# How would you have made Alien3? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 15, 2004, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651 "2004-01-15T21:28:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/1 "2004-01-15T21:28:39Z")
I think I’m one of…oh, two people on the boards that actually liked this movie, and having just watched it again, I’m really curious as to what fellow posters would have done had they been commissioned to make a sequel to **Aliens**. I’m pretty sure they’d all be an **Aliens 2** , but I’m just curios. So, all you people out there who hated this movie, of chose to delude yourselves into thinking it never happened, let us all know how you would have made a better movie (there’s a lot of you in those two categories, so I’d better get a lot of responses, damnit!) ---
**Author:** ![Chastain86](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Chastain86](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chastain86)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/2 "2004-01-15T22:10:43Z")
Do NOT kill off Hicks and Newt off-screen in the first five minutes of the film. If you wish to not keep them around for the final reel, that’s your call, but writing them out prior to any plot development is a lazy man’s way of fixing a difficult situation. If it’s me directing, you kill Hicks 1/3 of the way in, and make it look as if it might have been a jealous inmate looking to sexually assault Ripley. Only after the autopsy is done do you find out it was an alien attack. I’d personally leave Newt alive, but perhaps reveal she isn’t what she seems…maybe a Weyland-Yutani plant of some kind, a designed kid cyborg that’s supposed to keep tabs on Ripley. Other than that aspect, I actually enjoyed Alien 3. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecccb3/32.png) [@Evil\_Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Death)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/3 "2004-01-15T23:11:59Z")
Having seen the Extended Cut of Alien 3, I honestly don’t think I’d change much from that. The only thing I’d change is the idea of having everyone shave their heads; it made it difficult to tell many of the characters apart. ---
**Author:** ![KGS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/90ced4/32.png) [@KGS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KGS)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2004, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/4 "2004-01-15T23:22:36Z")
Forget the whole prison colony setting – Ripley & Hicks make it home safe, only to face a FULL SCALE ALIEN INVASION OF EARTH. It’s the only sequel I’ll accept! Granted, it would have been way way expensive back in the late 80’s, but with something like Peter Jackson’s MASSIVE program it could work. Heck, they could start filming the new movie today…just make the last two a dream or something dumb like that. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/5 "2004-01-16T00:26:12Z")
Here’s what I would have done: Ripley and Co. are picked up after a few years in hypersleep by Wayland-Yutani, who are pissed that their colony and fusion reactor are now radioactive slag and the aliens they wanted are dead. But they’ve had reports of a “contact” with the aliens on a prison PLANET (NOT asteroid…asteroids don’t have freaking ATMOSPHERES!) and they want Ripley and Hicks to investigate. When Ripley balks, they hold Newt hostage and she and Hicks are forced to agree. They get to the prison planet with a newly-repaired Bishop and a crew of corporate mercenaries and find that most of the prison staff has been murdered and the prisoners are hold up in a wing of the prison, trying to keep out the aliens. They find the sole surviving member of the prison staff, the doctor and he tells them that the alien eggs were found in a millenia-old chamber excavated by the prison’s warden, who fancied himself an amateur archaelogist. One of the workers wound up with a face-hugger and that was that for the guards and administration. The leader of the corporate mercenaries wants the doctor to show them the excavated chamber and he refuses until threatened with death. Eventually, the corporate mercs are killed in the chamber by the aliens, and while running away Hicks, Ripley and the doc are captured by the prisoners. They convince the prisoners to let them help against the aliens and there is a drawn-out siege while Bishop uses the prison computer to try to hack into the corporate ship above and get one of the landers back. In the end, most of the prisoners would die, while Ripley, Bishop Hicks and the Doctor—who is falling for Ripley—make it back. Rilpley brings the doctor with her and they tell the corporate execs that Hicks and Bishop were killed. The corporate types don’t want to let her and the doctor go—they intend to keep them there to avoid word of the aliens spreading–but Ripley anticipated that, and on her signal Hicks sets off explosives he had planted and in the confusion, they grab Newt and escape on the corporate ship, heading not for Earth but some colony world where they can lose themselves and avoid further entanglement with Wayland-Yutani. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/6 "2004-01-16T05:47:01Z")
Damn, **RikWriter** , that would have been a hell of a movie! Too bad they didn’t ask you to write the screenplay. I _like_ it! ---
**Author:** ![jimpatro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@jimpatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimpatro)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/7 "2004-01-16T06:23:42Z")
There was an Alien3? As mentioned before Hicks and Newt were part of the ensemble that fought tooth and nail to survive. Killing them off was cold hearted. And just too plain easy. Another problem I had with “Alien3” was that I couldn’t feel any sympathy for the inmates. They were just scumbags and I rooted for the alien. Alien3 needed Hicks and Ripley teamed up together. Maybe Hicks and Newt could have been impregnated early in the film. Hicks’ alien emerges but he survives and spends the remainder of the film in IC. Ripley races to get Newt to the ER before her chestburster appears. