What are your thoughts on Alien 3?

[Hamstray]

I think you're going to have to actually explain how you think all of this is 'some kind of morality down your throat'. Use examples.

I have given those, have I not? They were already discussed.

No shit. It's a prison. They have a society based on religious proscription of activities that would disturb the order. Dillon is the leader of the prisoners and a violent criminal. What would you expect from him?

I still question the motivation behind the construction of the plot around such a society. If none of this religious proscription is to reflect any of the writers views, then fine. Any religious overtones might just be a coincidence.

[hongi]

Why does it matter if there is any religious overtones?

[JLTucker]

Because you have to keep your internet anti-religious cred.

[Vendetta]

Actually, thinking it over, Alien 3 would have been a lot better if it had been just about Ripley having a new queen alien inside her and not have people with makeshift weapons running around, since we already saw that in Alien.

I think you've missed an important thing Stark said.

In Alien it's the alien that disrupts the lives of the space truckers. In Alien 3 it's Ripley who disrupts the lives of the prisoners, the alien is only really there for her.

We're not seeing "something we already saw in Alien", we're seeing a different thing have a similar effect on different people in a different situation.

[Gunhead]

I think you've missed an important thing Stark said.

In Alien it's the alien that disrupts the lives of the space truckers. In Alien 3 it's Ripley who disrupts the lives of the prisoners, the alien is only really there for her.

We're not seeing "something we already saw in Alien", we're seeing a different thing have a similar effect on different people in a different situation.

I got the point, just don't think it's all that noteworthy. Ripley as a woman in prison, sure this is a disruptive effect and they portray it as such. I was going more with the Ripley being the alien element both in the sense her being a woman and her having a monster thing inside her. And I was talking about the actual hunt for the alien, which to me basically plays out using similar themes in both movies. Or maybe I'm somehow misunderstanding you. And if the alien is there for Ripley, I don't think they really portrayed this all that well.
Since the only real way the alien can be there for Ripley is through violence and it appears to protect Ripley... once I think? Don't remember it's been too long since I last watched the movie.
That aside, one of the underlying themes in Alien and Aliens is that the "monster" is man. In both movies it's made abundantly clear the corporations would pay ridiculous sums for this new alien critter and in both movies people get fucked over by this. This could've been used in Alien 3 and kinda sort of was, but I think it was just kind of lumped in there.

-Gunhead

[Stark]

Putting aside people arguing about shit they barely remember, I don't think you've understood. In Alien and Alien3 there is a society, an order. In both, they are confronted by things they cannot deal with and their cozy order is destroyed. In Alien3, the mere presence of Ripley causes chaos and an end to order. They EXPLICITLY SAY THIS IN THE MOVIE and the staff BEG RIPLEY NOT TO BE SO RECKLESS. However Ripley doesn't care because she's totally apart from their society. She only cares about her own motives and apparently bizarre fears and behaviors. She is ALIEN.

This is why I say the microsociety is arguably an allegory for ANY human society. Forgotten people on a wasteland planet amid things they barely understand living irrelevant beliefs enforced by violence. This is a strong statement (and has nothing to do with 'religion sucks lol').

[SystemError]

I'm in two minds about their deaths. I'm annoyed that they were offscreen, and seemed a lot like a writer's inability to work them into the plot he'd already constructed.

I believe this was the result of Michael Biehn either not being available for or not wanting to do the sequel, I can't recall which.

[DaveJB]

From the interviews and commentaries on the DVDs, it doesn't even look as if they ever approached Biehn to star in Alien 3 (or even asked to be allowed to use a photo of him in one sequence, which REALLY pissed him off). I believe it was the film's original (well, second out of three) director, Vincent Ward who decided to ditch all the characters from Aliens and focus exclusively on Ripley, as he felt the series was her story. Then as they got through a whole bunch of different screenwriters and Ward was replaced by Fincher, they just never bothered bringing the Aliens survivors back into the story beyond Newt's autopsy, and the scene where RIpley briefly re-activates Bishop.

