digiboy

Well it makes sense that if the alien reveal was shot later, the assembly cut, which was made first, wouldn't have had that scene.

HSOI says in the above quote that they talk about this in the Alien 3 commentary on the DVD. I still would like to know where. I couldn't find it. It's not in the commentary during the actual sequence on either version. Maybe it comes up in the commentary somewhere earlier in the film. Anyone know where??

El-Kabong

Why I hate it so much? Want a list?

* Shameless continuity errors for the sake of moving along the plot. How did the eggs get aboard the ship? The Queen didn't have enough time to lay them once the lander returned - overlooking the fact that the egg sac was gone by that point. Or how did the face hugger have time to impregnate Ripley. Or how the Dog/Ox alien only took a bit of time to gestate, but Ripley's only burst when it was dramatically appropriate hours (if not days) later.

* The viewer loses any and all emotional attachment in the first 60 seconds of the movie. Killing Newt and Hicks was sloppy lazy writing to get them out of the way.

* No notable personalities. The entire cast is a bunch of faceless, featureless characters. There's no distinct personalities like out of the Nostromo crew or the Marines. There's no reason to care about them - they're just Alien Chow when the eggs start popping.

* Even worse, cardboard characterization aside - when you have a bunch of bald men with the same accent wearing the same clothes and running around the same featureless corridors - you can't tell one person from another. That is the most confusing climax I've seen in a long, long time.

* The worst bluescreen effects I have ever seen in my life. Every single miniature shot of the Alien looks like complete crap. Ed Wood would be ashamed of these effects.

* It's not scary. Even an action movie like Aliens had some scary moments, but this plays like a Friday the 13th flick, with boring and mindless blood and gore sequences. Not a scare in the whole damn film.

* Ripley dying. Well, there goes any final attachment to the film I might of had left.

I could go on and on and on, but this should do for a start. The film is a complete piece of shit from the first frame to the last credit. There's the occasionally redeeming feature - David Fincher's direction and style is pretty slick and clearly the best part of the movie - but for the most part the whole movie is a train wreck.

Nope, sorry - Ripley, Newt and Hicks lived happily ever after at the end of Aliens. Period, end of story.

DrOBoogie1

I never liked Alien 3, and I've never liked David Fincher's movies much. Alien 3 will always be, for me, the film that ruined the series -- it threw away everything that was built up in the first two movies just to have some unrelated story that essentially re-did the first film (alien creature stalks several members of a community). Aliens added to the first movie in a wonderful way and really created a universe in which following films could have thrived. Instead, we got Alien 3 which tore it all up before it even got a chance to be used.

I remember reading a criticism of the 3rd movie at the time that said the next movie in the series should have simply made out the 3rd movie to be a dream that Ripley had (she does tell Newt at the end of Aliens that they can dream now). While I would ordinarily resist such a cheat, I would have welcomed it in the case of the Alien series -- ANYTHING to get rid of the foul taste of Alien 3.

Still waiting for a sequel to Aliens.

kid samurai

As a fan of the franchise, I extremely despised the movie at the time I watched it during its theatrical run mainly for 2 reasons:
1) major (really gigantic) plot hole in the beginning: alien egg on Sulaco. I could not for the life of me figure out or come up with a plausible explanation for the existence of an alien egg being on the Sulaco taking into account everything that happened in the second film. To make matters worse, a plot hole in the film's first 5 minutes!!! This alone was a red beacon telling me that this film was going downhill from there.
2) Death of Ripley: it was too ludicrous to watch. The first 2 films have demonstrated that when an alien monster rips through your torso and ribcage, it sure as hell gonna HURT with excruciating pain unless you're already dead. Ripley falling and calmly taking a hold of the alien as it bursts through her chest without even wincing was just too unbelievable (I actually laughed at the gall of whomever made the decision to do THAT for an ending).

