Alien 3
1992 Directed by David Fincher
Halloween Marathon 2024 Day 31 Film 61
Ripley lands on some abandoned mining prison colony for the galaxy’s worst offenders with YY chromosomes. Her landing there upsets the male only balance of the space- which has turned into some religious cult for the damned. While this setting may have inspired some more twists for the franchise it really doesn’t create more of a mythos and fails outside of delivering some aesthetic grime in oily sets- the cold feeling of the previous films is replaced by hot meaty sweat.
This is the version with 40+ more minutes of footage. At least watching this version seems to make some of the background logic make more sense- things that happen in the film are explained (perhaps too much as even the ending sequence is hinted at earlier).
It also spends a lot of time building up Charles Dance’s Doctor character with an exposition dump on the background lore of the prison colony. Ripley and him have sex … for reasons? And there’s no weird twist in his character before he’s killed. When asked about how close she was to him Ripley just shrugs. Perhaps this was supposed to be some 90s twist on 007 killing some “Bond Girl”- showing Ripley can fuck and discard like the best! Oh and she’s shaved her head because that’s edgy as fuck too (at least a change to a hardened look for such an icon).
Although Fincher’s influence was often wrangled by studio meddling his need for visual drama is there. The film plays with distorted lenses in first person- frenetic Evil Dead sequences of the alien-dog hybrid. Somehow I remember this as a bloodier film than it is - the cuts are so fast they’re intelligible, but the theatrical cut may have better pacing for them. Most of the kills feel like a slasher movie as the alien just pops up then dips offscreen.
I’m glad they explain how dumb these men are with a reference to their IQ because it includes smoking while dousing hallways with flammable substances. But nothing about the team of prisoners actually boils over to very specific character choices- they mostly act as one aside from the religious fanatic. More could have been done to create some weird Alien cult that the extended sequences hint at with a disturbed prisoner obsessing over it.
It’s still a frustrating movie though. There’s a throwaway SA scene, The Rosemary’s Baby antics with pregnancy, and the corporation’s characterization are all very shallow. If they had leaned more into the campy performances and pulpy sci-fi luridness it may have worked.
There’s a sequence where Charles Dance injects her with some unknown painkiller, but that could have set up some body horror elements along with the whole fetus scenario-which was a creepy idea but never fully resolved. I guess that’s part of the problem with this film- ideas are made and never followed through like another writer forgot what was done on the previous couple pages.
It could have had some more conflict with the prisoners too or more context for any religious transformation for more of the population. The religious iconography never goes anywhere. The Assembly/Special Edition may be a more coherent film, but it still plays like a B-Movie with crappy CGI and middling finale. I don’t know that I need 40 extra minutes when it’ll eventually just be a popcorn slasher movie.