“Alien 3” has been maligned for its jumbled storyline, poor pacing, and lack of character development. That may seem harsh but those criticisms have actually come from its director, David Fincher! The root of the problem was the film’s rushed production schedule. Fox set an unrealistic release date so that the film could fill its summer blockbuster slot and all quality was sacrificed in order to meet the deadline. This led to a new script being written as they filmed, creating plot holes and forcing the crew to use sets that were already built for an obsolete script. It is a shame because Fincher’s vision for the next chapter in the series could have been fascinating. From the onset of the warped 20th Century Fox introduction that precedes the film, you know that this is going to be a weird one. The difference in tone and style is obvious from the opening credits, trading the slowly developing Alien text of previous installments for quick cuts that thrust us into the center of the story. The series returns to form with a single, terrifying alien that is able to stalk and destroy the crew on its own. “Aliens” gave us more aliens but cheapened their scare factor since the humans could easily dispose of them. The xenomorph is much scarier when it is so powerful that 25 testosterone-filled, double-Y chromosome criminals struggle to kill it. There are two sorts of scenes in this film - the ones where they try to capture the alien and the ones where they have a conversation about trying to capture the alien. The latter requires every third word to be the f-word while the former only requires every eighth word to be the f-word. There is so much unnecessary profanity in this film that it is difficult to stomach. I suppose that it emphasizes the “tough guy” persona of every character in the film but we could have gotten the idea without so much profanity. The acting is decent considering the lack of non-profane dialogue provided by the script. Sigourney Weaver delivers another strong performance, I always love Pete Postlethwaite, and Charles Dutton manages to create a well-developed character in spite of the weak script. My favorite character is actually Jonathan (the doctor played by Charles Dance) but he is completely underused in the theatrical release. It wasn’t until I saw the Assembly Cut that I realized how well-developed this character could have been. In fact, everything about the Assembly Cut is better... except that it is so long and slow. The additional footage helps us to better understand Fincher’s vision but adding content to a subpar production merely makes it a longer subpar production. The addition of Weaver washing up on the shore and the alien bursting from an ox add some extra grit but the most significant difference is the story’s most interesting plot point: Golic freeing the alien. I felt legitimate anger when I realized that the Theatrical Cut completely circumvented this subplot. It is crucial to the story, devastating Ripley when she is finally victorious and motivating her to take her desperate measures at the end. The exclusion of this portion of the story from the Theatrical Cut also robbed the film of its most interesting theme: man-turns-monster-into-a-god. Science fiction stories often have the hero defeating a monster but things get interesting when a character begins to believe that the monster is something other than the enemy. It is painful to think that someone believed that the film could be better without this element. The most interesting thing about “Alien 3” is what it could have been. When you strip away the philosophical discussions about the flawed production and the potential of David Fincher’s vision, we are left with a subpar movie that is only tolerable because it links “Aliens” to “Resurrection.”
[Pictured: The alien is scarier than ever but the story is less interesting than ever]
