What an impossible task first-time director David Fincher had in front of him: make a (mostly unnecessary) follow-up film to Alien and Aliens, two films that represent the apex of the horror and action genres respectively. You’ll also need to do this on a shoestring budget’ deal with constant, daily script rewrites; and handle no small amount of studio interference.
You weren’t called here so we could indulge your unique artistic vision, whatever that is; no, you made a name for yourself in music videos and we think we can push you around. It’s no wonder, then, that Fincher has all but disowned Alien 3 to this day, going so far as to say that “No one hates it more than I do.” When the Alien quadrilogy DVD dropped in 2003, Fincher turned down the studio’s offer to oversee his film’s transfer; every other Alien director accepted.
It’s inaccurate to say that Alien 3‘s reputation is that of a bad movie; no, it’s more that of a missed opportunity (The Godfather, Part III – now that has the reputation of a bad movie). When people (myself included, from now on) speak of Alien 3, it’s with a sense of bitterness, induced by the fact that 20th Century Fox had no idea what kind of talent they had in their midst, and did all they could do hamstring someone who would become one of our finest living directors. Going into Alien 3, I was prepared for a letdown.
What I was not prepared for was how much I actually liked Fincher’s film. It has its flaws, no doubt, but it is also the beginning of a vision; here you can see Fincher’s muted color palette on display, his dispassionate, almost clinical worldview. So detached is Fincher here that Alien 3 is staunchly bleak and nihilistic, which works to its benefit. Alien is a haunted house movie set on a spaceship. Aliens shows the enormity of the threat and our ill-preparedness to respond to it. Alien 3 shows that God has abandoned us.
The film starts with Ripley crash-landing on a derelict, windblown prison planet called Fury 161, where she is taken in by a doctor named Clemens (Charles Dance, for once not playing a villain). It’s in these early scenes that Alien 3 commits its most grievous sin (which is the script’s problem, not Fincher’s), and that’s in the off-screen deaths of Newt and Hicks. I want to unpack this a little bit, though. This is one of the main reasons that Alien 3 attracts so much vitriol; Aliens, like many James Cameron films, is about motherhood, and here Ripley’s surrogate daughter dies before the credits are over, and then is subjected to an invasive autopsy (we don’t see much of it, but Sigourney Weaver’s facial acting in this scene is simply devastating).
I won’t deny that this is the wrong way to treat characters who became so important to both Ripley and the audience, but I will argue that it is of a piece with Alien 3‘s black heart. I admire any work of art with the guts to be fully nihilistic, knowing full well how it might alienate an audience. So I agree that Newt and Hicks deserved better, but the entire meaning of Alien 3 is that we don’t always get what we deserve, that no one is keeping track of what we’ve earned, because no one is out there.
The prison is a fascinating environment, not as claustrophobic as the Nostromo but equally isolated. There is no way off the planet, and the supply ship only comes every six months. The prisoners have all become devoutly religious, and while there is a warden (another in a long line of this franchise’s despicable company men), the real power lies with Dillon, a self-confessed murderer and rapist who nevertheless leads the prison in prayer and is treated with a mixture of fear and respect. Charles S. Dutton is good as Dillon, but certainly better in the first third of the film, where he allows Dillon a quietly simmering intensity coupled with a never-ending struggle for decency. When Alien 3 becomes more of a slasher flick, Dutton’s performance sadly gets more one-note.
Alien 3 has two main problems. One is bloat: Fincher wants to tell a story about the futility of believing anyone will save us, and that’s what the script wants too, as much as it fights against itself. The script (by David Giler, Walter Hill, and Larry Ferguson) shoehorns in a lot about the heartlessness of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, but the problem is that we’ve already received ample evidence of that in Alien and Aliens. This would be a far more effective film if it were allowed to embrace the hard truth it wants to impart: that the universe is just as unfeeling as a corporation.
The second problem is the visual effects. Sure, this was 1992, but Terminator 2 had come out the year prior, so it’s not as if the technology wasn’t available. What I’m trying to say is that the special effects are bad, most notably on the titular monster. Some of the time, the xenomorph is played by an actor in a suit, and in these scenes the creature projects an air of genuine menace and terror. Other times, such as when the xenomorph is skittering around on the ceiling, it’s a computer-generated effect, and to say it doesn’t hold up would be a gross understatement. There are a lot of jokes about Alien 3‘s alien dog, but I didn’t see that, because I watched the 144-minute “assembly cut” instead of the 115-minute theatrical cut; in the version I saw, which I recommend, there is no dog out of which the xenomorph emerges, but an ox, which looks fine. My point is: if you have a problem with the dog, watch a different cut.
There was so much turmoil behind the scenes of Alien 3 that it’s impossible to not notice it on screen. So much is conveyed but never explained, such as: how did Ripley get the alien queen inside her? We know how xenomorphs are birthed. Dillon asks her several times, and not only does she not know, the script doesn’t appear to either.
But don’t let that dissuade you. Fincher might have disowned this film, but maybe he shouldn’t have. Of course, he had a miserable experience on his debut feature, but the fact that through all that came this nasty, black-hearted piece of art is frankly stunning. Alien 3 is by no means a masterpiece, but it is far better than you’ve heard it is, and it is the birth of a directing legend.
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