Alien 3 is a movie that seems to have made it to the screen by some sort of miracle considering every problem it faced before its release: a Frankenstein’s monster of a script, cobbled together by several drafts, a director working on his first feature, and a studio seemingly hellbent on not letting that director have a vision. After all of these setbacks the film still made it to screens… only to be a critical and financial flop that has found its audience over time and is now seen by some to be the best in the franchise. To understand this film and its complicated legacy, the best place to go is back to the beginning.
Aliens was released in 1986 and with it came heaps of critical adoration as well as box office returns ($85.1 million on a budget of $18.5 million) and awards, with Sigourney Weaver being nominated for Best Actress. With all this success it only seemed natural that the studio would want to strike while the iron was hot and make a sequel. But there was some resistance — minor as it was — from the producers, namely David Giler and Walter Hill who had been with the franchise since its inception. They planned a two film arc that would see the survivors of Aliens returning to fight against a new evil of genetically modified xenomorphs. With a story idea finally set in motion and the studio begrudgingly willing to make it, the next step was finding a screenplay, which was a step that would prove much easier said than done.
Cyberpunk author William Gibson was the first person hired to take a crack at the script and he decided to do something unexpected: he took Alien and turned it into Cold War body horror. Gibson’s script would focus on the survivors of Aliens — more accurately — Corporal Hicks as played by Michael Biehn and Bishop played by Lance Henriksen (a stipulation of Giler and Hill was that Ripley be saved for the sequel) as they are taken in by the Union of Progressive Peoples, this film’s stand-in for the Soviet Union. Instead of the Nuclear Arms Race, Gibson posits the idea that Weyland-Yutani and the U.P.P. are in a heated race to see who can replicate xenomorphs and the results aren’t going to end well for either side because, as it turns out, when you create a genetically modified killing machine it tends to live up to its reputation and that’s exactly what happens when the xenomorphs overrun the base and it’s up to the survivors to stop this threat.
Gibson’s script is a wild ride with characters literally shedding their skin to turn into xenomorphs, a spacewalk on the exterior of a space station overrun by them and, perhaps most importantly, a message of unity and trying to set aside our differences that would have given Rocky IV a run for its money. The initial first draft was seen as a bit too grand in scope and so he rewrote, scaling back and attempting something a bit more horror and less action focused, drawing on the atmosphere and ideas of the original film. While the studio decided to pass on the script and move on to another writer, Gibson’s initial script has been adapted multiple times, including a comic book and novelization, both worthwhile reads.
Eric Red was quickly hired and almost instantly put under the thumb of the studios who pushed him with story notes and a barrage of meetings to discuss what they envisioned of the script as a whole, leaving Red with the Herculean task of trying to write a script by committee. Within two short months, Red had a script that took some elements of Gibson’s initial draft and what he was given to work with by the studio, the result was considered a disaster by all, especially Red.
The script took the idea envisioned by Gibson of a space station where nefarious genetic experimentation was occurring but, whereas Gibson used a futuristic look and feel, Red — known for using a Western aesthetic with his previous screenplays — made the space station feel like Middle America with farms and agriculture on its primary level and evil militaristic experiments below. Red wanted none of the previous films protagonists to be a part of the film, all of them were going to be viciously killed before the film even began, with only items remaining to let the audience know who the victims were: this was seen as a strike against what Giler and Hill had specifically envisioned. Red instead decided his focus would have been on a military family as they struggle against the xenomorph threat. Red’s script was a bit too unwieldy with concepts such as xenomorphs mutating an entire space station, yes an actual space station, into one large xenomorph — had the studio given him just a little bit more time to finalize, and perhaps not interfered with demands — a finely tuned version of Red’s script could have worked for them. Yet again, the studio passed and also decided a simplification was in order: no more attempts at back-to-back filmmaking, instead they chose to simply focus on one movie at a time. But who was going to be the next person to fill the now vacated screenwriting position?
David Twohy, at the time known for films like Critters 2: The Main Course and Warlock, was hired and his script created the first building blocks to what the final product of Alien 3 was going to be. Once again Gibson’s script was used as the template minus the Cold War parallels. Twohy took an approach similar to John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 where prisoners on an ore mining station must team up with the “good guys” in order to survive against xenomorphs, yet again created by the means of genetic experimentation. Twohy also used this “unlikely team up against alien threats” to great success with the film Pitch Black.
