I saw the director’s cut of Alien this weekend, and leaving the theater, the disdain for this film was brought up by my roomate. And in another thread here on the boards, I read someone else trashing the film. Honestly, I liked the movie a lot. I watched it again fairly recently, and it holds true to the fact that the more I watch it, the more I enjoy it.
Now, I understand that many people don’t feel that way about the movie, so I just wanted to share with you the dreck that it could have been. This website:
http://home.online.no/~bhundlan/scripts/alien3/
has all the scripts written up for Alien 3, and I think you’ll agree, the final product was the best thing the studio had to offer. Personally, I think an adaptation of Aliens: Earth Wars would have been better, but still, the movie was pretty damn good. But, for those that doubt me, here’s a quick synopsis of the other scripts:
William Gibson’s script solved most everybody’s biggest complaint: Hicks and Newt don’t die off camera, but live to partake in the story. The big problem? Ripley ends up in a coma, Newt gets sent off to her grandparents, and Hicks has to fight on a space station dealing with crazed scientists who’ve fiddled with the xenomorph DNA and created aliens that reproduce by transmutating people into aliens. That’s right! A person gets sprayed by spores, cut, bit, whatever…they turn into alien hybrids. WHU? Of course, some get attacked by face huggers and then give birth to about six chest bursters at once. Ripley never wakes up, Hicks and Bishop fight threw a stupid plot, and the movie sucked.
Eric Red’s scripts killed everyone off of camera, including Ripley, so right there, it would have pissed off everyone, I’m sure. They all fall prey to face huggers while in chryosleep, and their bodies are found by a rescue crew. Of course, that crew is immediately wiped out, save for a few poor bastards who end up having their memories whiped clean. One of these guys ends up being our hero; a good grunt with a father who’s part of the science devision at the space station that’s working on genetically engineering controlable aliens. It doesn’t really work, the things get out, kill a whole buncha people, and the military instilation is destroyed leading to an invasion of the farming colony below. Now, that little bit was pretty cool, and the concept of aliens being spawned from farm animals was pretty sweet, but the fact that most of them came from transmutated aliens (again) really pissed me off. The finally, where the alien DNA somehow merges with the space station itself to create a giant space-station alien really sucked hardcore.
David Twohy’s script dealt with a prison colony that was also moonlighting as a scientific research facility working on engineering and studying the xenomorph. Ripley gets a quick reference when one of the characters is going threw the files, but aside from that, none of the characters from the other movies are ever mentioned. I didn’t have a problem with this, and I rather liked this script. I think this movie would have made a good flick, because I feel it’s time the movies moved away from Ripley, but with Weever’s decision to come back, we got
Vincent Ward and John Fasano’s script. Basically, the same start as the movie’s openning, but the prison planet that Ripley crashes on is the house of a religiuos faction that’s turned away from science. The main characters are Ripley, a young monk who’s what constitutes for the colony’s doctor, and an android that keeps having strange visions. Overall, not that bad, and again, it was interesting to have aliens spawn from things other than just people, but I don’t think it would have worked.
And those are the versions of the film that could have been. So, even if you think the movie sucked, just realize that it could have been a lot worse, and be happy with what you got. And you have to admit, it was better than B]Alien: Resurrection**.