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The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.
For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for Alien 3 can be found here.
No. Alien 3 is a sequel to Aliens (1986), itself a sequel to Alien (1979), which was based on an original screenplay by Dan O'Bannon. The screenplay for Alien 3 was written by producers David Giler and Walter Hill, and screenwriters Larry Ferguson and Vincent Ward. It was followed by Alien: Resurrection (1997), AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004), and AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem) (2007). Alien Resurrection continues Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)'s story begun in Alien, whereas AVP and AVPR were written as prequels to Alien. Alien 3 was subsequently novelized by Alan Dean Foster.
Not necessary but strongly advised. The Alien movies are written to tell a continuous story that starts with the discovery of the Alien creatures in Alien. Subsequent movies detail their spread and Ripley's attempts to contain and destroy them. Understanding the history of the Alien encounter makes Alien 3 much more understandable than just viewing it as a standalone monster movie.
No specific amount of time is given in the movie. It's known only that there was time enough in the interim for the personnel on the Sulaco to enter into hypersleep during which a fire broke out and the pod carrying Ripley, Cpl Hicks (Michael Biehn), Newt (Carrie Henn), and the remains of the android Bishop (Lance Henriksen) was ejected. The pod then set down on Fiorina 'Fury' 161, an all-male foundry facility and penal colony. When the pod was recovered by some of the inmates, the only one still alive was Lt Ripley and a facehugger that immediately attached itself to the prison dog. This scenario could have taken place in a matter of days, weeks, or months.
There have been several possibilities suggested. (1) Many believe that the Queen either carried an egg with her from the hive in Aliens and planted it on the Sulaco or simply laid the egg there, despite having torn off her ovipositor. (2) Others think that Bishop was responsible, i.e., while Ripley was rescuing Newt, Bishop retrieved an egg and later planted it on the Sulaco. (3) A third possibility is that an Alien warrior planted the egg on the dropship when Bishop was inside taking care of Hicks and waiting for Ripley.
It was established in Alien that the creatures inherit their hosts' characteristics. In Alien³, the alien comes from a canine (Theatrical version) or bovine (Assembly cut) host rather than a human one, so it inherits different physical characteristics. The creatures also appear to use color as camouflage. In Alien, the creature had a steel color that allowed it to blend in with the ship's pipework. In this film, large leadworks that had a very rusty-brown colour to the piping and brickwork led to the creature taking on a brownish appearance. Thus the creature adapts to the colourization.
In the original film, the alien birthed from Kane (John Hurt), killed Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), and cocooned only Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and Dallas (Tom Skerritt) although, in the continuity of the series, their deaths are left ambiguous. In Aliens, they killed the majority of the Marines, but they cocooned Apone (Al Matthews), Dietrich (Cynthia Dale Scott), possibly Hudson (Bill Paxton) and Burke (Paul Reiser). A large majority of the colonists were cocooned as well. It was about 15 people vs 100 aliens. But the people they killed, posed a threat. In this film, it is one Alien versus approximately 30 people. Also, it discovered that Ripley had a queen embryo inside of her. It had to do whatever it could to protect the queen. If the other humans had discovered she had an embryo inside of her, they probably would have killed her. The alien needed to do whatever it could to ensure the protection of the queen, as it was just a drone. If it wound up having to kill every last person to ensure the queen's safety, it would have.
According to the extra features on the Alien 3 Special Edition DVD (2003), the facehugger responsible for the Queen chestburster was a "super facehugger" which would specialise in carrying Queen embryos. This new type of facehugger had not been seen in the previous films until the Alien 3 Assembly Cut in a brief wide shot. Production photos showed it as a slightly different looking facehugger with a type of armour plated exo-skeleton (as to protect the Queen) and darker coloring. Interestingly, this facehugger was not used in the opening sequence where a traditional creature was seen, and it was ultimately removed from the film by Fincher when he changed the host for the creature from an ox to a dog.
In the original script and Dark Horse Comics adaptation, the alien Queen feotus was originally gestating inside Newt until she drowned in her cryotube in the EEV. The Queen feotus needed a living host to survive and so crawled out of Newt and into Ripley via her mouth and throat hence the cracked glass on Ripley's cryotube. This comment might also be attributed to the "tube" that a facehugger uses to implant an embryo. Kane's symptoms from the original Alien suggest that sore throat is one of the common side effects of recent embryo implantation via a facehugger, i.e., when he awakes from his coma his voice is scratchy and he keeps drinking cups of water.