However, watching the documentaries about Alien 3 it is revealed that:
1) the director David Fincher NEVER had a finished script to begin with. He filmed scenes that were storyboarded but never really having a cohesive tie. No blueprint to work from.
2) due to the fact there was no FINISHED script to work from, Fincher had to deal with input from everywhere( line producers, executive producers, studio board execs, his own Director of Photography, etc.) all having their say in what needed to be done and what couldn't be done.
3) as a result of studio politics and having no solid blueprint to work from, Fox ended up with a work-in-progress movie that resembled a mishmash of brilliant visual style and really terrible choices( no fault by Fincher I suspect).

As for the special edition of Alien 3, it only reinforces my belief that David Fincher is a film auteur with a brilliant yet distinct visual style I've come to admire in his films; unfortunately for him, especially for his debut directorial chore for a feature film, he had to deal with the reality of the unrelenting and unforgiving Hollywood machine to butcher his vision. So sad to see this happen especially in the art of film where the artist's vision is more often than not sacrificed and/or compromised for the sake of making a buck.

HighSpeedOnIce

When I first watched the Alien3 discs, I spent hours and did it all at once. I watched the film with & without commentary and just about all of the featurettes and production footage.

I was pretty sure that the explaination of Ripley's plunge came on the commentary track. Although, because I took in so much information in a single afternoon, I could be mistaken regarding exactly where on the disc that segment is. I wasn't planning on relating precisley where within the many hours of extras the one or two minute segment on her plunge appeared.

Here's the jist of the production comments relating to that scene:

The explanation that was given, was that during the initial screenings of the film, the test audiences reacted unfavorably to Ripley's plunge. There were indications that they wanted/needed closure to her queen embryo issue. Right or wrong, it was presumed that if the chestburster made a timley/dramatic appearance during her fall, then that would appease the unfullfilled masses.

Perhaps someone who reads this and then watches the extras would be able to make a note of where exactly this info can be found and then let us know.

~Cheers~

C Roberts

Alien = Alien goes to the escape shuttle.
Aliens = Alien Queen goes to the escape shuttle.
Alien3 = Ripley is the escape shuttle.
Alien R = Aliens go to the escape shuttles.

Considering the Alien's efforts to survive and clear knowledge of escape pods I don't see it as too hard to believe the Queen or one of her minions (before take off) stuck some eggs on the shuttle. They spread around the galaxy by getting their eggs onto ships. This is just my imaginative theory for the third movie plothole though.

necros

I really liked Alien 3. But I never saw the theatrical version and saw the movie for the first time in the special edition in the quadrilogy. I thought i was great. A very dark and almost depressing movie but why does everything need to have a happy ending? I can see why some people hate it cuz I was sad to see what happened to newt and hicks right off the bat, but this peticular story couldn't have been told with them in it anyway. Why just make Alien 3 be Aliens 2 and have anothe war movie? I'm sure it would have been cool nonetheless but I think Alien 3 works really good for me anyway. And after watching the second disc now, and being an ameture film maker myself, I think the end result is great especially considering all the problems and everything that were all over the project from start to finish. I mean, just to pull it off as well as they did when there was no real script ! .. Fincher just shot way up on my respect-o-meter now.

Grabastic

good point.

as far as alien egg "plot hole" goes, hey, i don't see what the problem is. i made the assumption that the queen laid a few eggs while inside the drop ship. it's reasonable, considering that she is an egg layer and she was in the middle of egg laying in Aliens when Ripley comes in with Newt. it might not have been the most imaginative way to handle that bit, but it certainly doesn't break any boundaries of conceivability, IMO.

i agree with the killing of Hicks and Newt part. that was the main issue that has always made me less a fan of this film than the others. those were great characters that deserved further exploration. shame.

the deal with the alien's gestation time in Ripley is a good point, though not without explaination. maybe the queens take some more time to gestate. afterall, they are rather large and they do play a larger role in the alien community. maybe they need a few more days to grow. remember, this is a sci-fi movie. sometimes you have to reach into your own imagination to find the answers to things that happen.

as far as the chestburster goes, it's obvious that a lot of people didn't like it, for whatever reason. i didn't mind it, considering that when i first saw Alien 3, i had the sneaking suspicion from the get go that Ripley was infected, what with all her coughing and wincing all through the movie. i'm thinking it's going to come out at any moment.

afterall, the alien chestbursting is what had happened to infected people in the previous movies. i figured Ripley's infection would go no differently. had they done some last minute miracle and got the thing out of her, would that have made people happy? certainly not me.

at least she didn't go in some writhing panic, which would have totally robbed her of all dignity. she went out just as toughly as she went in to her long-lasting ordeal.

