Summary
- Ripley's battle against Xenomorphs kept audiences on edge, but Alien 3's unrelatable characters diminished the stakes.
- Alien 3's troubled production led to an inconsistent departure from the original franchise, leaving many fans disappointed.
- Renny Harlin's version of Alien 3, with Xenomorphs invading Earth, could have been a success and a terrifying twist on the franchise.
The Alien franchise was a terrifying blend of sci-fi and horror that gave us the iconic heroine, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). Her harrowing and valiant struggle to survive against the brutal and incomprehensible Xenomorphs is a roller-coaster ride of heart-pounding moments which keep audiences glued to their screens and on the edge of their seats. The film's legendary tagline of "In space, no one can hear you scream," still hits deep and turns the blood in your veins to ice. The idea that one of these things could get loose in your hometown was too much to bear and Ripley was the person who stood between the Xenomorphs and the total annihilation of humanity.
The franchise had a kind of unifying effect by positing an existential threat so abjectly awful and terrorizing that our differences kind of melted away. That is until the third film. Alien 3, directed by David Fincher, is perhaps the most divisive of the franchise. Gone are the relatable characters of space truckers. Instead, the third installment saw Ripley battling it out with the Xenomorphs aboard a prison ship with a bunch of cut-throats. Rife with studio interference, the final result is a bit of a mixed bag, but according to SlashFilm, when original director Renny Harlin was attached to the project, the film had an entirely different plot that was arguably much better.
- Release Date
- May 22, 1992
- Runtime
- 114 minutes
- Director
- David Fincher
- Writers
- David Giler, Larry Ferguson, Walter Hill, Vincent Ward, Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shusett
- Producers
- Ezra Swerdlow
Cast
-
Ripley -
Dillon
WHERE TO WATCH
Returning from LV-426, Ellen Ripley crash-lands on the maximum-security prison Fiorina 161, where she discovers that she has unwittingly brought along an unwelcome visitor.
- Main Genre
- Science Fiction
So, What Was the Problem With ‘Alien 3’?
Though Alien 3 did well at the box office, a lot of people still disliked the film; but why? To start with, the production seemed to be cursed. The script went through dozens of rewrites and numerous directors were attached to the project, so when Fincher stepped in, he inherited a nightmare and, at one point, that included shooting without a script, according to SlashFilm. The result is a kind of massive and inconsistent departure from the established Alien world audiences knew and loved. To make matters worse, Ripley's entire crew was killed off at the start of the film. A detestable swan song for characters that had been firmly established during the two previous films. Ripley's new crew were murderous bandits aboard a prison ship that has been converted into a kind of cathedral for their prison religion. And all this led to a big, fat, "So what?" with the audience. Perhaps this is why the director disowned the film.
It is difficult for an audience to care about whether space prisoners they do not know live or die. It's also difficult to make an audience care about whether members of a dangerous prison cult live or die. The stakes were much higher in the original films because those characters were working people – miners and truckers – just like the rest of the movie-going public, albeit from the future, providing a relatable foundation. The new characters were introduced at a disservice by being portrayed without any nuance or likability. Intriguing characters like Dr. Clemens (Charles Dance) were killed off too soon. As such, if the audience didn't like the characters on screen, then they were not going to care whether they lived or died. So just who was Ripley protecting in the third installment? It is safe to say Alien 3 suffered from being a film with very unrelatable characters and diminished stakes.
'Alien 3' Could Have Been So Much Better if Renny Harlin Had His Way
Image via 20th Century Fox
Image via 20th Century Fox 
Image via 20th Century Fox 
Image via 20th Century Fox 
Image via 20th Century Fox
Renny Harlin's version of Alien 3 would have been a far more relatable film than Fincher's because the third installment of the franchise would have seen the Xenomorphs invading Earth. Harlin told Slashfilm,
"I was working on 'Alien 3' in '89, which was before 'Jurassic Park' and all those movies. So the concept of having these creatures on Earth for the studio, felt scary and unattainable. For me, it was the natural evolution. We've had the 'Alien' with the truck drivers in space, we've had 'Aliens' with the Marines in space, and where do we go next? Let's bring the aliens on Earth and have them going through the cornfield. I had the poster already in my mind with the farmhouse and the cornfield in moonlight, and they are going through the cornfield. To this day, I think it would've been a ginormous hit movie because it would've been the first time anything like that was done. But for whatever reason, the studio felt like, 'Ah, the audience won't buy that.'"
The idea of xenomorphs invading planet Earth is terrifying. Think about the potential of waking up one night only to find one of those things terrorizing a family? The xenomorphs are, after all, a highly evolved predatorial species and this is exactly what films like Prometheus were getting at. What happens when a superior species meets humanity? The Xenomorphs are unburdened by philosophy or religion, morality or conscience, they are perfect animals and setting them loose in an environment woefully unprepared to deal with these killing machines was a plot way ahead of its time. Most of the films that deal with alien threats feature humanoid-like creatures, often with superior technology being bested by humanity and our indomitable spirit. But even so, the idea wasn't that far out.
Invasion Of The Body Snatches (1978) starring Jeff Goldblum and the late, great Donald Sutherland, saw a race of parasitic aliens invading Earth and overwhelming humanity that did pretty well at the box office. In 1982, John Carpenter's The Thing scared audiences half to death with a superior life form murdering unsuspecting scientists at a remote station; it also performed well at the box office. Neither of these had the massive budget that the Alien films had. It's intriguing to imagine just how much terror the original idea of Alien 3 would have delivered with its budget. It's funny in retrospect, because four years after Alien 3's release, Independence Day, a film about murderous aliens invading Earth, would go on to become a massive hit, precisely because humanity facing extinction due to an existential threat is highly relatable, due to the fact that we are able to see ourselves as potential victims of an invasion.
Harlin chose to walk away from the project because he felt like the film couldn't live up to his lofty expectations, and we are left with the film we know today. But the idea wasn't permanently shelved because the FX network is planning an Alien TV series set on Earth, bringing the idea full circle, although Harlin isn't slated to direct.
Alien 3 is currently available to stream on Disney+ in the U.S.