You don’t hate Alien 3 as much as you think you do.
A terrible sequel, the third installment of the ’Alien’ saga created by Ridley Scott isn’t actually a terrible movie on its own. In fact, if you haven’t seen director David Fincher’s 2003 “Assembly Cut” for the DVD/Blu-Ray box set, you haven’t even really seen Alien 3. It’s a dark and nihilistic arthouse SF film with a complex, challenging female lead. No wonder it flopped as a summer blockbuster in 1992.
Not to say that summer blockbusters can’t have complex, challenging female leads. The previous year introduced moviegoers to a stronger, crazier Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Where have the Sarah Connors and Ellen Ripleys of my youth gone? My guess is that they’re all on television these days. ScarJo pouting through The Avengers in a catsuit just isn’t cutting it for me. Noomi Rapace had enormous footsteps to follow in as the lead of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
I could not think of a stranger movie for a major studio to make than Alien 3. It’s no surprise to learn that Alien 3 almost didn’t get made at all. The road to bringing it to theaters was a gauntlet of contract negotiations, the worst kind of studio meddling, and a revolving door of screenwriters and directors. It shows in the traces of each discarded script like the ghosts of better movies.
Sigourney Weaver plays Ellen Ripley, woken from cryo-sleep when her escape pod crashes on Fiorina “Fury” 161, a desolate foundry planet and abandoned penal colony, population 25. Ripley’s makeshift family from Aliens, Corporal Hicks, young orphan Newt, and android Bishop, died in the crash and Ripley is left to stand alone amongst Fury’s hardened sociopaths. The former prisoners have adopted religion and do not appreciate the temptation of a woman in their midst. They like her stowaway even less, some seeing the alien as the ultimate test of their faith.
Serious stuff for what was supposed to be a popcorn flick.
William Gibson wrote one of the earliest screenplays in 1987. Because it was uncertain if Sigourney Weaver would return to reprise her role, Ellen Ripley remained in a coma for most of the movie. It was largely about Corporal Hicks (Michael Biehn) and Newt involved in a Cold War-era tale of corporate misbehavior on a galactic scale. Only the bar code tattoos on the backs of prisoners’ heads survived Gibson’s draft. You can read his screenplay yourself online.
David Twohy’s screenplay involved a Weyland-Yutani prison planet, where inmates were being experimented on for biological warfare research. His script is also available online, but the most interesting thing about it is how Twohy, eventually fired, took his prison planet idea and turned it into the world of Pitch Black. There would be no Riddick without Alien 3.
One of the cooler ideas for Alien 3 was Kiwi director Vince Ward’s beautifully outré wooden cathedral on a satellite, inhabited by monks. But, like the directors before him, Ward got too fed up dealing with the studio’s demands and left. This version of Alien 3 has a small cult following and a good chunk of the Alien Quadrology box set dedicated to it.
Enter a young untested director, David Fincher.
Fincher got his start in commercial work, just like original Alien director Ridley Scott. But Fincher had to begin filming with an incomplete script, several million dollars over-budget and several weeks behind schedule. Cast members said there were more producers on set than actors on any given day. And the script was made up as filming went along, by a director who had actors repeat scenes twenty times or more before being satisfied with a take.
Things became so contentious between Fincher and Fox that the director left the production before final editing began and has since disowned the film. The 2003 Assembly Cut isn’t actually the true vision Fincher had in mind (we suppose, as he even refused to return to record DVD commentary or appear in any bonus features) but it’s closer to his original cut of the film. It’s got a new beginning, a modified ending, and a few new sequences that flesh out some of the prisoners and fill in plot inconsistencies made by the studio’s editing.
The opening shot in particular is beautiful in its bleakness.
Former inmate and chief medical officer Jonathan Clemens (Charles Dance, a.k.a. Tywin Lannister) walks along a beach, past mining equipment, his coat billowing behind him in the harsh winds. He finds Ripley’s body washed up on shore, covered in the bugs we only heard about in the theatrical cut. Yes, you’d definitely want to shave your head on this world. A team of oxen drag the Sulaco’s pod out of the ocean. One of the beasts is impregnated by the facehugger hiding on board. (In the theatrical cut, it was a dog.)
The fact that there is a facehugger at all is the biggest headscratcher in all of Alien 3. How did the Queen lay an egg on the shuttle, in record time, when her egg sack was ripped off at the end Aliens? The Assembly Cut at least shows us that it’s no normal facehugger that parasitizes two hosts before dying. Still, the whole foundation of Alien 3 is flawed from the start.
