Originally published on Facebook 2 February 2015.
The fatal problem with ALIEN 3 is not, *not*, that it takes a big steaming dump on Ripley’s heroism from the prior film, by killing off Newt and Hicks, the two people she bonded with and rescued in the prior movie.
Sure, that sucked, but let’s be honest: I was spoiled on that plot point before I went to see it. I was dismayed, of course, but I’m a horror guy and I recognize that the ALIENS franchise was made up of horror films. In the best horror, and indeed in the best stories, life isn’t always fair; sometimes it’s spectacularly unfair. I was 100% willing to give the movie a fair shot, to prove that it would reward our tolerance of this development that upset us, by going places worth going. So, no, that was not a fatal problem. I withheld judgment.
The fatal problem is that, *having done that*, it gave us a story that sucked, thus following its deliberate violation with a cowpie in the face.
It’s first of all a story that doesn’t advance the mythology one iota. ALIEN gave us our first exposure to the life form; ALIENS showed us what it was like when human beings fought them in a fair fight; ALIEN 3 showed us nothing more except a slightly different metamorph and the lesson that anybody we love, including the heroine whose fate we had given such an emotional investment, will be taken from us not only without warning but without meaning. That was one point.
It’s second of all a story that violates who Ripley is, turning her a woman who – having suffered the most devastating loss one can imagine and then being forced to suffer it all over again – proceeds from absolute emotional desolation with Newt’s autopsy scene, to hopping into bed with the first guy who treats her with kindness. (Sure, she uses sex to avoid answering his questions, but there’s a post-coital shot of her smiling her secret smile, and THE WOMAN SAW HER DEAD SURROGATE DAUGHTER GETTING HER RIBS SPREAD ONLY A FEW SCENES BEFORE, and that is not the woman we know, nor a woman we want to know.)
And third of all —
it’s a goddamned stupid story.
People complain about Newt’s off-screen death. You know what offended me more?
Late in the movie Ripley and company come up with a plan to kill the canine metamorph: they will lure it into a trap and crush it under thousands of gallons of molten lead.
This they actually accomplish.
But the alien doesn’t die; in a jump-scare moment, it leaps out of the pool of molten lead, as if propelled by a spring.
Sure, somebody said. It’s an Alien. It can have any capabilities the writer wants it to have.
Sure. I agree with that.
It can, for instance, be repelled by flame-throwers, as in the prior movies. OR it can be wholly unfazed by molten lead. Either it can be driven back by fire or it’s not affected by heat. YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH.
It can be stymied by a closed door, as happens a few times in this movie. It can be knocked to its knees by a pissed-off blue-collar woman in a power loader suit, as happens so memorably in ALIENS. OR it can be so powerful that it can swim upward through uncounted tons of molten lead, and propel itself leaping out of that ungodly weight. YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH.
It can be ripped to pieces to bullets or it can be invulnerable to thousands of tons of falling lead. YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH.
I was offended because I watched that scene and I thought, “There are any number of things in the first two movies that strain common sense, or biology, or conditions in outer space, but there is no point, in either of them, where I had my nose rubbed in the attitude that the people who wrote it think we’re goddamned idiots and won’t notice something this profoundly stupid.”
The only alternative explanation is that they were too stupid to tell the difference themselves, in which case the story becomes what you get when excited six-year-olds play with action figures, and the stories six-year-olds make up about toy Indy and toy Chewbacca and toy Superman, fighting the giant rocking horse, are not regarded by the rest of us as canon.
It did not happen.
Comment By: Paul Ebbs
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
Cubed is the Best Alien movie and I will brook no disagreement.
Comment By: Debra Wallace Day
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
I agree with everything you wrote. It’s a horrible movie. There aren’t many movie I hate as much as I hate ALIEN 3. Ripley was everything, and they ruined her.
Comment By: Adam Holmberg
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
Cameron has had poor luck with his franchise sequels; Aliens, in which he built Ripley into a strong, great character who overcomes so much hardship (both actual and emotional), is followed by Alien 3 which completely destroys the character work that he did.
Then Terminator 3 came along and not only does it piss on the “no fate but what we make” theme of the first two, it also kills off Sarah Conner in a mundane way (she died of cancer years earlier) and basically leaves things that all the work she did in Terminator 2 was for nothing. Frustrates me. If you HAVE to do a sequel, build on what made the original great, don’t just tear it all down.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
It’s not Cameron’s bad luck. Really. His films still exist and are the ones people still go back to.
Comment By: Jon Meltzer
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
Aren’t there only two Alien movies?
Comment By: Samuel J Tomaino
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
Killing of Newt and Hicks was the reason I never even saw the movie.
Comment By: Brian Siano
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
I gotta be blunt, and I say this with the utmost respect for your skill as a writer, but the phrase “take a hot, steaming dump” is usually a signal for me to read no further. That’s why I don’t bother with Ain’t It Cool anymore.
As or the movie… I think this came up before, but the whole production was a miserable clusterfuck. I’m just glad it didn’t kill David Fincher’s career.
