Alien3 presents one of the most intriguing and stark examples of a film that is so paradoxical that it is difficult to imagine its existence. One can point to many examples of contradictions in the film--its juxtaposition of pure, wild creative ambition with cost-cutting corporatism; its mood, extraordinarily moving but simultaneously numbing; its technical virtuosity, nevertheless replete with many examples of sloppy work on both sides of the camera. The trouble with Alien3 begins fairly early, even before the movie starts--the title of the film, if taken literally, suggests that there will be three of the famously fearsome alien creatures in this film, where there is merely one. Well, another one is a bit of a plot point, and it is seen in the earlier, theatrical version of the film, but not in the newer and more authentic restored version released on DVD a few years ago. Nevertheless, Alien3 is a film that drove many an audience up many a proverbial wall upon its release. After the enormous success of Aliens, audiences no doubt expected another thrilling, rollicking, ass-kicking adventure, replete with heroics and chills from beginning to end. Alien3 contains many heroics and a fair amount of chills, but Fincher's first film is such an exceptional case study in confounding audience expectations that it is difficult to describe just how efficiently he manages to do it without citing some examples.
For one, let's visit the sequence about fifteen or so minutes into the film. To give a bit of background, the characters from the first film (Ripley, Newt, Hicks, Bishop) crash-land on a rather desolate planet, Fury 161. Ripley is the sole survivor. After some exposition, Ripley asks to see the body of Newt, the young girl she saved in the first film. The body is produced. Ripley fears she was infested by an alien and looks down the dead girl's throat to try to see said alien. Finally, after some harrowing flashbacks, she orders the doctor, Clemens, to perform an autopsy. He complies. So, within the first half-hour of this film, Alien3, we see one of the beloved survivors of the first film being cut open in a sequence that isn't edited for maximum gore but rather for maximum emotional effect. It is a brilliant scene, and after watching it, many Aliens fans probably immediately gave up on the film right away, perhaps understandably. But the sequence is an effective way of introducing the sensibility of the new film--by killing off the old characters and literally ripping them apart in front of our eyes, we know that this film is going to take place in a much darker place, literally and spiritually, than its predecessor. Fincher was letting us know that we were in for a different kind of ride, and if you weren't ready for it, then you ought to get the hell off the boat. Unfortunately, as it turned out, too many people did jump ship then and there. Nevertheless, one does have to admire the integrity of the thing done, even if repelled by the very idea.
For those who have not seen the film, I will not spoil the plot, which is fairly well-constructed and contains a few really good twists. Suffice it to say that Ripley ultimately faces a choice between continuing to live despite being guaranteed (by an admittedly sketchy source) that the aliens will not be used as weapons, or making the ultimate sacrifice to save us all forever. She chooses the latter option. How easy it would have been to have taken the unctuous company representative at his word and continue living? How many of us would have made that choice? We needn't be reminded that Ripley was not born a hero--in the very first Alien she was often less than commanding. And yet she sacrificed herself in a noble, selfless, and beautiful act. For a moment--just one--she seemed to consider the offer. This film is hardly Aliens, Part Two--it's The Last Temptation of Christ! At least in the central dilemma it creates. If anything, Ripley seems to less actively contemplate absolving herself of her fate than did the Jesus of that film--it just wasn't an option, not to her, not to anyone who gave up her family (twice! well, sorta...), all her friends, her job--literally everything was destroyed by these aliens. While revenge was certainly a motive in Ripley's ultimate decision, I believe that her decision in this film goes deeper than just payback. At some point Ripley, just like Jesus in Last Temptation, realizes that she has to save the world simply because nobody else will do it. Nobody else would have died for the sins of the World, and nobody else would have died to keep the world from an infestation by indestructible aliens. All of the other mechanisms for accomplishing her mission had failed. Ripley had to take the one action that she could to save humanity. Scorsese's film came out only two years before Alien3, but their respective protagonists have such compatible and selfless motives that the intertextuality seems almost deliberate, and unexpected. There are differences, though: where Jesus's choice was predetermined, to some extent, Ripley's choice is not. Ripley was an unlikely survivor in Alien, and while heroic in Aliens, the character did nothing that would indicate such a grandness of spirit. And yet her decision is entirely plausible, thanks to Fincher. After the loss of everything else, she managed to find something--not faith, exactly, but a sense of purpose so strong that it substantively differs little from that of a religious mission. If anything, the comparisions to the LT Jesus are favorable, as Ripley displays little of the existential angst and uncertainty that Willem Defoe inhabits as Jesus. The final irony is that the Christ allegory in the film is so overt despite that Ripley's heroic final act is the act of suicide, one of the mortal sins according to early Christian teaching. Ripley, like Christ, would not have been able to enter Heaven upon her death. The Christ allegory in Alien3 is so perfectly presented and worked out in every detail, and yet it is presented to nonchalantly and naturally that one might not even catch it the first time viewing the film. All in all, though, the film's use of the Christ allegory is interesting in that it seems to thread the needle of presenting a person who is certainly heroic but--and here's the trick--not superheroic. Ripley's act is honorable, but Fincher manages to keep her as a creation of flesh and blood rather than of marble. It is a very interesting companion piece to Last Temptation.