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/8 "2004-01-16T06:36:08Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > Ripley and Co. are picked up after a few years in hypersleep by Wayland-Yutani, who are pissed that their colony and fusion reactor are now radioactive slag and the aliens they wanted are dead. But they’ve had reports of a “contact” with the aliens on a prison PLANET (NOT asteroid…asteroids don’t have freaking ATMOSPHERES!) and they want Ripley and Hicks to investigate. Hicks was still serving in the military; he would have been turned back over to them (whether to recover or be studied or whatever - either way, I can’t see the Company having any interest in sending him to investigate anything), and would have been just as out of the picture as he wound up being. Newt was little more than someone for Ripley to play mother to in order to contrast with the alien queen in _Aliens_. All she did was scream and get captured, so she would have essentially been a non-entity in any subsequent sequels as well. If Ripley did get back home, there’s no way she’d go back to explore anything having to do with the aliens (remember why _Jurassic Park III_ sucked, among other reasons?) - especially if an entire platoon of Marines wasn’t able to do it. In my opinion, the way they dealt with Newt and Hicks at the beginning of _Alien[sup]3[/sup]_ was the only logical thing for them to do in order to even _have_ a sequel. But then, I never felt any particular attachment to either character, so maybe I’m just callous. ---
**Author:** ![shijinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cc9497/32.png) [@shijinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shijinn)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/9 "2004-01-16T07:33:23Z")
killing Hicks and Newt off-screen in the first five minutes of the film really spoilt the entire show for me. getting someone else to play the two of them would also be bad. IMHO the only way to recover from that kind of write-off would be to have ripley go slowly insane and start killing every living thing on the prison planet, discovering that she had somehow become part-alien through another convenient excuse. a pretty young android would then take over the reins of fighting back the alien horde, nuking the planet and escaping on a ship bound for earth. (there would be an alien egg with ripley’s genes hidden on board without anyone’s knowledge of course) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Long\_Road](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5a626/32.png) [@The\_Long\_Road](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Long_Road)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/10 "2004-01-16T08:58:59Z")
My problem with _Alien3_ was that it boiled down to the original _Alien_ in an abandoned prison. _Alien Resurrection_ was _Alien_ and _Alien3_ on a ship with a plot fix about her being cloned. I’m going with KGS here and saying that Aliens attacking Earth would have been more interesting. Hell, have them get here unknown and multiplying in the sewer system until hordes of them break out and a full-scale war erupts. Perhaps “the company” would infect some prisoners with them and then lose control. Sheeesh, the possibilities are endless unless you are a scriptwriter in Hollywood I guess. They might have even explored the Aliens somewhat instead of just having them be killers. Perhaps even a small bit of back story somehow worked in. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/11 "2004-01-16T12:13:24Z")
> [@Darwin's Finch](#): > > Hicks was still serving in the military; he would have been turned back over to them (whether to recover or be studied or whatever - either way, I can’t see the Company having any interest in sending him to investigate anything), and would have been just as out of the picture as he wound up being. Well no, Wayland Utani would do whatever they could get away with. They wouldn’t want to lose his knowledge and experience with the aliens by just sending him back to his unit. Besides which, as far as the military knew, he was dead. > [@](#): > > Newt was little more than someone for Ripley to play mother to in order to contrast with the alien queen in _Aliens_. All she did was scream and get captured, so she would have essentially been a non-entity in any subsequent sequels as well. If Ripley did get back home, there’s no way she’d go back to explore anything having to do with the aliens (remember why _Jurassic Park III_ sucked, among other reasons?) - especially if an entire platoon of Marines wasn’t able to do it. Didn’t really read my post, didya? Her function in my proposal was to be the hostage to FORCE Ripley to investigate the aliens, so I really don’t know what the heck you’re talking about. > [@](#): > > In my opinion, the way they dealt with Newt and Hicks at the beginning of _Alien[sup]3[/sup]_ was the only logical thing for them to do in order to even _have_ a sequel. You are, of course, welcome to your opinion, but the conclusion you reached was very faulty. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Griffin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@The\_Griffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Griffin)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 12:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/12 "2004-01-16T12:17:08Z")
Right, it would start with an alien bursting out of Sigourney Weaver’s ass, thus killing her and rendering her obsolete for the rest of the film. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/13 "2004-01-16T13:40:07Z")
> [@shijinn](#): > > killing Hicks and Newt off-screen in the first five minutes of the film really spoilt the entire show for me. getting someone else to play the two of them would also be bad. So what’s your solution? The movie came out six years after **Aliens** and Carrie Henn was to play a ten year old again, and why bother to pay an actor to reprise a role if all you’re going to do is kill him off “on camera” in the first five minutes anyway? I don’t know, I took the move as rather gutsy and bold. Plus, **Darwin’s Finch** does a great job in pointing out that, in the setting of **Alien3** , and pretty much any sequel that didn’t leave her, Ripley and Hicks alone to live a life as a happy family, she would have just been a tired plot device. If they had made an **Aliens on Earth** sequel, I would have been happy with that, too. _Aliens: Books One and Two_ are really cool stories; I haven’t read _Earth War_ yet, but thumbed threw it and it looked rather interesting as well. The concept of a xenomorph infestation on Earth is a great idea that I don’t think is going to get used anytime soon, but would have been a good sequel storyline for **Aliens**. Of course, the scripts they did write about a xenomorph infestation on some colony really, REALLY sucked. Still, I like the end result of **Alien3** and felt that it set up great potential for something wonderful. **Alien: Ressurrection** is where I place the ball being dropped. I was really hoping for a continuation of the **Alien** franchise focusing on someone _other_ than Ripley, and they really just screwed the pooch. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@El\_Elvis\_Rojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Elvis_Rojo)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/14 "2004-01-16T13:46:48Z")