El-Kabong

I would *ALMOST* buy this if the egg shown in A3 was tucked away in the landing gear of the drop ship. The egg, however is nowhere near the drop ship - it would appear that it was stuck in medical or something. And I'm pretty sure that the queen didn't have time to scuttle down to where the egg is, drop it off and rush back to put the smackdown on Ripley.

This of course, is overlooking the fact that the whole egg laying apparatus was shot by a bazooka and ripped away when the Queen hauled ass. And then there's the time factor - the queen didn't have all that long before grabbing a strut before touching down (and there were probably more important things on her mind like . . . oh, I don't know - not falling off while a nuke shakes the ship?

But ok - lets say for a second that a Magical Egg Fairy visited the ship while everyone was away and dropped off the egg. I'll concede the point. There are still 9,999 OTHER things in the movie that makes it suck ass. This alone is not the movies only sin.

HighSpeedOnIce

I just don't know about the whole egg-laying thing . . .

In Star Trek - The Wrath Of Kahn, we see Kahn grab ahold of some creature and pull a pair of its offspring off and insert them into Chekov's and the other guy's helmets.

I just kinda figured that maybe the Queen had "hitchhiker" offspring similar to the Kahn thing.

The queen bearing facehugger is noticably different in appearance than the ones we've all become used to. I think it may be reasonable to assume that maybe this particular offspring isn't delivered in the typical fashion. Especially, seeing how it's sole purpose seems to be perpetuating the alien race by spawning a new queen in the event the old one fell.

While I completely understand the need for a reasonable level of continuity in the fictional alien world. I also realize there were a few artistic liberties taken with Alien3.

I guess the level of enjoyment one receives from watching all of these films is directly related to the level of belief one is willing to suspend.

I dunno, that's my theory . . . I'm sticking to it

shill66

Still haven't gotten over it, eh? Tsk, tsk. I got over it in the first 60 seconds of the movie.

Anyway, your statement says that the viewer has no emotional attachment to Ripley. I sincerely doubt that.

I've said it before, and it looks like I'll say it again: the focus of the trilogy is DEATH. More specifically, the focus is on how the aliens consistently and unfailingly destroy every single thing that Ripley ever holds dear, no matter how hard she tries. Alien3 fits that mold perfectly, especially with the death of Newt and Hicks (while Ripley is asleep, cruelly multiplying her feelings of helplessness) and her own sacrifice at the end. In fact, it's the only way the trilogy should have ended.

(And clearly I think it should have remained a trilogy, because the ending was so perfect.)

Do we conveniently forget that everyone dies in Alien except Ripley and Jones?

EPKJ

I think that the death theme was destroyed by the off handed way in which Newt and Hicks were killed. This was done so the director did not have to deal with anything from the prior film. It was sheer laziness and had nothing to do with advancing a grand story arc.

shill66

You really would have preferred recasting both roles?

nemein

True at min they would have probably had to kill off Newt (or have an extensive search for a young actress who looked exactly like her). The guy who played Hicks would have probably been available though but having him on the planet wouldn't have really added anything IMHO. In fact it would have complicated things wrt exposition that was given while showing the "relationship" between Riply and the doctor. WRT Riply dying I thought that was they only way they got Weaver to come back in the first place (that and a boat load of money)

bboisvert

I would have preferred had the storyline actually been more original and interesting. There are many ways to exclude the characters from Aliens.

