Despite my love for creatively independent, original properties and stories, I’m a huge fan of franchises. As someone who has consumed massive amounts of horror films and video games, it’s in my DNA to at least be okay with the idea. While we’ve been blessed over the last few years with Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight trilogy, and last, but certainly not least, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, franchises tend to not have the best reputations. Franchises usually to go like this: a fantastic film is made followed by a competent, or, in rare cases, superior film. Cue the Benny Hill theme because this is when the studio, having made vaults and vaults of Scrooge McDuck money from the first two films, begin running around, having suddenly becoming creative geniuses by wedging in their association to this new franchise, and generally doing everything humanly possible to screw things up for the creators for the sake of the dollar.
For nearly every franchise, there’s a rule about third films: they’re awful. Star Trek. Alien. Batman (Forever). Halloween. Spider-Man. Terminator. You see where I’m going here. Nine times out ten, the third movie is a spectacular disaster that causes viewers to question why the ever liked the original films in the first place, and possibly their life choices. Even if they’re not awful, they’re the linchpin on which the fall of the franchise is based.
“Wait–Myles, why are you telling us all this? It’s kind of Film 101, idiot,” I can hear some of you ask in Drew’s voice.
Over the holiday, I grabbed Alien: Isolation on sale. Partially because no one was on Destiny, partially because I’ve been starved for a good horror experience on the current generation, and partially because, like our beloved estranged Mike, I’m a huge fan of the Alien franchise…in theory.
So I started thinking about Alien, and franchises in general. After talking about doing blog stuff for The More You Nerd for about a year, the three of us inadvertently made a New Years resolution to actually start doing so in 2015. It’s a way to talk nerdy about stuff in ways that don’t always fit on the show in its current iteration. So for the “Franchise Fatigue” series of articles, as I’ve decided to call them, I plan on doing, I’m wanting to take a look at classic (or maligned) franchises and seeing 1) if they’re actually as bad as their reputation 2) what went wrong and potentially 3) what could have been done better. Drew or Pat may pop in and do one of these. Or they may not. But I’m not trademarking it. Though I’m going to try to be somewhat academic about it by, you know, citing sources and other things I was counted off for in my English classes, the tone of these will be mostly conversational, as if I was talking on the show, but a conversation I’d like to have with you, the listeners.
For better or for worse, the first two movies are the only things I let come into my mind.
Watching Alien and Aliens was the easy part. That’s like getting dessert before your mother forces you to eat the lima beans. I’ve seen them many times over the years. But Alien 3? Resurrection? Alien 3 I think I saw when I was twelve, and I have not dared to revisit Resurrection since I saw it in theatres spending Thanksgiving with my dad in 1997. Considering their reputation and my age at the time, it’s easy to see how they didn’t leave a positive impression on me (or much of one at all). All I remember from Alien 3 was: “bald.” Resurrection doesn’t fair much better: “Clones. Basketball. Maybe lesbian robot? Toilet baby monster.” While the Alien 3 buzzword is pretty cut and dry, Resurrection leaves a whole lot of questions and garbled memories.
Seriously! Any two of those would leave someone scratching their head. Putting all four together, and you tend to want to get a sense of what the crap you watched 17 years ago. Having discovered I had ridden the third Alien and Alien: Resurrection from my mind, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to watch the entire series for the first time as an adult.
As regular listeners may (or may not know), I have a habit of being a bit contrarian to things that are universally disliked or straight up appalled. At the very least, I want to give a fair shot and the benefit of the doubt. After all, isn’t that what the show’s all about?
Even though, I don’t remember much about the film itself, I’m very familiar with the details involving the development and making of Alien 3. While Alien: Resurrection has a very less then stellar reputation itself for being just plain, well, “weird,” it’s often given value by critics for not being Alien 3. Alien 3 gets a lot of hate. And I didn’t remember a single thing about it outside Sigourney Weaver’s cueball head.
It’s seen as the point the series never recovered. “Oh, it’s the worst!” “It completely undid the Alien franchise.” “I’d rather go to the dentist. Twice.” These are a few of the responses I received from friends when mentioning I was preparing to watch this one. After hearing that, one tends to get a morbid curiosity about these sorts of films.