However, more people would say the largest flaw of Alien 3 was killing off Newt and Hicks.
I’m in the minority. I actually didn’t mind it. I kind of admired the balls of it. Sure it was a downer to see these two great characters — and a great character actor in Michael Biehn — get cut down in their sleep. They were heroes in the last movie. They were supposed to be Ripley’s new family. But the alien has stripped all of that away as easily as Ripley shaves her head. The alien strips everything away.
What’s left is a world-weary, caustic woman who doesn’t really give a shit about herself, but still manages to care about the fate of the universe. It’s in Alien 3 that you really see the toll the alien encounters have taken on Ripley. Her life is one long chase sequence, punctuated by gruesome deaths.
Down as she is, with her freshly shorn head, Ripley still has it in her to boldly proposition Dr. Clemens. It’s an unusual pairing, but a tender and oddly fetishistic one. Clemens certainly isn’t the classic hero Hicks was. He wasn’t a rapist at least, he was “just” a smack-addled doctor who accidentally killed 11 people when he prescribed the wrong medication. This makes him a good guy in Alien 3. The fact that he stuck around the lice-infested planet to take care of the criminally insane after his sentence was served makes him a goddamned saint.
Unfortunately, their mutual solace in one another is brief. When the alien attacks, the film really does turn into one long chase sequence.
The inmates’ religion permeates life on Fury 161. With their shaved heads and long coats and the overall sepia tones of the movie, Dillon’s “brothers” look like Catholic monks, but Ripley is constantly reminded that they are rapists. Even the most devout among the men, Dillon (Charles S. Dutton,) thinks that women are “intolerable” and he’s the closest thing to a friend Ripley has for the remainder of the film. When Ripley learns that she’s carrying a queen embryo, that makes her a double feminine threat to the inmates’ tenuous faith and their only chance at survival. This irony seems lost on everyone but Ripley.
As bad as the alien is, it’s Weyland-Yutani Corp. that is the looming threat to the galaxy. As is always the case in these horror movies, man is the most dangerous predator around. Trite but true. Ripley convinces the reluctant inmates to join her cause in killing the alien before a company team can use the creature (and Ripley) for research.
Perhaps it’s this rampant despair and extreme anti-corporate stance that made Alien 3 very popular among the goth-industrial dance crowd of the mid-90s. Shaved heads, goggles, and drab clothes were the fashion in this subculture and Fincher’s film shared that aesthetic. In a strange coda, it’s one of the most frequently sampled movies in industrial music, used by Frontline Assembly, Haujobb, and probably Velvet Acid Christ. (They’ve sampled every movie made before 2002.) German band Wumpscut went a step further and made the Weyland-Yutani logo their band logo, too. One of their biggest dance hits sampled Dillon’s eulogy for Newt and Hicks.
Yes, the plot is messy, the alien FX are cartoonish now, but the action itself is stylish and fun, especially considering that the prisoners have no access to weapons and must use themselves as bait. The cinematography and the re-purposed Vincent Ward cathedral sets provide a visually arresting Middle Ages-meets-the future landscape. Dutton and the rest of the supporting cast, including Pete Postlethwaite, are colorful — when you can tell them apart. There’s a biting sense of humor permeating many of the scenes. And over all of this is Elliot Goldenthall’s menacing score, a mix of choral and orchestral work.
The final act slips further into downbeat territory. Series fans get two brief appearance by Aliens vet Lance Henrikson in two roles, one brief scene playing the desiccated android Bishop and finally as Michael Bishop, a human (we think) representative of Weyland-Yutani offering Ripley a chance to remove the alien embryo and live to have real children of her own one day. As if that’s the only purpose a woman could possibly have in life. (And ignoring the fact that Ripley did have a daughter on Earth before she signed up for duty with the Nostromo.)
When Ripley takes that final plunge into the furnace in the Assembly Cut, arms outstretched like Jesus on a crucifix, the alien doesn’t burst from her chest like it did in theaters. That, to me, made her story more tragic. She was terrified of giving birth to an alien in the first two movies. The Assembly Cut ending makes her decision to kill herself and her “baby” more of a conscious choice to be the savior of mankind.
The worst hasn’t happened yet; she’s preventing it.
