Happy New Years! It’s around this time that I discuss another franchise. This time was tough since I had no clue which series to talk about. I wanted to avoid the ones where there was a good entry and then the drop in quality was immense. To me, it makes sense to talk about one horror series. I think it’s appropriate to have an overview since the series is now branching towards the small screen with a show on FX. So throughout the month, I’ll be looking at the Alien franchise.
1. Skinheads in Space
Everybody at the time thought that the franchise was done after Aliens. The ending was a perfect capstone for the seemingly short series. Ripley nuked the home planet and killed the only queen in existence. Well, to say that this film had a troubled production is putting it mildly. For starters, there was five drafts of the script that didn’t get used. The fifth one was mostly a retooling of the fourth draft. Compounding the issue was that 20th Century Fox released a teaser that seemingly was going to take place on Earth.
Only that, they had a firm release date without a working script to shoot. The idea was that they didn’t care if the final product was good enough, and that people would still run to see the film, since the first two were financial winners. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case since David Fincher was brought in after Fox let go of another director Vincent Ward who had a script while Fox had a concurrent script that was being written. Already, nothing was going right and this was David Fincher’s first film.
To say the film is an unnecessary entry is one thing. Considering the way it opens, practically ruins any goodwill the film comes in with. And man was I upset with how it opened, since we see that both Newt and Corporal Hicks are killed as a Facehugger appears in the stowaway ship from Aliens. The android Bishop even gets destroyed as the ship descends and crashes on a foundry and maximum prison named Firoina 161. I can understand that the whole series involves just Ripley, it’s a real head scratcher why the film went about that way creatively.
So with that, we follow Ripley as she’s the only woman in the planet. She is surrounded by former inmates as she tries to tell them about the alien that was on her escape ship. While no one believes her, inevitably the Xenomorph appears and causes mayhem as Ripley suspects that she’s carrying a hatchling.
As I mentioned earlier, I can understand that the whole series revolves around Ripley and having the supporting characters from the last film removed is just a massive downturn. And I know what the film is doing, is that to strip away the things that will help Ripley like her friends and weapons and see a deconstructed look of how she can survive in a literal male dominated space. While an Alien is running around.
If there’s one thing where I’ll give the movie some positive notes is how the whole male dominated space is set up. You see, the men chose to stay in the planet as a way to get redemption since a majority of them are criminals to the highest degree. And they have a huge issue as Ripley is in their space and see her as a threat to their environment. The whole film has a religious angle to it, albeit not full blown but very subtle. It’s clear that the men have a monk look to them with their shaved heads and see the newcomer as a sign and of course the Alien as a demon that’s rampaging through their monastery.
The problem I have is that it doesn’t advance Ripley’s story or build upon the company that reaches its supposed end. Like, having Ripley dealing with the creature once more now makes it personal since it killed the only people and android that she cared. And the company now has a chance to finally capture the thing and use it for their means. More than anything, I feel that the film would’ve been impactful had the inmates be criminals instead of reformed ones. That way Ripley would have to watch her back twice as hard and amp up the horror since she has nothing to defend herself.
You know I go into a lot of detail without talking about the main star of the film. While trying to be different, the Alien as well is different since this time the victim was a dog. I think it’s an interesting concept to have the Xenomorph have variants of whichever life form is spawned off from. It has the same face and head but having a more feral body as it moves in all fours. The effects are weak since the creature looks stiff since it was a puppet and the body suit was used in the only best shot in the film.
2. David Fincher
It’s understandable why David Fincher disowned this film. More so that he was so close to having his filmmaking career cut short because of what happened. He came from a music video background and it was more than enough for a major studio to hand him the keys to their biggest franchise aside from Star Wars. Not to besmirch his background, but he was handed a really bad product from the start. I think the one thing I can take away is that there’s video of him grabbing the boom mike and cursing out the studio.
A miracle had to occur for Fincher to finally get a proper reintroduction in terms of filmmaking. Se7en is one of those films where it defined Fincher’s direction and aesthetics. That one is when he had total control of the whole project. It’s interesting that both films focus on a religious angle, albeit one does it in an interesting manner, while the latter is Alien 3. Due to how it was received critically, Fincher disowned the film.
When it came for the obligatory film collection on home media, Alien 3 came with a special cut called the “Assembly Cut”. Out of all the cuts in the series, this is the only one where the director didn’t have a say in it. Most people say that it’s the superior version of the film. Even in the making of documentary that highlights the pains of making the film, Fincher wasn’t in it and it’s one of those things where I can’t blame him since he delt with a bad situation and the studio did not do him any favors.
3. Overall
Alien 3 starts the downward trend of the franchise; I recommend only watching the Assembly Cut if you want to marathon the series.
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