Alien 3 1992 Trailer

[Cecelia Seiner]

Setimmediately after the events of Aliens (1986), Ripley and an Alien organism are the only survivors of the Colonial Marine spaceship Sulaco following an escape pod's crash on a planet housing a penal colony populated by violent male inmates. Additional roles are played by Charles Dance, Brian Glover, Charles S. Dutton, Ralph Brown, Paul McGann, Danny Webb, Lance Henriksen, Holt McCallany, Pete Postlethwaite, and Danielle Edmond.

The film faced problems during production, including shooting without a script and the attachment of various screenwriters and directors. Fincher, in his feature directorial debut, was brought in to direct after a proposed version with Ward as director was canceled during pre-production.

Alien 3 was released on May 22, 1992. While it underperformed at the American box office, it earned over $100 million outside North America. The film received mixed reviews and was regarded as inferior to previous installments. Fincher has since disowned the film, citing studio interference and deadlines. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, seven Saturn Awards (Best Science Fiction Film, Best Actress for Weaver, Best Supporting Actor for Dutton, Best Direction for Fincher, and Best Writing for Giler, Hill, and Ferguson), a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, and an MTV Movie Award for Best Action Sequence. In 2003, a revised version of the film known as the Assembly Cut was released without Fincher's involvement, which received a warmer reception.

Following the events of Aliens, an egg hatches aboard the Colonial Marine spaceship Sulaco, releasing a facehugger. A fire starts and the ship's computer launches an escape pod containing Ellen Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and the damaged android Bishop; all four are in cryonic stasis. The pod crash-lands on Fiorina "Fury" 161, a foundry and maximum-security correctional facility inhabited by male inmates with a genetic predisposition for antisocial behavior. The inmates recover the crashed pod and its passengers. The facehugger approaches inmate Thomas Murphy's dog, Spike.

Ripley is awakened by Clemens, the prison's chief medical officer, who informs her that she is the sole survivor. The prison warden, Harold Andrews, says that her presence may have disruptive effects. Ripley insists that Clemens perform an autopsy on Newt and that her and Hicks's bodies be subsequently burned, fearing that Newt may be carrying an Alien embryo. Despite protests from the warden and his assistant Aaron, the autopsy is conducted and no embryo is found. The funeral proceeds with spiritual leader Dillon delivering a speech as the deceased are dropped into the furnace. Elsewhere in the prison, a quadrupedal alien bursts from Spike.

Ripley finds the damaged Bishop in the prison's garbage dump before being cornered by four inmates and almost gang-raped. After being saved by Dillon, Ripley returns to the infirmary and re-activates Bishop, who, before asking to be permanently shut down, confirms that a Facehugger came with them to Fiorina, under knowledge of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Growing to full size, the alien kills Murphy, Boggs, and Rains. It also returns outcast prisoner Golic to his previously psychopathic state. Ripley informs Andrews of her previous Xenomorph encounters[a] and suggests everyone work together to hunt down and kill it. However, the facility is without weapons; their only hope is the rescue ship being sent for Ripley by Weyland-Yutani.

The Alien ambushes Ripley and Clemens in the prison infirmary, killing him, and cornering her. However, it mysteriously spares her and retreats. Ripley rushes to the cafeteria to warn the others. Andrews orders Aaron to take her back to the infirmary, but the warden himself is dragged into the vents and killed by the Alien. Ripley rallies the inmates and proposes they pour flammable toxic waste into the ventilation system and ignite it to flush out the Alien. However, its intervention causes a premature explosion and several inmates die. With Aaron's help, Ripley scans herself using the escape pod's medical equipment and sees the embryo of an Alien Queen growing inside her. She also discovers that Weyland-Yutani hopes to turn the aliens into biological weapons.

The Alien will not kill her because of the embryo she carries, so Ripley begs Dillon to do it; he agrees only if she helps the inmates kill the Alien first. They form a plan to lure the Alien into the foundry's molding facility, trap it, and drown it in molten lead. The bait-and-chase plan results in the deaths of every remaining prisoner but Dillon and Morse. Dillon sacrifices himself to position the Alien towards the mold as Morse pours the molten lead onto them. Although the Alien is covered in molten metal, it escapes the mold. Ripley activates the fire sprinklers, blowing the Alien apart from thermal shock.