At least until Weyland-Yutani brings her and her queen back for the even more disappointing Alien Resurrection. But for a few years, Ellen Ripley’s story had a wildly dark and heroic end to a journey that seems almost unimaginable in today’s film landscape.
This article originally ran as part of Tor.com’s 2012 “Countdown to Prometheus” series.
Theresa DeLucci is a regular contributor to Tor.com. Follow her on Twitter.
It does have one of my favorite scenes, though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCTd1XHbliU
Yeah, nor me. The current crop are not characters, they are caricatures. The women of Filmation’s Masters of the Universe line are better and more thought out female characters than the borderline fetish porn “action girls” who masquerade as strong female characters these days. Ripley and Sarah had a depth of character to them beyond being asskicking badasses. In fact I’d go as far as to say that being asskicking badasses were the least part of their character. I blame Joss Whedon for this, for obvious reasons. Joss, learn how to write other types of women FFS!
Onto this movie though. I kinda like it. I do object to the death of Hicks and Newt, but not for the deaths themselves. I also kinda appreciate that their deaths contribute to the dark nihilism of the movie and the further burden the creatures (or rather Weyland Yutani’s desire for it) places on Ripley’s shoulders. I object to the summary way they were presented. Those deaths are important to Ripley and the audience, the reveal that they are dead should not be over and done so quickly. There should be more hope that they are alive, we should feel the hole their absence makes in Ripley (and the audience’s) life and then reveal their deaths to further crush us all.
I feel it gets unfairly compared to Aliens simply because the military porn guys are sad there is not more military porn involved. I like that, just as Aliens went to military horror after the stalker horror of Alien, this one shifts genre again. It is still horror, but this is a base under siege/medical horror movie. Perhaps even with a touch of post apocalyptic horror, and it brings it back down to the nitty gritty of average people who are so out of their element and so definitely and completely unprepared for the creature and the company.
They ought to have left it there though. The next movie, Aliens: Firefly Begins, sucks sweaty goat balls.
Also, while it’s flawed, I’m glad that they at least tried to make Alien 3, not Aliens 2. And the autopsy scene with Newt squicks me out to this day, despite (or because of) the fact that it all happened just below frame. Those sounds, man …
Had forgotten that this came in such close proximity to T2.
“You don’t hate Alien 3 as much as you think you do.”
Yes, I do. Don’t ever tell the reader what they think.
I hate this movie more than any other except Prometheus.
Does the Assembly Cut have Newt and Hicks still among the living? No? Then screw it, too.
Oftentimes, people will say, wrongly, that a sequel will ruin the previous movie. This is almost NEVER true.
Except Alien 3 ruins Aliens by killing Hicks and Newt. Unforgivable.
What is this Alien 3 the OP discusses? everyone knows there were two–and only 2–movies in the Xenomorph series: Alien and Aliens.
I am among the few that loved Alien 3. The deaths of Newt and Hicks was depressing, it was dark, and it was unfair. But that’s ok sometimes. Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead have succeeded immensely doing something similar.
What I love about this one is the setting and the atmosphere. I remember reading in the novel how long these tunnels were. The ones the prisoners are trying to map out via candle-light. I will never forget this sense of place. I was young and lived in a small village next to a huge barn. It had chains coming from the ceiling, multiple haylofts, etc. And sometimes the light coming through the planks looked like the light in Alien 3.
Plus, it was the first time I really saw how an Alien looked like. The first SEGA Alien game I knew was Alien 3. And so, in spite of all it´s flaws, I have some fond memorys of this film.
Wait, people actually wore goggles in public as fashion? Huh. I lived through that era, and of the industrial bands listed, the only one I didn’t see live in those years is Wumpscut. Obviously. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone wearing goggles. All the rest, sure.
Anyway, I feel like I saw and disliked this movie back then, but I’ll be damned if I remember even a little bit of it after reading this review.
Now I’m gonna go listen to Slaughtering Tribe.
Killing Newt and Hicks didn’t take balls, it wasn’t brave, or an artistic choice it was petulant. The actions of a teenager who’s too cool for child actors and thinks dark automatically equals deep. You could have set up the rest of the movie just as well having the ship eject Ripley’s pod after detecting an alien presence leaving the others to finish their journey home. Killing Newt added nothing and dug a hole the movie could never dig out of. There is some decent stuff in the rest of the movie but nothing to overcome the snit fit at the start of the movie.
As far as I’m concerned it’s mediocre fan fiction.