> [@The Griffin](#): > > Right, it would start with an alien bursting out of Sigourney Weaver’s ass, thus killing her and rendering her obsolete for the rest of the film. And here we were calling them _face_ huggers. I guess every species has its perverts. Do you think that would have lead to two aliens? One for each cheek? ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 2:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/15 "2004-01-16T14:05:00Z")
All the aliens of all the films come from the batch the Nostromo found in the first film. Those eggs had been in suspended animation for many years, perhaps millions of years. That means other strains of Aliens that had been actively reproducing have been evolving for millions of years. My Alien movie would deal with finding a strain that evolved higher intelligence and technology. Or maybe it would deal with this strain finding Earth. Like the current ones we are familiar with, there would be different phenotypes. The grunt workers/killers would remain mostly unchanged, but there’d be an additional intelligent type to work with the technology, making spaceships and weapons and such. And there’d be a soldier-type to fly the ships and man the weapons, and unload the old-style killers onto Earth’s surface. ---
**Author:** ![paulberserker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@paulberserker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paulberserker)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/16 "2004-01-16T14:23:38Z")
The script Vincent Ward did with the wooden prison planet (its available on line, and is discussed in the pre production Alien3 features in the boxset) would have worked well, with a bit of polishing and sorting out- a sheep alien? with wool you say? It was a lot more gothic, having monks that have abandoned technology rather than prisoners, and its ending wasn’t so bad: Ripley walks into a burning field to die & escape W-Y at the end. If they’d have thrown a few more ideas into that, rather than letting Fox studio people all over it, it would have worked well IMO. Otherwise, the Alien earth war would have been the only way to go. they did that now, it may possibly usurp Aliens as my favourite film in the hands of the right scriptwriters/directors/SFX guys. ---
**Author:** ![MrMyth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e19b73/32.png) [@MrMyth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrMyth)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/17 "2004-01-16T15:06:33Z")
Personally I wasn’t ready for an Earth invasion after Aliens. I wanted to meet the mofos that manufactured the xenomorphs in the first place. Who were they? Who were they trying to kill? Was the Space Jockey’s race the ones who created them, or just transporters? These are all more interesting question than watching nonstop fighting in New York.There existed a whole system of alien space flight and science that we never got to explore. After the non-stop action of Aliens, I was ready to go back to the moody drama of Alien. The Earth invasion could happen after the xenomorph’s creators found Earth, in Alien4. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/18 "2004-01-16T15:07:23Z")
> [@El Elvis Rojo](#): > > So what’s your solution? The movie came out six years after **Aliens** and Carrie Henn was to play a ten year old again, and why bother to pay an actor to reprise a role if all you’re going to do is kill him off “on camera” in the first five minutes anyway? I don’t know, I took the move as rather gutsy and bold. It was neither, actually. It was such a bad move that Michael Biehn refused to appear in the movie, which is the only reason they killed him off in the first five minutes. It was a desperate, classless attempt by the director to “kill off” the previous movie. ---
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/19 "2004-01-16T15:16:44Z")
> [@El Elvis Rojo](#): > > I think I’m one of…oh, two people on the boards that actually liked this movie… Hello, my name is MeanJoe and I… well… I… errr… oh this is embarrassing but I might as well get it over with… I AM THE 2ND PERSON WHO LIKES ALIEN3. Phew, I feel much better now, thank you. MeanJoe - I want a bald Sigorney Weaver of my own, please. Hubba-hubba! ---
**Author:** ![paulberserker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c4cdca/32.png) [@paulberserker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paulberserker)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651/20 "2004-01-16T15:26:42Z")
> [@RikWriter](#): > > It was neither, actually. It was such a bad move that Michael Biehn refused to appear in the movie, which is the only reason they killed him off in the first five minutes. It was a desperate, classless attempt by the director to “kill off” the previous movie. Not entirely correct. Biehn was up for it, then they said the script has him as DOA at Fury 161. No need for him, but they built a mock up Hicks to show him dead. Biehn found this out, and made them pay him a considerable sum for his likeness. He never refused to appear in the film until he _found out_ they killed him in the first 5 minutes. And fuck knows what you mean by “a desperate, classless attempt by the director to “kill off” the previous movie.” Fincher didnt write the script now did he. Theres an interview with Biehn on the Alien3 extras detailing all this. :rolleyes: [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-would-you-have-made-alien3/224651.md?page=2)