Alien 3 Deep Dive (Gibson vs. Fincher)
Experiencing Alien 3 for the first time - two different ways
Did you know that Science Fiction legend, William Gibson, wrote a first draft for Alien 3 that was never produced?
*Spoilers for the first three Alien films, and for William Gibson’s draft of Alien 3*
I am fascinated by the Alien franchise, because it contains the work of three of our greatest directors: Ridley Scott for Alien (1979), James Cameron for Aliens (1986), and then David Fincher for Alien 3 (1992).
Each entry comes relatively early in their respective careers. Alien is Ridley Scott’s second film. Aliens is James Cameron’s third film. And Alien 3 is David Fincher’s first film. And I’m fascinated by how distinctive creative voices tackle stories in the same universe, with some of the same characters.
Alien is a perfect science fiction horror film (Scott described it as “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre of science fiction”). Suspense. Dread. The claustrophobic nature of the ship, and then the vents within that ship. Scott and his team set the tone for the entire franchise with absolutely stunning production design, perhaps most notably H. R. Giger’s designs for the aliens. But Scott’s greatest contribution may have been making Ripley a woman, as Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley went from the standard sci-fi male hero to a genre defining heroine.
Aliens is a perfect science fiction action film. I also think it’s one of the greatest sequels of all time as it builds on the first film’s premise and characterization, increases the stakes, while at the same time shifting the tone, so as not to just repeat the successes of the first film. James Cameron ups the ante across the board action-wise, but in my opinion, the reason it works so well is that he also finds the emotional core of the story with Ripley and Newt.
I love the first two films, but had never seen the third, even though I also really enjoy Fincher’s work.
Then I learned that William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, wrote a draft of a screenplay for Alien 3 that was never produced. That script was recently novelized by Pat Cadigan, an accomplished writer in her own right.
My idea was to rewatch Alien and Aliens. Read the William Gibson version of Alien 3 (as brought to life by Pat Cadigan), and then to watch Alien 3 for the first time.
I wanted to compare the two approaches to the third entry in the series, but also see what Fincher brought to the table, compared to Scott and Cameron. I was also interested in some of the behind-the-scenes for the third film, as Fincher famously despises the finished product (”No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me”).1
Alien 3 by William Gibson and Pat Cadigan
*Final spoiler warning*
The unforgivable sin of Gibson’s version is that it doesn’t have Ripley or Newt. I realize that this was following instructions from the production team, as they were unsure if Weaver would be willing to return as Ripley in a third film, but it remains as a horrible missed opportunity.
The basic premise is interesting: The Sulaco (the ship with Ripley, Newt, Bishop and Hicks) floats into the territory of the “Union of Progressive Peoples,” essentially space Communists, and they board the ship, and leave with Alien material. The ship is then sent on to a space station mall (??) called Anchorpoint, where Weyland-Yutani corporate reps take over the ship and also extract alien material.
It’s like a cold war arms race metaphor, with both communists and capitalists trying to harvest the alien material as the ultimate weapon, and then dealing with the consequences. Hicks and Bishop wake up and try to stop them by destroying the alien material before it gets out of control and kills everyone. They rightly understand the existential threat that the alien lifeforms pose after their experience on LV-426.
You can guess how it ends up. Aliens get loose and kill virtually everyone. Hicks and Bishop do what they can to destroy them and save as many people as they can.
Newt is shipped off to earth early on.
Ripley never wakes up!
She is in a coma after the events of the last film, and she never wakes up!
I was at about the halfway point of the novel and kept wondering when Ripley would take the central role for the rest of the story. I kept thinking they were really milking it by leaving her out of commission, but that likely they were setting up for a bigger pay off when she finally enters the story and uses her hard won expertise to save everyone.
But no. She never wakes up.
Hicks and Bishop are essentially our main characters. We are introduced to a number of people in the UPP and at Anchorpoint, but I never felt particularly invested in them or their stories.
I liked the space station as the setting, and dug the communist cold-war arms race as a premise but it never solidified into anything beyond that. There was potential with again exploring Weyland-Yutani’s corporate greed, manifested in their irresponsible risking of the entire human race, but that’s also nothing new. It’s the same tension of the first two films. We didn’t go any deeper.
In this version, people can become Aliens through exposure to airborne pathogens, which means we get a lot of aliens, very quickly. This amount of aliens in play lessens the tension and impact, and also their perceived danger, as our protagonists suddenly have to kill a lot of monsters to even stay alive (something that was never possible in previous stories).
I respect Cadigan’s work as a hired hand, but she had a tough job. These films rely so heavily on their visual elements, whether it’s to establish the technology and surrounding terrain, or build tension with the horror/action sequences. It may just be me, but I didn’t find the survival horror elements translated as well in this medium. I was also consistently annoyed by the heavy handed references to the previous films, whether in dialogue or in the character’s inner monologues (a variation of the phrase from Aliens “I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” showed up a minimum of three times before I stopped counting).