The result of a scene that was deleted (and restored in the Assembly Cut). The prisoners are normally congregating in an assembly area (where superintendant Andrews (Brian Glover) held his first "Rumour Control") or in the canteen. However, the canteen is no longer safe because that is where the Alien killed Andrews. In the deleted scene, the prisoners complain that they are not safe in the assembly area, until one of them remembers that the Alien is afraid of fire; so they decide to move to the furnace, which contains hot molten metal that they hope will keep the Alien away.
Golic (Paul McGann) was dragged into the infirmary because the other inmates thought he had gone insane and killed two other prisoners. The last time we see him in the Theatrical Edition is when the Alien kills Dr Clemens (Charles Dance). An entire subplot was restored in the Assembly Cut in which the prisoners manage to lure the Alien into the storage room and lock him up. However, the deranged Golic, thinking the Alien deliberately spared his life, frees the creature and is killed during this action.
The producers of Alien³ wanted each film to be different in tone and style. It is apparent that they did not want to make "Aliens 2" and made a conscious decision to shift away from the action genre. This also serves to remove the simple solution Aliens presented -- that the aliens can be killed quite easily if you have the guns to do so. The producers removed the guns to increase the threat to the characters. Sigourney Weaver also served as executive producer on the film and her "no guns policy" had to be observed as it is known that she is very anti-guns, though she obviously made some concessions: 85 and Morse were quite definitely at the wrong end of a pulse rifle!
The rescue team from the Company, now known as the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, has arrived on Fury 161 and are making their way towards the prison. Inside the compound, Ripley and Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) have successfully lured the Alien into the lead molding facility. Ripley climbs up the scaffolding to get free of the lead molding vat, and the Alien starts to go up after her. Dillon distracts the Alien, keeping it in the vat, until Morse can pour in the hot lead. Unfortunately, not even the molten lead stops the creature. It again begins to climb up after Ripley. Knowing that the Alien is scalding hot, she turns on the sprinklers. The cold water causes the lead to solidify, and the Alien's exoskeleton shatters. The rescue team, lead by Aaron "85" (Ralph Brown) and Bishop II enter. Bishop II, professing to be human, tries to convince Ripley that the Company will remove the Alien from within her and kill it. Ripley knows better and sacrifices herself by jumping into the molten lead. On the way down, the Alien Queen births from Ripley's chest, but Ripley holds it to her, and mom and baby both go down into the molden lead [theatrical version]. In the final scene, the rescue team exits the prison. There is a final transmission in which it is noted that Fury 161 is closed, sealed, and any remaining equipment is to be sold as scrap.
Out of the 26 people on Fury 161, Morse (Danny Webb) is the only survivor...not including all the company people who arrive at the end.
Bishop II (Lance Henriksen) is human. He states that he is the human designer of the original Bishop android, and he bleeds red blood (androids have white blood) when hit over the head. Some viewers argue that he could be an advanced model with realistic blood just in case it needed to pretend to be human in order to trick Ripley into going with them or possibly that the red blood made the androids too human so they were reverted back to white blood as to identify them as androids. However, Bishop II is human in the script (and subsequently the novelization), and the filmmakers state in the DVD commentary that Bishop II is indeed human.
In America, Alien³ was generally disliked by the public and by film critics when it came out. However many reviewers outside the US hailed its bleak and uncompromising vision - and the film was more successful internationally.