Fincher also seems to get more personal with his characters than directors in other Alien films bothered to. Ridley Scott's original was genuinely scary, more in its sustained suspense than in the few shocking scenes where the alien showed up (though those were expertly done as well). However, Scott kept the characters distant from us--while they felt plausible, they were never made personal. So, say, when Tom Skeritt's character Dallas gets killed by the alien in the air shaft, we feel bad, but not shattered. Scott takes more of a sociological view of the situation--the competition between man and alien interests him on an intellectual level, as a springboard to look at all sorts of late 1970's anxieties, which he does brilliantly. Especial credit ought to go to Scott's interesting preoccupation with sexuality between humans and nonhumans, such as the attempted rape of Ripley by the (non-equipped) android Ash and the (possible?) rape of a female crewmember (not Ripley) by the alien, not to mention the "birth" of the alien. Still, it's a movie that aspires to chills and is interested in ideas, but doesn't really push the emotional angle. And Aliens, while entertaining, cannot help but feel a little shallow emotionally. Much of the terror in that movie is generated by putting women and children in danger, and otherwise by having scary things pop out at the screen. It's a movie that feels fulfilling at its end because of the gamut of emotions that are run through watching the thing, but none of the emotions are terribly deep and there is little to take away from the film. I would talk about Alien: Resurrection, but it's not really worth talking about, or seeing, for that matter. Some smart people keep insisting that it's satirical rather than shitty, which reminds me of nothing other than those people who insist that the offensive remark they just said was just a joke. It is indefensible and will remain undefended.
But despite his blase vivisection of a plucky ten year old at the beginning of the film, Fincher's film actually treats life with far more reverence than his fellow directors do. Yes, people die fairly often in this movie, many of whom we never know. But the deaths of the characters we are supposed to care about do register, and their deaths often feel less like heroic sacrifices for the good of humanity than just senseless killing. Fincher feels their deaths, even while understanding their ultimate purpose. And so do we. But the deaths do have meaning, and often prove one point or another about humanity. One central character is devoured by the alien about halfway through the movie in what might be considered a cheaply ironic shock tactic, but it truly is shocking--just like the alien kills off the most compassionate and likable character on a physical level, so it eradicates the "better angels of our virtue" on a deeper level. This film takes place in a prison, although in a long-deserted prison where a small amount of religious prisoners have remained behind to live as monks, tending to the machinery. Despite their religion and their oft talked about vows of celibacy, sexual tension does not only linger beneath the surface but remains right on top. Ripley, unsurprisingly, is nearly raped early on in the movie, a somewhat frequent event in these films, which raises the question of whether spiritual convictions are valid if there is no test for them--after all, it is easy to be celibate when Sigourney Weaver isn't around, no? One might suspect the film to turn into a polemic against religion, but it does not, as the very character who attempts the rape ("Junior") later gives his own life to save her from being killed by the alien. He actually finds virtue through the course of the film. In fact, virtually all of the prisoners risk their lives (and most of them give them up) to kill the alien in order to keep it from falling into the hands of the evil company. Now, this is one of the flaws of the movie, as many of those characters are difficult to distinguish and many don't register when they die. However, the heroic deaths of Ripley and Dillon, the evangelical leader played brilliantly by Charles Dutton, are quite shattering, and the film is very generous and humanistic when it comes to people--one senses, after a time, that the main message of the movie is that all people are fundamentally good. Couple this with the Christian angle, and you have a very interesting series of themes advanced by the film. When push comes to shove, most people in the film do the right thing, even though they usually don't want to, and not just out of selfish reasons. It's characters are generally noble. Aside from the company men, of course.