Let’s start with how we got to this point, because, honestly, the story is in and of itself, more interesting than the Alien story we got.
Now, I don’t envy anyone with the job of following up the first two. Alien is one of the greatest science fiction/horror films of all time. Aliens set the bar on how to make a fully successful sequel, and is a movie Patrick and I argue about for the title of Best Sequel of All Time (I argue T2: Judgement Day. He argues Aliens. I don’t always think he’s wrong on the matter). It, too, is also a definitive science fiction/action film. They’re both classics in their own right.
When Alien made $78,944,891 domestically in 1979, the studio was kind of shocked. Keep in mind, the blockbuster as we know it was still in its infancy. Jaws had only come out 4 years earlier, and Star Wars surprised everyone only the year prior. Adjust that for inflation, and Alien made around $254,133,400 domestically. On a $9 million budget. That’s pretty impressive even by today’s standards, but was an insane amount of profit in 1979. So you have to think that when Aliens made $85,160,248 domestically in 1986, that the studio, well…cue the Benny Hill theme.
I jest, but it’s kind of the truth. So what happened, exactly?
First of all, 20th Century Fox, whom many of us nerds know as the horrible company that canceled Firefly, was already setting themselves up to receive the ire of nerds by being the horrible company that wouldn’t leave Alien 3 alone. After many false stops, the studio finally settled on David Fincher. Yes, THE David Fincher. An Alien film by Fincher today sounds like a dream come true, however, this was a 28 year old first time film director, whose credits mostly consisted of music videos and commercials at the time. In retrospect, it was a clear move by the studio to hire someone young, impressionable, and most importantly, cheap to essentially serve as their whipping boy. The joke on set was that there were more producers on set than cast and crew, and by accounts, that doesn’t seem to be exaggeration. Fincher himself has gone on record as saying “A lot of people hated Alien 3, but no one hated it more than I did.”
Studio tinkering wasn’t the only major problem. The biggest hurdle, that had delayed production for years, was the script. Why was that the biggest problem? Simple: there wasn’t one.
As I joked, the studio scrambled, immediately wanting a follow up after the huge success of Cameron’s Aliens. The main producers at Brandywine Productions, who had some semblance of creative sanity, were a tad cautious. They wanted to do something decidedly different, not wanting to repeat either of the first two films. Their idea was to explore more into Weyland-Yutani AKA “The Company,” the corporation that owned the Nostromo in the first film, and why they were so hellbent on obtaining the xenomorphs for the use of biological weapons in the second. Ripley would not be the main focus of the film, but Corporal Hicks. Instead Ripley would delegated to cameo status in order for her big return in Alien 4.
Fox was understandably squeamish. The Alien films made a star out of Sigourney Weaver and its heroine, Lt. Ellen Ripley. Though they were skeptical, they didn’t rule out the option.
The producers approached legendary science fiction novelist and father of cyberpunk fiction as we know it, William Gibson, to write the script. He wrote a large Cold War analogy introducing a new entity called the Union of Progressive Peoples (U.P.P.) in addition to our old friends at Weyland-Yutani. The xenomorphs were used here as a loose metaphor for the AIDS virus, which had only been clinically discovered 6 years prior and an extremely topical issue itself. Hicks became the hero of the story as asked, with Ripley given a very open ended role to make way for a fourth film, potentially on the xenomorph homeworld.
Gibson’s script never made it much further past the draft stage, sadly. Brandywine liked the overall script but didn’t find it radical enough. They were expecting more cyberpunk, it seems, which is an odd direction to go for an Alien film, and I think Gibson knew that. Feeling that the producers were dragging their feet, Gibson refused by the time they asked him to write another draft and left the project.
The producers and the studios kept scaring off writers until finally, the entire idea was abandoned completely with the fall of Communism in 1989. Vincent Ward was the next major player to influence the production. A budding visual auteur, Ward shifted the focus of the film back to Ripley, employing what’s famously known to fans as the “Wooden Planet” script. Perhaps the most striking thing about it, and what likely attracted the producers and Fox outside the inclusion of Ripley, was Ward’s intricate designs for this medieval looking world. While much of the basic plot survived to the screen, this iteration of Alien 3 has Ripley crash land on area populated by Luddite monks, all men. Because it so much runs similar to what we have today, I won’t go into the differences, but check out the previous link if you’re curious.