Verdict: Skippable except for the most hardcore Alien/Gibson fans.
Alien 3 (1992) Directed by David Fincher
The treatment to continue the Alien franchise, after the success of Aliens, was for a two-part story, with Alien 3 being the first. 20th Century Fox agreed to finance story development based on the treatment, but asked that both films be shot back to back in order to save on production costs. Finnish director Renny Harlin (director of the fourth Nightmare on Elm Street) was also a part of the production process at this stage.
William Gibson’s draft is the first attempt based on the treatment by producers David Giler, Walter Hill, and Gordon Carroll. They were unhappy with the draft and asked him to do another, but he refused.
Eric Red was hired to make the next attempt. His script was rejected for not following the treatment among other things (Red himself described the script as “utter crap” due to the rushed timeline and interference). At this point the production team stopped trying to make two sequels at the same time.
Next they hired David Twohy, who was told to use Gibson’s script as a jumping off point. His main contribution appears to be changing the setting to a prison planet. Harlin did not like the script, feeling it was too similar to the previous movies and left the project. At this point, Fox executives come to their senses and realized that they needed to center the new story around Ripley, and backed up a truck of money to Sigouney Weaver’s house to ask her to return. She agrees, but had notes on the latest script, which prompted another round of rewrites by Twohy.
At the same time, Walter Hill goes to a screening of The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, and asked the director Vincent Ward to join the project. Ward did not like Twohy’s script, so he worked on his own idea, eventually bringing on John Fasano to expand his idea into a screenplay. Twohy finds out that Fox is going down this parallel path and also leaves the project.
Ward’s idea is built around Ripley crash landing on a type of monastery, with luddite-like monks, living on a planet (or space station) made entirely out of wood(??). It seems there was a lot of enthusiasm for aspects of this idea…except from the production team. Ward was eventually fired because he was unwilling to make changes to the core of his story.
David Giler and Walter Hill eventually take matters into their own hands and essentially marry the wooden monk scripts (by Ward/Fasano) with the earlier prison planet script (by Twohy).
This is when Fincher was hired to replace Ward. He brought with him author Rex Pickett to make further changes to this new script by Giler and Hill. Pickett was eventually fired, and the final draft was written by Giler and Hill.
I’m already exhausted.
In addition to all of the above, Fincher reportedly also had issues throughout production fighting for his vision for the story as Fox had continuous concerns about the money being spent.
For my first time watching the film I chose the “Assembly Cut” which was created for the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy box set. Fox wanted a “director’s cut” of the film, but Fincher wouldn’t do it. The assembly cut was made using Fincher’s notes, and puts back in about 30 minutes of footage. The version I watched put a symbol on the screen for all of the “new” footage in the assembly cut, which I thought was very helpful.
I did not enjoy the film. I could see why Ebert would call it “one of the best-looking bad movies I’ve ever seen.”2 Fincher’s signature style is on display, but the story is a mess.
The unforgivable sin of the film is similar to Gibson’s, although Ripley is left alive, Newt, Bishop, and Hicks, all die within the first few minutes of the film, undoing virtually all of the hard won catharsis of the last film. James Cameron put it this way at the Comic Con panel celebrating the 30th anniversary of Aliens:
"I thought [the decision to eliminate Newt, Hicks, and Bishop] was dumb. I thought it was a huge slap in the face to the fans. ['Alien 3' director] David Fincher is a friend of mine, and he's an amazing filmmaker, unquestionably. That was kind of his first big gig, and he was getting vectored around by the studio, and he dropped into the production late, and they had a horrible script, and they were re-writing it on the fly. It was just a mess. I think it was a big mistake. Certainly, had we been involved we would not have done that, because we felt we earned something with the audience for those characters."3
I feel very similarly to the way I did with the Gibson script: both versions fail to build on the emotion and momentum of its predecessor. Each version has interesting ideas, but neither fully honors Ripley’s story, and the end point of that character at the end of Aliens.
I liked Charles Dance’s character, but besides him and Ripley, I do not care about anyone in the film. I didn’t connect to any of it. The CGI monster was painfully bad in so many instances, especially compared to the terrifying effects of the original.
Verdict: Skippable except for the most hardcore Alien/Fincher fans.
I had fun with this even though I didn’t love either version (Gibson’s or Fincher’s). I am also somehow still intrigued by this universe. Noah Hawley is currently making his Alien show on FX (which takes place before Alien and does not include Ripley or any other characters from the original franchise). This seems to be instead of the planned Neill Blomkamp sequel, which would have taken place directly after the events of Aliens (and seemingly ignoring Alien 3 and Alien Resurrections).
The franchise appears to be in good hands with Hawley, who is one of the more interesting creators working today (between Fargo, Legion, or his novels), however I think I will always be a little sad that we will never get a true sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens, and explore all the exciting places that story could have gone.
Looking forward to reading this in full!