Aliens is the rare sequel that is arguably just as good as the original Alien, but Alien 3 doesn’t quite sit right with many people, including Aliens director James Cameron. While Cameron’s sequel opens with a time jump after the events of Alien, Alien 3 gets much more bold, as it shows Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley has landed on a prison colony and Michael Biehn’s Hicks and Carrie Henn’s Newt didn’t survive the crash. While some considered this an ambitious direction for the franchise, Cameron thinks it was “the stupidest f*cking thing.”
Cameron made the reveal while appearing on Biehn’s podcast Just Foolin’ About. The filmmaker explained:
“So, you build a lot of goodwill around the characters of Hicks, Newt, and Bishop. And then the first thing they do in the next film is kill them all off. Really smart, guys … And replace them with a bunch of f*cking convicts that you hate and want to see die, right? Really clever.”
Alien 3 marked the feature-film debut of director David Fincher, who would go on to deliver classics like Fight Club, Gone Girl, and The Social Network. Fincher has been vocal since the movie’s release about how unpleasant the experience was, with Cameron sympathizing with the situation he was in:
“Now I’m a big fan of Fincher and his work and all that … That was his first feature film, and he was getting vectored around by a lot of other voices and all that, so I give him a free pass on that one.”
‘Alien 3’ Was a Challenge for Everyone
Ridley Scott’s original Alien is a masterclass in survivalist horror. For the sequel, Cameron was coming off of The Terminator, and while his Aliens had plenty of tension-filled moments, it was a more bombastic and action-forward experience. By leaning into a slightly different tone than the original, Aliens manages to be entirely effective in what it attempted to accomplish, with the two experiences complementing one another.
With Alien 3, 20th Century Fox wanted to find another new angle for the franchise, which would have spent more time exploring the corruption of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Multiple filmmakers worked on the project and multiple scripts were developed, with the studio, filmmakers, and Weaver failing to align on what they saw for the project. The studio was so adamant about the project moving forward, the movie had a release date and a teaser had even landed in theaters before a script was finalized.
Back in 2009, Fincher reflected on the challenge of trying to make the best movie he could while also writing the script as they filmed, while also having to adjust for studio notes, when speaking with The Guardian, “I had to work on it for two years, got fired off it three times and I had to fight for every single thing. No one hated it more than me; to this day, no one hates it more than me.”
Fans look at the film a bit more kindly now than when it was released, largely due to how talented a filmmaker Fincher proved himself to be and how explicit he has been about the film’s challenges. Additionally, an Assembly Cut of the movie has been released on home video, which runs nearly 30 minutes longer than the theatrical cut and more closely honors Fincher’s vision.
Alien 3
- Release Date
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May 22, 1992
- Runtime
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114 minutes
- Writers
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David Giler, Larry Ferguson, Walter Hill, Vincent Ward, Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