Fox fired Ward after he refused to alter his script. Afterwards, they had a variety of writers in and out, including the producers, use the skeleton of his script, which constantly changed during production, to give us the film we ended up with.
The rest, as they say, is history. Ripley crash landed on a derelict prison planet as the only survivor…BUT SHE WASN’T ALONE (*gasp!*). Taking elements of Ward’s story with the group of prisoners being part of a religious group rather than monks per se, the general plotline saw Ripley in yet another cold and unforgiving place with a single xenomorph stalking in the shadows throughout the movie.
For this little experience, I watched the 2003 “Assembly Cut” released as part of the Alien Quadrilogy set as well as the Alien Anthology Blu Ray set. It adds about 30 minutes of footage to the theatrical cut. My reasoning was to try to get as close to what would have possibly been what Fincher tried to cobble together in ‘92 before it was mangled even more (even though this cut was not approved by the director).
So…is history right?
Honestly?
Mostly yes. On it’s own merit, Alien 3, even with the additional content, is a tolerable movie at best.
Nearly every character except for the two you’re meant to root for is unenjoyable to watch. Not just unlikable characters. Unenjoyable. I can love to hate someone or dislike a character but still enjoy them on screen. That’s a tall order for an 145 minute film. Ripley and the future Twyin Lannister are the only characters of any sort of real interest. She’s not given nearly enough depth on screen (most of what exists comes through academic conjecture) and he’s only barely interesting with a “dark” secret that’s, well, really stupid and not that dark.
All the xenomorph stuff in the film feels like a less tense, rehash of the first movie. I remind myself to be kind about CGI from 1992, but it still looks rough where they used it for the creature.
While on the subject of the xenomorph, the implantation of the new queen into Ripley is extremely bothersome. It makes absolutely no sense. The 2013 game Aliens: Colonial Marines tried to rectify that in its “Stasis Interrupted” DLC, but the less said about that game, the better. And their idea was still nonsense. In fairness, I can’t technically argue that the incubation period of the queen is ridiculous because, well, that’s not information we had at the time. Maybe the queens do take longer than the short amount of time normal chestbursters do, but the few days Ripley was awake (this is under the assumption the hypersleep also applied to growing xenomorph embryos as well) seems like a tall order to believe.
That said, the performances in the film are fairly strong. Sigourney Weaver again gives a fantastic performance, a series constant; and the poignant scene when she’s talking to the remnants of Lance Henrikson’s Bishop is outstanding on both actors’ parts.
Surely more positive things can be said about the film, Myles! You said the film was directed by David Fincher! The Fight Club guy! It had to at least look good, right?
I thought the same thing, but the truth is: not really. Fincher, by all accounts, tried. He really did. But the film is essentially not his. Almost every account and interview I’ve read from the production of the film spoke well of Fincher, but also pitiful. The general consensus from the cast and crew was “Bless his heart.” Fincher has been more open about the positive aspects of the experience in the last few years, but even then was very dour about the project for the longest time, once referring to making the film as like being “in a massive car accident where you just kind of remember the aftermath.”
Still, the film is shot competently, but not interestingly. There’s a few cool shots. Nothing to write home about, though. Whether or not the director is responsible doesn’t matter when the end product still looks drab and uninspired. Most offensively, and this goes for the entire film, it’s boring.
So, yeah. I have to agree with the consensus that Alien 3 really kind of is that bad. Some have defended it, hyperbolically so. I can understand why someone may like it. Mike recently rewatched it as well and didn’t come off hating it. However, the temptation of some to claim the film’s a “misunderstood masterpiece,” comes off both pretentious and ridiculous to me. Defending the merits of a “bad” movie, even if you have an argument as to why you like it, does not automatically make it a masterpiece. Sorry, What Culture, it’s true.
I know, I regaled you with hundreds of words to lead up to what I thought of Alien 3 just to more or less say “Meh” and drop the mic? Nah, I wouldn’t do that. There’s one very important element to what I disliked, nay abhorred, and what a lot of Alien franchise fans reaaaally dislike about Alien 3 that I saved for the “what could have been done differently?” part of this little soiree I’m having with myself.