Comment By: Ann Crimmins
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:18 am
I saw Alien 3 out of register if that’s the appropriate term. The top of the frame was cut off and appeared at the bottom, making the characters stand on their own heads. It improved the movie, and we all got our money back from the manager at the end of the show. I think I lucked out.
Comment By: Peter Wilson
February 2nd, 2016 at 10:19 am
I just regret that it didn’t make better use of Pete Postlethwaite. In a McDonalds commercial would probably count as better use.
Comment By: Craven Sean
February 2nd, 2016 at 11:17 am
I’ll be honest. I think Aliens succeeded as a movie, but I don’t really like it. I think Alien 3 is a trainwreck, but there are pieces of something really interesting in there and I got a lot of pleasure sorting them from the rubble. (I kind of like Eraserhead Dune on a similar basis, so my approval probably qualifies as a warning sticker.)
Comment By: buzz
February 2nd, 2016 at 11:15 am
Still a better love story than Alien: Regurgitation
Comment By: Buzz Dixon
February 2nd, 2016 at 12:19 pm
There’s still a way to get back on course for the Alien portion of the franchise (gawd know what they’re going to do on the Prometheus side). Write off Cubed and Regurgitation as Ripley’s hypersleep nightmares and hand the series mantle to Newt.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
February 2nd, 2016 at 12:19 pm
(I incidentally have a lot of affection for Carrie Hehn, who played Newt. Made one movie, a classic of its kind, decided that acting was not for her, grew up to become a schoolteacher, is neither offended by her brush with stardom, nor ruled by it. Made no sex tapes, appeared on no tabloid covers. Just lived. How can you not respect that?)
Comment By: David Vineyard
February 2nd, 2016 at 12:19 pm
ALIEN 3 suffers a common Hollywood phenomena, the need to undo rather than build on everything that went before. So called creative types decide successful franchises need their vision and we end up with things like ALIEN 3 or the last few TERMINATORS and the final TRANSFORMERS.
ALIEN has moved on to tie with the Predator series so Ripley and Newt are both gone short of a remake of the first one.
Comment By: Brian Siano
February 2nd, 2016 at 12:19 pm
Stephen King once cited Robert Sheckley about “the kid trick” in soap operas. A character is pregnant. Two weeks later, the kid’s born. Two weeks after that, he’s six. A month goes by, he’s a teenager. Inside of six months, he’s an adult and ready to join in the drama, and maybe die of some beautiful disease. King went on to say that, on _Dark Shadows_, the characters could come back as ghosts. “I was better tan the kid trick.” he wrote.
Now, we have “retconning,” where new stories can simply revise what’s been established. Dead characters are brought back simply because people want them back. Things that were massive, wrenching tragedies in episode 5 are erased in episode 15.
Makes it really hard to care, doesn’t it?
Comment By: Drew Bittner
February 2nd, 2016 at 12:19 pm
I cannot recall any part of Alien 3 that I enjoyed.
Comment By: Steven Renteria Nickell
February 2nd, 2016 at 1:18 pm
And then Alien:Resurrection. The hits kept coming.
Comment By: Gregory Colbert
February 2nd, 2016 at 1:18 pm
I hate this movie with a passion. There’s nothing memorable about it. Complete waste of time.
Comment By: Bob Benson
February 2nd, 2016 at 1:18 pm
I just pretend nothing after Aliens exists.
Comment By: Matthew M. Foster
February 2nd, 2016 at 5:22 pm
Your points are well taken. The Newt and Hicks deaths still bother me more because all those other things (the poor plot, inconsistancies, the strange character development, etc. etc.) only damaged and eventually destroyed this Alien 3–a movie that sucked, like a lot of movies. The deaths damage Aliens (a different film that I did care about). I can claim to ignore it, but human brains remember, so I now always remember that, even if I say it didn’t happen, when watching Aliens, and that really damages the story of Aliens (as what is the story then?).
Alien 3 I can just not watch. Problem solved for it. But that memory is hard to get rid of. The most important task of any sequel is not to harm what came before. Alien 3 failed in that. It failed tons of other ways, but those I can ignore by turning it off.
Comment By: Michael Pullmann
February 2nd, 2016 at 6:23 pm
I always liked Peter David’s idea that it was a nightmare Ripley had while in hypersleep. If nothing else, it explained the plot holes.
Comment By: Eric Cline
February 2nd, 2016 at 9:20 pm
For a terrible film, it has an oddly iconic scene. (You all know the one I’m talking about). Has there ever been another bad flop movie that could say that?
Comment By: Steven
May 1st, 2017 at 1:40 pm
I definitely agree with what you wrote. Also, minor error but you say Metamorph instead of Xenomorph.
Comment By: Eduard
December 27th, 2017 at 8:26 am
I honestly think it could be a great movie if Fincher could have a last say, scenes like autopsy, tunnels etc are iconic, atmosphere is depressing and it fits with the story,