Twohy, like Eric Red before him, tried to distance himself from the previous films but, whereas Red decided to kill off the previous films survivors, Twohy simply decided not to acknowledge them and try to make something wholly original. Unfortunately, the head of Fox studios at the time felt (incorrectly in my opinion) that Ripley had to return. Sigourney Weaver needed to headline another Alien film. With that demand, and Weaver getting a large pay increase to return, Twohy began retooling his script to fulfill this request. Little did Twohy know that behind the scenes, plans for yet another script were already being set in motion.
Director Vincent Ward, at the behest of Watler Hill who had seen his previous film, was given a meeting with Fox to discuss his ideas for where he felt the franchise would go. Ward, uninterested in any of the previous scripts, created a story that is seen by many as what Alien 3 should have been and is probably the most ambitious of the entire lot. Ward’s idea, co-written with John Fassano, is as such: Ripley crash lands on a planet of monks, the sole survivor of the previous events but she hasn’t come alone. A xenomorph has followed and begins to cause havoc and lead the monks to believe that Ripley has brought them death and destruction. Ward and Fassano’s script was very ambitious with the monks living on a planet that is made entirely of wood over metal and various set pieces set within the monastery, attempting to evoke what worked well in the previous Alien films. Even though many agreed that this script was worthwhile, producers at Fox didn’t feel that it was commercially viable enough and decided to not move forward with it, leaving Fox to scramble as best they could to make a stew out of the meat that they had been given.
Walter Hill and David Giler, alongside Larry Ferguson who had done scripts for The Hunt for Red October and Highlander, took their turn at the script, taking a mishmash of elements from each of the previous drafts that they felt worked best and melding them into a more cohesive product. The monks became workers on a prison planet, mining for the omnipresent and evil Weyland-Yutani, Ripley was the lone survivor of a ship crash and she would have to yet again do battle with a lone xenomorph while also discovering that she is carrying one inside of her. With this script somewhat finalized, it was time to begin filming. The only problem now, who was going to direct?
David Fincher, a big name in the world of music videos, was an interesting and unexpected choice. His inexperience directing features didn’t deter the studio; they assumed they had a director who could work fast and get their film out on time. That didn’t turn out to be the case. One thing Fox didn’t count on was the fact that Fincher was extremely meticulous about what he wanted to get done.
Filming at Pinewood Studios in 1991 was — to put it simply — not great. Fincher had frequent clashes with the studio: they were trying to corral him so that they could get the film that they wanted. All of this despite the fact that filming was happening without a finished script to work with. Eventually this situation became such a disaster that the only way for production to be even remotely salvaged was to stop filming in Pinewood and work on the Fox Studios lot.
Moving production to Los Angeles in 1992 slightly lessened the production troubles but, at this point, it felt like they were trying to put a bandaid on a shark bite. Clashes between Fincher and the studio increased, especially regarding the necessity for reshoots which the studio initially felt were unnecessary then soon discovered they greatly needed, as well as cuts to make the film “more accessible.” Finally, after working for two years on a project that he was hamstrung by from the start, Fincher walked off and disowned the project prior to editing, leaving it to the studio to oversee the final product. After a process six years in the making, from story to screenplay to disastrous filming, Alien 3 was about to be released.
Alien 3 was released on May 22, 1992… and didn’t set the world on fire as expected. It took #2 at the box office behind Lethal Weapon 3 which had opened the week prior. Alien 3 madet a little under half its budget back in the opening weekend and barely made back the full budget during its entire run. The film was poorly received by critics who saw it as too bleak. If that wasn’t bad enough, a double thumbs down from Siskel & Ebert was a sure sign that the film was not going to be on the same level as its predecessors. The film was considered to be a flop.
After his experiences making Alien 3, Fincher returned to music videos for three years until he was given the script that revitalized his interest in feature filmmaking. Seven was a critical and financial success that propelled Fincher’s career into new and interesting paths, including directing Fight Club for 20th Century Fox. It’s funny how things work out like that sometimes.
When it came out, some saw Alien 3 as a disaster, but that doesn’t mean that everybody did. With critical reappraisals and social media posts popping up more and more frequently Alien 3 has been seen for what it truly is: a great film that just had the misfortune of being mishandled by the studio. It’s nice to know that there are people out there who will defend this film; it shows that even when things seem bleak, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It may take about 30 years to reach it, but someday you’ll get there.
