MovieChat Forums > Aliens (1986) Discussion > I’ll never understand Alien3

I’ll never understand Alien3


When you’ve made something as objectively awesome, groundbreaking, timeless and successful as Aliens, why in the name of God’s butthole would you trash it like Fox did with Alien3?

The incredible hair’s-breadth escapes and meaningful character journeys are rendered utterly worthless by 3’s demented decision to kill off everyone, including giving Ripley the indignity of having an Alien queen burst out of her chest.

Normally studios make shit sequels because they get greedy. Not here. They made a small, weird, alienating film that was never going to have the kind of mass appeal of its predecessor, and bricked in the mouths of everyone who loved Aliens and would have followed the adventures of Ripley and her pals to edge of the universe. I expect studios to commit artistic suicide, but financial suicide??

To add to the insanity, Fox hire a newbie, Fincher, to direct, and then do everything in their power to stop him making a good film. Stabbing him in the back, front, tying him up and dunking him upside down in molten lead. Such was the trauma that Fincher, who has gone on to greatness, completely disowns the film.

I know that Sigourney wanted to kill off Ripley, remove all guns and various other stupid decisions, but when a star starts going nutso like that you don’t buckle. Leave her out for a film or two if you have to and wait for her to come to her senses as her career declines (as she surely enough did when she came crawling back for the godawful Resurrection)

To make things worse, when Ridley comes back to make his Alien prequels he farted all over Aliens again with his origin story which rejects the whole queen alien concept. Fox took yet another dump on their masterpiece.

I’ll never understand Alien3. I actually like the Assembly Cut but there’s no way in hell I’ll ever consider it canon. As it is the Alien series ends with Aliens, which is crazy because that franchise could have been a never-ending gold mine for Fox.


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"To make things worse, when Ridley comes back to make his Alien prequels he farted all over Aliens again with his origin story which rejects the whole queen alien concept. Fox took yet another dump on their masterpiece."

I don't think it rejects the Alien queen. It just doesn't include her. The prequels have different aliens created by David.

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I did think Alien 3 was a lot more subdued (only one of them, no guns -- altho they were told they couldn't use guns in Aliens) but I enjoyed Alien Resurrection...

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altho they were told they couldn't use guns in Aliens

That applied to the hive attack only, since they were in an environment where stray bullets could have caused a massive explosion. "No guns" was not applicable to any other scenes in the movie, so I really don't understand how this could be tied to Alien 3...

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yeah I didn't think the no guns thing in Alien 3 was in any way connected to Aliens

tbh Alien 3 came out long before I started to analyse films, I just thought it was the type of environment they had chosen for that film

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I didn't think the no guns thing in Alien 3 was in any way connected to Aliens

Then... why did you bring that up in your previous comment? Maybe I'm slow today but I still don't understand :-)

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sorry I was just referring to the fact that the no guns situation was in both films. so if someone had said "no guns in (one scene in) Aliens?!?!" I was just referring that no guns also applied in Alien 3, so it wasn't that crazy a premise

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Ah, ok, I understand now.

The "no guns" part was the least of Alien 3's problems - after all, the scenario was a prison planet with convicts, so it makes sense. All the other elements however... really make the experience suffer.

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How the hell do you fight a horde of ALIENS with no guns?? No weapons as well?? And Newt should've lived along with Michael Biehn

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What horde of ALIENS?

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Wrong movie.. I just watched ALIENS and was thinking about that one

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I've actually just done a quick google. apparently one of the reasons they (the producers) had a no-gun policy, was that (the) aliens can be killed quite easily with pulse rifle guns (or whatever future guns are), so a no guns policy made the film a bit more tricky for the humans in the film. which sort of makes sense

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cos otherwise it would just have been "more of the same shit"

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No way, there are plenty of ways to change the formula while keeping the beloved characters, look how Die Hard With A Vengeance abandoned the single confined location model while maintaining awesomeness.

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You're not the only one.

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I've always hated those things about it too. People defend it by saying there should be no happy ending to a horror franchise.

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If you look into the production history of Alien 3 it becomes much more understandable how it turned out the way it did. Nobody went into the project with the intention of producing such a drab film, it just slowly got funneled into that shape after years of development hell.

Basically they spent years trying to get an action-oriented sequel to Aliens based around Hicks and Bishop off the ground but simply couldn't get a satisfying script, so they finally decided instead to bring back Ripley and try for a fresh new direction. By the time the producers decided that the "surreal" direction David Twohy had come up with (wooden planet, crazy nightmares, etc.) was too far out there for an Alien sequel, the movie was already in pre-production with sets being built and everything, and so they had to work with what they already had.

Essentially, the reason that Alien 3 is so boring is mostly because it's the Twohy script but with all the "surreal" stuff scooped out without adding anything to compensate. It's like if you simply deleted all the action out of Aliens-- all you'd have left is a lamer retread of Alien, and that's pretty much what happened here. Now, I agree that Twohy's stuff was bonkers and inappropriate to the Alien series, but it would've likely been more fun and interesting to watch than the dull final film, at least.

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Agreed with all this (Vincent Wards was the 'wooden planet' script btw) basically A3 tried to be the weird diluted weird Wooden prison planet script and trying to be cyberpunk but it doesn't really work/is very disappointing ..

Would Blomkamps 'alternate A3' have been any better? ... Maybe? (it couldn't have been much worse)

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