[Terralthra]

Well, certain scripts, if I recall correctly, focused on Hicks as the main character. When they switched to a script that had Hicks and Newt dying off-screen, Biehn demanded pay nearly equal to what he got for Aliens for the few seconds his likeness, etc., were in Alien3.

[Sleck]

I am normally forgiving of sequels, in part because I try to never judge by the standards of the predecessors - I look at each work as standalone. Alien Cubed (which is a very silly way of spelling Alien 3) isn't an exception. I like it. Most people complain about killing off Newt and Hicks. To them I say 'This is a horror franchise. Major characters dying is not unheard of. What did you expect, a happy ending?'

[Gandalf]

Presumably they wanted something more than "Oh by the way, they died."

[Flagg]

Presumably they wanted something more than "Oh by the way, they died."

Pretty much.

[Stark]

Why? They're only important as they impact Ripley, and they died as part of an accident (and 'rebirth') she experienced due to the horror she can't escape. She even muses on this in the film - everything in her life dies... except the alien.

Its powerful stuff.

[DaveJB]

Well, certain scripts, if I recall correctly, focused on Hicks as the main character.

The very first script, by William Gibson had Hicks and Bishop as the main characters, yes. However, the next couple of draft screenplays dropped the Aliens survivors altogether, then when Vincent Ward joined the film he brought back Ripley alone, with just vague mentions of what had happened to the other characters. Most of the draft screenplays can be read here if anyone's interested, though I wouldn't recommend reading Eric Red's version of the script while sober.

[Gunhead]

I can pretty much understand why Newt was killed off. First thing would be Carrie Henn was 10 when Aliens came out. She would have been 16 when Alien 3 was released and I don't think they spent 6 years in the escape capsule. Secondly, Newt was more or less just a motivator for Ripley but as a character she was pretty shallow.
Not that Hicks as a character is all that interesting. He is part of the team with a memorable quote and only rises to the forefront when most of the team is wiped out. Neither are really bad characters as such, but if you'd want to include them in a sequel you'd have to spend some time fleshing them out.
Ripley is the obvious choice out of the surviving cast if for no other reason than she has appeared in two movies already and thus has background writers can use.

I've never had any interested in reading any of the alternative scripts to Alien 3. They just highlight the problem of trying to achieve the same level of success as the two previous movies, that were both critically well received and the audience loved them too. So I doubt having a script which would have included more of the survivors would have made a better Alien 3 movie. The basic problem is that you're stuck with the same monster and lets face it, we've seen it. Alien and Aliens covered the monster itself and if you want to give credit to the makers of Alien 3 for something less obvious, it's the fact they didn't go for the "oh let's slap some more amazing abilities on the alien to make it moar awsum!!".
It's a bit of a catch 22 really. On one hand, if you use the same monster you're stuck with previously shown abilities but if you modify the monster, it quickly seems like you're just slapping on abilities just to make your story happen. This is not a problem with Alien movies alone but I think Alien 3 did suffer from this.

-Gunhead

[DaveJB]

I doubt having a script which would have included more of the survivors would have made a better Alien 3 movie.

Probably not. William Gibson's draft had all the Aliens survivors returning (albeit with Ripley being taken out of the action early on and Newt being sent to live with relatives on Earth), and it was pretty bad. Eric Red's draft had all the survivors being killed off before the film even started, and it was even worse.

But yeah, the problem they had with the earliest drafts was that they weren't really about anything. Weaver initially didn't want to return in anything more than a two-minute cameo, so they were flailing around for a direction, pumping up the action sequences, and adding in weird shit like viruses that turn humans into xenomorphs. It wasn't until Vincent Ward showed up and Weaver changing her mind that the story actually started to have themes beyond "blow shit up" and "show more new varieties of xenomorph," even if it seems like Ward didn't really get the franchise all that well.

[jollyreaper]

It's totally like saying you'd like to see Predator 2 in which the 101 Airbourne is deployed to Belize to fight predators in a conventional open-field engagement, in order to display field artillery and vertical envelopment tactics.