Dollars to donuts, the biggest sin committed by Alien 3 lies in the unceremonious deaths of Newt and Corporal Hicks. I always thought it was dumb that they died, conceptually. However, when I rewatched the film, their deaths bothered me to no end in a fashion that was just as nonsensical as the source of the crash and Ripley’s impregnation. It’s lazy storytelling just for the sake of getting Ripley on her own again. I absolutely hate it.
Defenders of this particular story bit tend to use the flimsy argument that killing them keeps from having the “nice happy family” element that Aliens seemed to indicate at the end.
What?! Nice happy family? Are you insane?
First off, every single person on that ship is scarred for life, Hicks quite literally. He just had half of his face burned away from the acidic blood of the xenomorph. All of his squad was killed. And Newt? That girl’s gonna have issues. Not only did she just live through a traumatizing ordeal in the film itself, but even outside of what we were shown, this girl saw the slaughter of her friends, family, and entire colony. Then she survived, by herself, for days. She may have found a surrogate guardian in Ripley, but that girl’s not okay.
As for Ripley? She already experienced PTSD after the events of Alien and the shock of waking up 57 years later. Facing and destroying the xenomorphs may have been cathartic, but it’s going to leave some mental scars as well.
I like science fiction author (not to mention Star Trek: The Motion Picture story creator as well as a writer for Alien projects) Alan Dean Foster’s argument best:
“Killing Newt was not only an obscenity, it removes the principal rationale for Ripley to fight to stay alive. Filmmakers love to shock, even if it goes against logic, reason, and plot. They suffer from a misguided belief that shock equates to art. This misnomer is not confined to cinema. My thought in re: the killing of Newt in Alien 3 was to explain that her capsule was damaged and that she would therefore have to remain in deep sleep until it could be repaired. That way, she remains alive but inactive for the duration of the story, Ripley’s motivation to fight to remain alive in order to sustain her is maintained, and Newt’s status being iffy (she can live or die at any time) adds another element of suspense to the film. And of course, having Newt as an older person with a unique insight into the aliens would have opened up some wonderful spin-off possibilities. But Walter Hill essentially killed off everything I tried to add to the story.”
While I don’t fully support that Newt’s death removes Ripley’s only reason to stay alive, it’s absolutely a strong component. I’m assuming because Foster had been most critical of Newt’s death, the interviewer failed to ask him about Hicks, who had for years been given the position of lead in Alien 3.
Their deaths were poor decisions that lead to poorer ones. For me, that’s the breaking point in the series from which everything goes further down. That’s the key thing I would have done differently.
As for what story I would have used for the film itself? William Gibson’s draft showed a lot of promise (you can read the typo-ridden draft here, by the way). When following a tense, claustrophobic horror film and a pitch perfect actioner, you need to give in to the fact that you cannot make lightning strike, which is what Alien 3 tried to do by emulating the first film. Gibson fleshes out the ‘why’ of Weyland-Yutani desperately wanting to develop biological weapons by inserting our heroes into this Cold War parallel. Throughout the first film, we could believe a corporation would want to get ahold of alien life. The second…stretches belief a tad but still remains pretty believable that corporations care more about profit than they do human life. By the third film, it’s beginning to get Umbrella Corporation levels of ridiculous.
As a fan, I’d always wondered what in the world Weyland-Yutani wanted the xenomorphs for. I mean specifically. By including the far too thinly veiled Communist stand-in, the Union of Progressive Peoples, as an existing force in this universe, Gibson allowed a fairly believable reason as to why new forms of weapons would be useful and valuable.
The transfer of leadership from Ripley to Hicks is fairly smooth, with Ripley’s fate open ended for what Fox wanted as an all out war finale in the fourth film, heralding the return of the heroine of the series. His characterization remained consistent from Aliens, as was a reconstructed Bishop (a personal favorite), who gets some interesting philosophical moments himself.