Not directly. Production (i.e. shooting) of the film in England began as soon as David Fincher was officially signed on to direct and with no finished script. All that existed at that point was a dozen or so abandoned script ideas and almost two million dollars worth of sets that had been entirely or partially constructed (for a script that was entirely discarded weeks earlier). Fincher was informed that he needed to incorporate as many of the creative ideas the producers wanted as possible and he needed to write scenes around the sets that had already been built in order to justify the cost of their construction.As a result, Fincher was forced to effectively write, shoot, and edit the film, all at the same time. While he was attempting this almost impossible task, the producers were continually requesting that changes be made on a variety of levels on an almost daily basis. This only caused the production to become more complicated and difficult. The film went overbudget rather quickly and although the film was *almost* completed, the studio shut down production and asked for what is called a 'work print' or 'assembly cut'. You might think of this as an audit. They wanted to see what all their money had been spent on before they allowed any more.David Fincher created a work print in collaboration with editor Terry Rawlings. This was done in order to see which shots still had to be filmed and how the film flowed so far. Fincher, and the rest of the cast and crew, were under the impression that this was to be only the initial cut of what would be the final film and that very few pick-ups and changes were to be made (other than those requested by Fincher himself). The studio, however, eventually rejected this version of the film, and ordered a radical re-edit, requesting that entire plot points (including the beginning and ending of the film) be either altered or scrapped and entirely reshot. Most of these ideas were incorporated into what would become the Theatrical Version. After the hellish production of the film, the news that Fincher's vision of the story would not be the one that would ultimately make it to the screen was enough to make the director walk entirely.The alterations and new scenes were created without Fincher and despite the protests of most of the crew which had worked with him. In fact, a lot of the scenes, including the new ending, were shot in Los Angeles with almost an entirely new crew.For the extended 2003 Assembly Cut of Alien, editor David Crowther reassembled the earlier work print, and a small crew finished music, sound effects and visual effects in the additional scenes to the best of their abilities on the limited budget (e.g. there was no time or money for additional dialogue recording, etc). Based on what they had to work with, this version was as close as they could get to Fincher's original idea for the film they shot. It should be noted that this was not the film that Fincher had set out to shoot, only the compromised version he would have been *okay* with releasing.David Fincher was invited to create his 'director's cut', but refused, citing that a director's cut would mean burning all the original negatives and starting over from scratch. He had very little creative control over the original production and for his true 'director's cut' to ever really be realized, they would have to shoot a whole new movie.But according to some sources, the Assembly Cut has his blessing.
According to the Alien 3 Special Edition DVD (2003) interviews, producers expressed that the inmates' and Ripley's success in capturing the alien took away the creature's scariness, and that there was nothing scary about a monster that could be caught. One of the features on the Special Edition DVD also mentions that a test audience responded unfavourably to the entire Golic/Alien capture-and-release subplot. The edit also served to shorten the film considerably which is helpful when the studio are trying to maximise revenues.
It wasn't for want of interest. After the release of Aliens, director James Cameron mentioned the possibility of a third installment in the series, concentrating on the last three survivors: Ripley, Hicks and Newt. Cameron thought it would be interesting to further explore the family dynamic established in the previous film. In interviews, Michael Biehn admitted being interested in reprising his role. Several script treatments were written and rewritten, including one in which Hicks would lead a group of survivors (including Newt) to safety while Ripley was unconscious or in a coma. As the script was reworked, however, the story moved further and further away from this concept, until, eventually, the characters of Hicks and Newt were not included at all. When Biehn learned this, he stated that he was 'heartbroken'. Biehn's agent actually went to the studios when Alien 3 went into preproduction (still under the impression that the Hicks character would, at the very least, make an appearance) to negotiate his participation but learned that the producers didn't wish to make use of Biehn's services. On his way out of the studio, the agent walked past the special effects workshop and saw several artists working on a dummy in Biehn's likeness with a hole in its chest (he wrongly assumed that Hicks was to die from an alien bursting out of him, but this was never the case). Upon hearing the news, Biehn threatened to sue the production for using his likeness without his approval, the studio offered him money. Biehn refused, saying he didn't want to end up as a chestburster victim in the movie, no matter what amount of money he was offered (Biehn joked that he 'was really stupid back then.'). The studio then offered him money to use his picture in the movie's opening scene, to which he agreed, since the character was never intended to be a victim of the alien anyway. This picture is Biehn's entire appearance in the movie (the impaled Hicks is a dummy that cannot be facially identified). Biehn admitted that this fee for his picture was about the same as his entire salary for Aliens.
For the first time fans are able to purchase and admire a complete restored and revised version of the workprint which was created in 1991. This Special Edition had, beside a runtime of additional 30 minutes, new sequences and a fascinating view on the difficulties which occurred during the cutting of the movie. This version also provides the viewer with a combination of exceptional and unreleased optical effects and some recently completed digital effects which were essential to integrate the new material into the movie. A detailed comparison between both versions can be found here.
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