I’ll admit to never seeing the Assembly Cut of Alien 3, but I’ll also admit to having a soft spot for. The script is a mess and the plot makes no sense. (Two or three facehuggers crept aboard with the queen and one managed to infect Ripley without waking her from hypersleep, sure.) Honestly there weren’t a lot of ways to have a third movie make sense without finding another ship on another planet.
That said Alien 3 was brave in that it wasn’t Aliens 2. Smaller action instead of bigger and a battle for survival using jury-rigged tools. Some very solid acting including Charles S. Dutton and a location that was shot to carry a sense of mood. If nothing else Alien 3 had a sense of style.
I can understand people being upset that Hicks and Newt were killed, but honestly Newt was going to killed off anyway after so long between film shoots and Hicks without the rest of squad would likely have been bland. He was a character for a Vietnam movie, not survival horror. Also killing them stripped Ripley of some of her humanity and put her on a more equal mental footing with the convicts. Maternal pseudo-Marine Ripley or PTSD Ripley or trucker Ripley wouldn’t have functioned so well in this story.
@6 I think you’re confusing this with the alleged existence of a movie called “The Godfather part 3.” ;) If ever there was a movie I pretend doesn’t exist, it’s that one. But I’m Italian.
@9 Maybe goggles were a regional Northeast thing? I’d post photographic evidence from back in the day, but I’m too embarrassed. Silly goggles were definitely A Thing in the shows/clubs I went to. Maybe more for cybergoths vs. classic, more austere rivetheads?
And whatever else you may say about Alien3, it produced one of the series’ most iconic images (up at the head of the article).
@5, I agree with you 100%. IMO, what makes it worse is how they pile on the rape themes. All that fighting in Aliens, and the xenomorph gets everyone in their sleep? C’mon, now. Then, of all the places in the universe, Ripley winds up on a prison planet. I was tempted to walk out after the opening credits, and wish to this day that I’d followed my first impulse.
With the first movie’s extended rape allegory Alien 3’s inclusion is at least thematically appropriate, I think. It’s been over a decade since I’ve seen the film, but I remember being interested by how varied the prisoners were. Some are unrepentant while others try to redeem themselves, but all are predators hunted by a predator.
I thought it interesting that the planet full of rapists listen to Ripley as voice of reason much quicker than her coworkers or the corporate space marines. Unless I’m way off target in my memory.
The technical proficiency of the opening scene floored me, the way it conveyed its horror in a jagged sequence of disconnected yet immediately frightening images. And, yes, it is a reminder that in space, nobody can hear (or even may care if) you scream.
Also, I was never sure if the Bishop who shows up, red carpet and all, is human or android, and just what that says about Weyland-Yutani also increases the agony of the Alien universe.
I will have to track down the Assembly Cut someday and see how that affects my appreciation of the film.
Alien 3 is a good movie, features an excellent Giger Xenomorph, but it’s not a good follow-up to the first two movies. I watched it for years hoping I could make sense of it. I had been thrilled about it in 1992. I thought the Giger-Alien Pepsi commercial was the most daringly gross ad in television history (the belch didn’t make the Star Beast any less revolting, and it looked as black and evil as death itself). I read the novelization. I read the bad reviews. And I wondered how the movie got made. A lame but exciting blockbuster surely would have been the best option. Over the years, I read of all the cooks in the Alien 3 kitchen. Sometimes I’d watch the movie just to get lost in its unrelenting nihilism. Ripley is brave and tragic, and some of the prisoners are almost likable. It’s obvious the director is very, very good. But– about two years ago, I watched the theatrical version for maybe the hundredth time. I thought I’d revisit Ripley’s bitter, heroic end. And I saw a movie as disjointed and empty as Prometheus. Corners were cut at every turn. The gloomy reality behind the magicians’ tricks showed repeatedly. No one had a clue as to how to follow up Aliens. The movie needed a big budget to compete with its predecessors, but (apparently) the creek was going dry. Sigourney Weaver supposedly wanted Ripley to die, and received a big chunk of money for reprising the Ripley role. Why she wanted to return as a Ripley clone after the sacrifice of the real Ripley is baffling. Amusingly, Alien: Resurrection always seems as if it intends to be bad from start to finish. It’s as if everyone is giggling at Sigourney/Ripley. That movie is a hideous dud that blew all its chances to be a science-fiction horror hit. So, the AVP dreck, the Prometheus pause, then Covenant, which just seems to me to be a mix of Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection…with David and Walter. I’m out. The Giger art books are all I need. Everything has been tried. Some of the old Dark Horse Aliens comics were brilliant, but the stories could never be movies and probably wouldn’t work on television. You can’t reboot Alien or Aliens. The first AVP had a great Queen. Maybe Alien can survive as sheer entertainment. But I was stunned to find out the Space Jockey had been retconned into a giant boring superhuman. Suddenly the Predator fights didn’t seem quite so stupid. Alien 3 is regrettable, but it’s an unexpected look into the mind and heart of a woman whose life and body have been invaded–raped–by a biomechanical perversion she gives her life to kill, in the hopes her homeworld will not become its breeding ground. We all cheer for her in Aliens when she’s an action hero, but in Alien 3, in bleakness and the company of lost souls, she may be at her very best as a heroine, a survivor, a realist, a woman, and an iconic character. And she succeeded in killing the Alien.