Although 20th Century Fox were skeptical about the idea, they agreed to finance the development of the story, but asked that Hill and Giler attempt to get Ridley Scott, director of Alien, to make Alien 3. They also asked that the two films be shot back to back to lessen the production costs. While Scott was interested in returning to the franchise, it did not work out due to the director's busy schedule.[17]

In September 1987, Giler and Hill approached cyberpunk author William Gibson to write the script for the third film. Gibson, who told the producers his writing was influenced by Alien, accepted the task. Fearful of an impending strike by the Writers Guild of America, Brandywine asked Gibson to deliver a screenplay by December.[17] Gibson drew heavily from Giler and Hill's treatment, having a strong interest in the "Marxist space empire" element.[19] The following year, Finnish director Renny Harlin was approached by Fox based on his work in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master.[20] Harlin wanted to go in different directions from the first two movies, having interest in both visiting the Alien homeworld or having the Aliens invading Earth.[8]

The screenplay was very action-oriented, featuring an extended cast, and is considered in some circles as superior to the final film and has a considerable following on the Internet.[21] The producers were on the whole unsatisfied with the screenplay, which Giler described as "a perfectly executed script that wasn't all that interesting",[8] particularly for not taking new directions with the initial pitch. They still liked certain parts, such as the subtext making the Alien a metaphor for HIV, but felt it lacking the human element present in Aliens and Gibson's trademark cyberpunk aesthetic. Following the end of the WGA strike, Gibson was asked to make rewrites with Harlin, but declined, citing various other commitments and "foot dragging on the producers' part."[17] On July 12, 2018, it was announced that William Gibson's unmade screenplay of Alien 3 would be adapted into a comic series.[22] As part of Alien's 40th anniversary, on May 30, 2019, the audiobook version of William Gibson's unproduced screenplay of Alien 3 was released and made available on Audible.[23] Both are based on the second draft. 2021 saw another adaptation of the screenplay, this time as a novel written by Pat Cadigan from Titan Books[24] and based instead on the first draft.

Following Gibson's departure, Harlin suggested screenwriter Eric Red, writer of the cult horror films The Hitcher and Near Dark. Red worked less than two months to deliver his draft in February 1989,[17] which led him to later describe his Alien 3 work as "the one script I completely disown because it was not 'my script'. It was the rushed product of too many story conferences and interference with no time to write, and turned out utter crap."[25] His approach had a completely new set of characters and subplots, while also introducing new breeds of the Alien.[17] The plot opened with a team of Special Forces marines boarding the Sulaco and finding that all survivors had fallen victim to the aliens. Afterwards, it moved into a small-town U.S. city in a type of bio-dome in space, culminating in an all-out battle with the townsfolk facing hordes of Alien warriors. Brandywine rejected Red's script for deviating too much from their story, and eventually gave up on developing two sequels simultaneously.[17]

Writer David Twohy was next to work on the project, being instructed to start with Gibson's script. Once the fall of Communism made the Cold War analogies outdated, Twohy changed his setting to a prison planet, which was being used for illegal experiments on the aliens for a Biological Warfare division.[17] Harlin felt this approach was too similar to the previous movies, and, tired of the development hell, walked out on the project, which led Fox to offer Harlin The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.[26]

Once Hill attended a screening of The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, he decided to invite its director, Vincent Ward. Ward, who was in London developing Map of the Human Heart,[17] accepted the project only on the third call, as he at first was uninterested in doing a sequel. Ward thought little of the Twohy script, and instead worked up another idea, involving Ripley's escape pod crash landing on a monastery-like satellite. Having developed this pitch on his flight to Los Angeles, once Ward got with the studio executives he saw his idea approved by the studio. Ward was hired to direct Alien 3, and writer John Fasano was hired to expand his story into a screenplay.[8] Once Twohy discovered through a journalist friend that another script was being written concurrently with his, he went after Fox and eventually left the project.[28]

Ward envisioned a planet whose interior was both wooden and archaic in design, where Luddite-like monks would take refuge. The story begins with a monk who sees a "star in the East" (Ripley's escape pod) and at first believes this to be a good omen. Upon arrival of Ripley, and with increasing suggestions of the Alien presence, the monk inhabitants believe it to be some sort of religious trial for their misdemeanors, punishable by the creature that haunts them. By having a woman in their monastery, they wonder if their trial is partially caused by sexual temptation, as Ripley is the only woman to be amongst the all-male community in ten years. To avoid this belief and (hopefully) the much grimmer reality of what she has brought with her, the Monks of the "wooden satellite" lock Ripley into a dungeon-like sewer and ignore her advice on the true nature of the beast.[29] The monks believe that the Alien is in fact the Devil. Primarily though, this story was about Ripley's own soul-searching complicated by the seeding of the Alien within her and further hampered by her largely solo attempts to defeat it. Eventually Ripley decides to sacrifice herself to kill the Alien. Fox asked for an alternative ending in which Ripley survived, but Weaver would agree to the film only if Ripley died.[8]

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