripley and the Alien. The way Ripley is recovered from the EEV crash is completely different. She's washed ashore after the crash and is found by Clemens, who's taking a walk along the shore, a bit that also sets up what a cold, rundown, miserable place this is better than in the theatrical cut. He picks her up and runs back to the foundry, where he has the prisoners send out a party to remove the EEV from the water, while Andrews sends a message to Weyland-Yutani about the details of the crash (this correct an error that's made in the theatrical version where Newt is described as being twelve, when she was actually only ten). The men use oxen to pull the craft out of the water, leading into the second difference: here, instead of a dog, the Alien gestates inside of one of the oxen, which is seen being brought into the foundry kitchen where it's intended to be sliced up for food later. At the end of the scene, Murphy finds a dead facehugger, alluding to the ox's fate. You only see it from afar in the shot (the image you see here is a cropped close-up) but Amalgamated Dynamics designed it to resemble the Alien Queen, with webbing around its legs similar to the structure of her head, in order to get across that it was a Queen that Ripley was impregnated with. (Granted, that still doesn't explain how the egg with the facehugger got aboard the Sulaco to begin with and where the normal type of Alien in the film came from but at least they were focused on some details.) During the funeral for Hicks and Newt, the Alien explodes out of the ox's carcass, with some of these shots remaining in the theatrical version, and there's a wide-shot of it walking away and running down a hall, which was done with a full-scale rod puppet whose puppeteers were removed with compositing. This was an early effect that does look interesting when you see it but was ultimately dropped in favor of the smaller rod puppet because of how difficult it was to remove the puppeteers with the old-fashioned style of compositing; plus, the Alien's movements sometimes look a little too cute and playful when it's running down the hallway. The reason for the change in the Alien's origin was because they deemed it to difficult to explain how they would have oxen on the planet, so they replaced it with the simpler dog instead, which I think makes more sense anyway since, if it came out of an ox, why didn't it have horns?
Without a doubt the worst movie of the entire Alien series considering that it killed off Hicks and Newt! Add to the fact that most if not all of the new characters are unlikable scumbags makes this movie even more awful and terrible!
ReplyDeleteWhat a disappointing sequel! What makes Alien 3 suck is the fact that they killed off Hicks and Newt considering that those two were likable characters who didn't deserve to die! Add to the fact that most of the new characters in the movie are convicts makes this a rather terrible sequel to one of the most iconic sci fi movies!
ReplyDelete