The possibilities of this movie (and Resurrection) given the involvement of, for example, Fincher or Jeunet and their failures are, perhaps things which would have happened in different ways if the films were made in the past decade and a half. That group of producers would probably not even have allowed Fincher or Jeunet on set and the films would feel either more like Tomorrowland/John Carter or Transformers/the Kelvin Abrams Trek duo (or worse). I have fond memories of this film even recognizing where I was disappointed and felt left down. But it doesn’t compare to the anger and revulsion I felt (feel) towards Star Trek Into Darkness or the sadness and emptiness I feel towards Superman Returns or Cars.
This isn’t a film I’ve watched more than once but then, to be honest, there are entire films that I would deem eminently re-watchable from that era or the decade afterwards simply because I have so many things I have not watched once.
That said, I have put the Assembly Watch (which I was not aware before tonight) on my secondary ‘to watch’ list.
Nope, that has nuthin to do with why this movie is a turd blossom of epic proportions. The reason this movie sucks so much ass, IMO of course, is that they kill off Newt and Hicks offscreen for fucks sake.
Here’s how Alien 3 starts off: You know that kid that Ripley so heroically saved at the end of the last movie? Yeah, she’s dead. That badass marine that showed Ripley how to use the gun that she used to save the kid? Well he’s dead too. And Ripley? Oh yeah, she was impregnated with an alien queen embryo by a stealth facehugger, offscreen! The rest of the movie could have been the goddamn Godfather and I wouldn’t have given a flying rat’s ass!
David Fincher directed one of my favorite movies of all time but it sure as hell ain’t this piece of shit!
This is one of the few movies to lose me in the first five minutes. It’s not just killing off Hicks and Newt that hurts the brain (and the heart), it’s the mystery of the egg. How the heck did it get there?! The Queen couldn’t lay it without its egg sac. And Ripley was such a stickler for quarantine procedure I don’t see her going to sleep without checking ever square inch of the drop ship. So did Bishop find an egg and hide it somewhere? But that’s not really his character. That’s Burke.
Just doesn’t add up.
An interesting and honest article, I appreciate that.
Couple of corrections:
“It’s a dark and nihilistic arthouse SF film with a complex, challenging female lead. No wonder it flopped as a summer blockbuster in 1992.”
It tried to be, but it wasn’t. And that’s not the reason the movie flopped. They killed it in the first 10 minutes.
“One of the cooler ideas for Alien 3 was Kiwi director Vince Ward’s beautifully outré wooden cathedral on a satellite, inhabited by monks.”
This may be a very cool idea for a completely separate movie, but for an Alien movie, it was a terrible idea. The series already established itself very firmly as a utilitarian dirty spaceship futuristic sci-fi.
“I kind of admired the balls of it.”
Killing off beloved characters like garbage wasn’t ballsy, brave or artistic, it was plain stupid. It was done solely for shock value by people who didn’t care about the movie and anything related to it except money. It was primarily Vincent’ Ward’s idea who didn’t care at all about the aesthetics of the series and studio who, for some reason liked the idea so much that even Alien novelist Alan Dean Foster who said: “Killing Newt was not only an obscenity, it removes the principal rationale for Ripley to fight to stay alive. Filmmakers love to shock, even if it goes against logic, reason, and plot. They suffer from a misguided belief that shock equates to art.” couldn’t convince them to change their minds.