Newt still gets sort of sidelined, but this time she’s simply shipped off to her grandparents back on Earth. Sure. Why not. She’s a child and Ripley is incapacitated. I can live with that and her character returning in a future entry wouldn’t be out of the question. She’s given a few fun moments and a touching little scene with an unconscious Ripley, but given the craziness that occurs in this film, it was for the best.
Xenomorphs have possibly their most radical iteration here. For whatever reason, there is still a stray alien on the ship, which gets killed at the beginning of the script. Almost every Alien 3 script did this. It bothers me, but I suppose it’s the most likely scenario to get an Alien sequel going. Just seems odd Ripley didn’t do a sweep of the ship. Both Weyland-Yutani and the U.P.P. attempt to use the genetic material of the xenomorphs to engineer a new biological weapons.
That ends well.
What transpires, though not satisfyingly explained in this draft, is a strange viral version of the xenomorph, which infects humans, who then transform into a strange hybrid creature rather than have them burst out of people’s chests. Seriously.
But I think this is a really cool idea because it gives a whole new danger that doesn’t simply rely on “Okay, this time there’s more aliens, guys!” Now you don’t know who may be infected, and could attack you at a moment’s notice. This highlights the paranoid political overtones of the Cold War parallel while opening up that universe more.
Keep in mind, however, that while all of these ideas are fascinating, they’re not 100% fleshed out. The script itself is somewhat superficial. A lot of the science and characterizations of new supporting roles is missing. Gibson also became way too liberal with xenomorph queens. There’s like three of four of them running around here.
That’s not to say it’s not good. I really dig it. Just keep in mind that this was a first revised draft. That means it probably had two or three good polishes to go before it resembled what we would have hypothetically seen on screen.
Still, an excellent start to what I think would have been a fantastic entry in the franchise as well as a worthy follow up to the first two films.
Alien is one of the franchises where I’ve never really pondered upon what I personally would have done differently, story-wise, but having read the direction they were initially going with, I’m perfectly happy with that idea.
An unused script doesn’t amount of much in term of “what could have been” or alternate stories, but there is something more concrete out there for you. If you, like me, love the franchise and would have liked the third film to go into a completely different direction, well, I’ve got news for you. It exists.
I’m not talking about fan fiction. There are official releases that you can buy right here using our Amazon link.
Before the great SNAFU that was Alien 3’s developmental process completely derailed the franchise, Dark Horse obtained the rights to the franchise, and released a series set 10 years after the second film. Centered on Newt and Hicks (with Ripley appearing later), critics warmly received the comic which ran with some really intriguing concepts. Newt was mentally strung out and in an institution while Hicks became washed up, relying on alcohol to keep the memories of Aliens at bay. Obviously the titular creatures end up involved, and everything becomes Crazy Go-Nuts University. Story-wise, I loved everything about it. The art leaves a lot to be desired.
The reason I don’t hold this up as my go-to for a third film is because I don’t see a single film perfectly capturing what Dark Horse did. I’d much rather HBO or Showtime use those ideas for a television series, Game of Thrones style. Or, as Mike consistently asks for, a Tell Tale adventure game, which I completely agree with.
You may also notice that the back of the linked omnibus doesn’t mention Newt or Hicks. Once Alien 3 finally settled on a plot and killed off the comic’s two primary characters, Dark Horse went back and retconned their names. Newt became “Billie” and Hicks became “Wilks.” I’m somewhat surprised that Dark Horse didn’t decide to change the name back after critical and fan reaction to Alien 3, but them’s the breaks. The stories are still solid and we can pretend they happened instead of what we got on the silver screen.
At this point, I’m sure you guys are fatigued of this first round of Franchise Fatigue. I can absolutely promise you future entries won’t be this monolithic. If you’ve read this far, I really appreciate it. Please let me know your thoughts on the subject on our Facebook! I would be thrilled if any of you gave your own impressions of Alien 3 or the series…or what I did here!
We have many different kinds of blog articles planned out for this year, so it won’t all be like this and there definitely won’t be a set schedule for them. We’ll definitely keep you posted as they develop, though.
I do have plans for other nerd-related franchises. Some of the less obvious ones (The Never Ending Story) will get my attention sooner than others, but I have also been re-watching the Terminator series as well. So until next time…NERD OUT!