But, instead, they opted for the standard 'slasher sequel' method (the boogyman that you thought was dead isn't, everyone from the previous film is now dead, and now lets start over with another bunch of characters getting picked off by the bad guy).

It has about as much class as Nightmare on Elm Street 4, in my opinion.

Joe Schmoe

The changes to this film didn't change my opinion about it one way or the other. It still ranks 3rd in my book.

As for the changes themselves, I liked the extended crash and rescue scene, but that's it. The scene where Golic frees the creature explains why he disappears from the film, but that sequence doesn't contribute much to the story. I didn't like an ox being used as the host because it means another ox should have been used as bait to lure the beast; in the theatrical version, you have no idea there's livestock available to use as bait, so it makes more sense that the prisoners used themselves instead.

I was hoping the new version of "Alien 3" would explain how the Queen in "Aliens" laid an egg in the cryogenic compartment aboard the Sulaco, but alas, it still remains a mystery.

jdslater

I've just watched teh new version of Alien 3 and all its documentaries, but not the commentary. I found the film alot better then I was expecting. Yes there are plot holes (but I can forgive them). But I think Fincher was in the worst place he could ever be!
The documentaries are brilliant. They are amazingly frank!(when they talk about the 20th century fox spies phoning in at the end of each day). Vincent Wards ideas for the woodern planet sounds amazing, and there is more aspects of his film in the finished film he is willing to admit.
A great couple of books about filming nightmares are out, "The greatest sci-fi movies never made" and "tales from develpment hell" both by David Hughes. I recommend them both highly.

vivarey

Okay, just watched this tonight. Stupid question:

Is Bishop II an android or not? He didn't spew white milk, but he seemed rather unharmed by the blow that nearly took off his ear and part of his face. Perhaps this is explained in Alien 4 (haven't watched it yet). It was an odd moment though.

Also, maybe I missed it in the movie, but was there an explanation for why this particular Alien moved and looked different? I would have just attributed it to a new design, but Ripley pointed it out herself in the film. I wonder if it had anything to do with the fact that the Alien was born from a 4-legged mammal (ox/dog) instead of a human?

Finally, I know there was some question about how the eggs made it on the ship. Do you think there's any chance that Bishop brought them on? It would have made a lot more sense, knowing the history of androids and the company. If only Bishop would have confessed this to Ripley before he was deactivated (when he confirmed her fears of the facehuggers onboard), it would have explained a lot.

But overall, an enjoyable yet disappointing movie.

JM1

The "Bishop" character at the end of Alien 3 was not an android, rather the guy who actually built him.

The explanation as to why the aliens looked and moved differently was indeed because they were born from different animals, but I personally never thought this made sense. I don't see how the the host's biological make up can influence the genetic makeup of the creature itself - but I suppose at a stretch they can just about get away with it. It's only a movie.

Bishop bringing the eggs on board? Well, it seems unlikely as they had gone to great lengths in the second movie to show the Bishop android as friendly and a good guy.

Apart from anything else, if you were to hypothesise this theory, it would completely change the character of Bishop that had been established in the second film, and would not be fair to Cameron.

Bottom line is, whatever reasons anyone may come up with about how the eggs got there - the filmakers just did'nt think about it. I get the impression someone sat down and said " I have a great idea for explaining why Newt and Ripley are not in the movie", and everyone said "Yeah, that'll work".

jdslater

I was thinking that about Bishop II as well, when hit he shouts out that he is human, but I think most humans might be concerned about the half-of-my-face-hanging-off thing.
People might know this but, Lance Henrikson has said he is playing the charactor called Weyland who is the head of "The Company" in the new film, but that doesn't fit well with Bishop II. But then again do we know the time difference between Aliens and Alien3. The may have invented a new Synthetic ( who says their "blood" has to be white).

BizRodian

I once read that in the original script there were going to be multiple animals and multiple looking different aliens because of it. That could be BS though. I love the design of the dog alien though.

Alien3 is my favorite too, though I've never seen the extended version. I can see why people dislike it, but it's for those exact same reasons I love it.