You can rationalize it as some kind of setting for the tone of the movie, but it wasn’t, and even if it was, it was still stupid.
There were so many ways to remove those characters from the plot/movie by not killing them.
“As if that’s the only purpose a woman could possibly have in life.”
It’s not, but it’s perhaps the most noble one. And Ripley obviously wanted to be a mother.
“And ignoring the fact that Ripley did have a daughter on Earth before she signed up for duty with the Nostromo.
“She didn’t, at least not in the canon. That scene was deleted and for a good reason; Cameron obviously understood that her attachment for Newt would be projecting.
“The Assembly Cut ending makes her decision to kill herself and her “baby” more of a conscious choice to be the savior of mankind.”
I’m not so sure about that. Ripley knew she was going to die, especially when she saw trough the company manipulation. She really didn’t have a choice and considering a painful death of a chestburster, it wasn’t even that heroic.
Oh, and you forgot to mention Eric Red’s screenplay.
Maybe the most frustrating thing about this movie is that it had so much potential and could have been a masterpiece and on equal footing with the first two. The concept of an existential drama on a prison planet was great and really the only logical next step in the series.
To paraphrase Kirk Lazarus: “Never go full depressing”.
@@@@@ 21:
“The series already established itself very firmly as a utilitarian dirty spaceship futuristic sci-fi.” And that means nobody is ever allowed to deviate from this and try something new? Well, modern franchise-thinking … Seriously, as long as it doesn´t go in the opposite direction, like a Star Trek kind of thing, we would be alright, I guess.
“That scene was deleted and for a good reason; Cameron obviously understood that her attachment for Newt would be projecting.” That doesn´t make any sense. Of course its projecting. Us knowing that Ripley had a daughter on earth would have strengthened her character instead of taking away frome it or diminish it. She is only human.
@22: “And that means nobody is ever allowed to deviate from this and try something new? Well, modern franchise-thinking … Seriously, as long as it doesn´t go in the opposite direction, like a Star Trek kind of thing, we would be alright, I guess.”
They’re allowed to deviate and experiment, but that’s not always a good idea. Alien 3 had to be different and it was going in a right direction but Vincent Ward’s idea went too, too far. He didn’t have any respect for what Alien series was.
And I despise modern franchises so please don’t make assumptions about my thinking.
“That doesn´t make any sense. Of course its projecting. Us knowing that Ripley had a daughter on earth would have strengthened her character instead of taking away frome it or diminish it. She is only human. “
Ripley not projecting and developing genuine maternal feelings/instincts from scratch, so to speak, towards Newt is more powerful.
And again, since it’s a deleted scene, it doesn’t count.
@@@@@ 23: “Vincent Ward’s idea went too, too far. He didn’t have any respect for what Alien series was.” — Maybe it was a little bit of foreshadowing of what would happen to Alien 4. Alien was one of the few movie series where every film had a different director and a very different style. It seems to me they wanted to take it into some wild new direction. But then, with Alien 3, the studio was broke at the time of making it, and they needed a big hit. Hence the weird product.
“I despise modern franchises so please don’t make assumptions about my thinking.” — Alright, sorry.
“Ripley not projecting and developing genuine maternal feelings/instincts from scratch, so to speak, towards Newt is more powerful.” — I think we can have both, actually. Projecting and developing genuine maternal feelings doesn´t necessarily exclude one another, in my opinion. For me, her feelings are real no matter what. And, as you have said, it doesn´t really count.
I’d come across one of the novels based on Alien on Amazon and it got me to thinking about Alien 3. I’d seen it in the theater when it came out the first day, and I hated it so much. I loved Aliens a great deal so 3 ended up being a such a downer for me. Finding Newt dead from the very beginning depressed me so much that I never saw 3 again. People can psychoanalyze the third film all they wish but for me it is simple: kill off a beloved character and its a child to boot, the story is already a flop. They could’ve taken 3 in all sorts of directions, but they settled on the extremely depressing storyline that most people didn’t care at all for. I still feel the same way after all these years.
In the first 2 movies, the aliens would capture and incapacitate people to use them for a purpose (hosts for reproduction), but in Alien 3 the alien just killed and moved on ala a regular slasher flick; what made the original movies so spectacularly scary was the fact that the victims didn’t just scream and die, they had to endure being glued to a wall in misery until their gruesome death from within. In addition to completely negating the end of the much better Aliens movie, I find this dumbing down the series villain to a preditor weakened the concept.