And I bet people out there actually do want that. :V

Oddly enough, that happened in I think it was the very first Predator comic by Dark Horse. By the time the engagement devolved into mass warfare the Predators clearly indicated they had the upper hand and walked away. It wasn't their kind of fight. They want to hunt.

It actually worked rather well for a Predator direct sequel, much better than the movie. The problem with subsequent efforts was over-detailing the bad guys, the same way horror villains diminish with every sequel. Pinhead goes from demonic badass to camp comedian like Freddy.

While it's certainly possible to make a good sequel, it rarely happens, does it? The subsequent efforts share the shape of the original but lack the internals. Soulless pastiche.

[Stark]

Those Dark Horse comics were catastrophically stupid, even the ones that had only Predators. Predator 2 was a bad movie for reasons distinct from 'not being like terrible comics' and 'juveniles want big battles'.

And sequels add to original works all the time. You just need to expose yourself to a broader range of fiction.

[jollyreaper]

I did not say sequels are never good, I said they rarely are. That's not really a controversial statement.

[Stark]

Should be easy to prove, then. I mean I never claimed you did say that and you're making shit up, but whatevs.

While you're at it, you should consider te forces that drive sequels, how they differ from original works, and how this results in poor decisions. Sequels with clear vision and goals beyond 'make easy money' succeed all the time. Crap movies are crap; being a sequel doesn't make them more crap.

[jollyreaper]

Your original statement about needing broader exposure implied I said there are no good sequels.

Purely commercial demands will of course usually result in bad sequels, the same as with bad originals. But in cases where creators are given a free hand and the results are still bad, they simply could not find an interesting part of the story to explore.

This gets to the question of whether there are any more stories worth telling in a setting. While there's always the chance for surprises, some stories I do think are fairly sequel-proof. If a project is green lighted, we probably won't be pleasantly surprised.

While not a sequel or technically a remake, the new Dredd movie faced deserved skepticism. I had little hope for it. But what resulted was actually a pretty decent action movie. It did what it set out to do without any distractions. I don't think it really broke any ground but it wasn't trying to. Frankly, I didn't think it was necessary and was pleasantly surprised. I don't think the new Robocop will be any good but maybe I'm wrong.

It might also be worth distinguishing between sequels that are just episodes or real developments. The three Man With No Name movies were episodic. Unforgiven didn't try to be just another Eastwood western but tried to find something deeper, sandblast the glamour from the archetype.

I do think sequels can be held to a higher standard at times than original movies because of the prior film. We may be disappointed that an original failed but we are more upset when the sequel tarnishes the original by association or the director makes decisions about what's important that clashes with our own interpretation of the film.

[Stark]

My original statement about you needing to watch more stuff before making poorly informed generalizations doesn't actually mean that at all.

It's pretty terrifying that you appear to be defining sequel in the least flattering way possible to support your idea that sequels in some way result in worse movies. Maybe you should look at things on their merits, so you can say meaningful things like 'Predator 2 is a bit crap because of cast and plot' instead of meaningless crap like 'Predator 2 sucks because SEQUEL'. Don't mix cause and effect.

[jollyreaper]

It's pretty terrifying that you miss what I'm actually saying in your efforts to portray my every post as ignorant and wrongheaded.

[Stark]

You mean like you inventing paranoid implications in simple statements?

Why do you draw distinctions between different kinds of sequels, when you should already be aware that sequels that have vision or add something are probably better? If you approach films as individual efforts you can see that you get tired rehashes that are sequels and are not sequels, and you get inventive creations that are original and that are sequels.

Still waiting for you to prove that self evident statement btw. Maybe it's better you don't, though, and just Ty to take a broader perspective towards complex projects.

[Cykeisme]

It's pretty terrifying that you miss what I'm actually saying in your efforts to portray my every post as ignorant and wrongheaded.

You're ignorant, wrongheaded, AND paranoid!