Coupled with the film's humanism is a distinctly distinctive style. The atmosphere of the film is at the same time tinged with dread, decay, spirituality, fear, but not without the occasional touch of dark humor. All of this is to say that the film hews very closely to the rest of David Fincher's canon, and fans of Fincher must watch the film. It is surprising just how on his game this rookie filmmaker was, and how much of his own personal style was evident right from the start. The visuals are also incredible, the best of all the Alien films, which is not a trivial achievement. The look of the film owes much to other dark sci-fi like Blade Runner and, of course, the original Alien film. Lots of steam, contrasts, and dark and drab colors. It's all pretty compelling on a visual level.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film is such a mess that one might be forgiven for not appreciating the subtle nuances of the Christ allegory at its core, or the sublimity of the characters. This film has got some pretty significant flaws. Despite frequently being deeply felt, the movie also frequently induces a great deal of numbness in the viewer. While the combination marks a unique feel it can't help but feel schizophrenic--it often feels nihilistic, despite the fact that the message of the film is anything but, and one is tempted to lay the blame at the feet of David Fincher, who might not possibly have had the full command of tone that he would later come to possess. It does work a little bit in a strangely converse (and compelling way) in that it keeps daring the viewer to give up hope for the characters: that they'll be rescued, that they'll kill the alien, et cetera. One shouldn't blow it out of proportion, as the film's tone is actually one of the most memorable parts of the experience, and while it isn't consistent it is predictably inconsistent. During the key moments we are right there with the characters, adrenaline pumping. Otherwise, the film takes on an elegiac feel. All in all, the taste of the film is an acquired taste, but one suspects that it could have used a bit more thought and refinement before filming began.
The difficulties of the third Alien film go beyond the tone, too. Despite having some unbelievable visuals and atmosphere there are many parts where the special effects for the alien are so unconvincing as to make a typical episode of Charmed or early Buffy, the Vampire Slayer look realistic by comparison. The final action scene is easily one of the worst I have ever seen in my life--it is impossible to understand or visualize what is going on, and shifts to and from the alien's point of view are clumsy. The production values are high for much of the film, but these sequences are conceptually flawed and bring down the movie right before the exultant finale. Fincher does not entirely deserve the blame for this, as it was during this point where Fox really put the screws to him and made his life impossible. On the other hand, the decision to cast a group of generally similar-looking, largely British, all bald men to play the cast of convicts was an egregious error on Fincher's part. It is difficult even for me to tell them all apart, and I've seen the film a half dozen times!
Still, some of these errors are not the fault of Fincher. The third Alien film has one of those "stories behind the film" nearly as fascinating as the final product itself. The script went through several iterations and several directors, but various ideas from all of them wound up in the final version because preproduction had already started. That is one of the most interesting (and paradoxical) aspects of the movie--many of the unique ideas found in the film were cobbled together not out of some wild ambition but merely because the ideas were all present in various drafts of the script, and the studio wanted to save money by using the sets/props/costumes that they had already constructed. With each new version of the script, radically different settings, characters and ideas were put forward. Pre-production was begun, then ended. The completed (and expensive) output was then utilized in the next draft. Thus, a script about a prison planet and another about a planet of monks culminate in a story of prisoner monks, with a little bit of Ripley fighting aliens on Earth tossed in, but only on an outer rim planet. The end result was, to put it mildly, memorable.
Eventually David Fincher was named the film's director. Fox seemed to believe from the beginning that it knew how to make a film much better than David Fincher did, and second-guessed him constantly, continally screwing up his film in many ways. One of the greatest embarassments was the film's tagline, "On Earth, everyone can hear you scream," a takeoff on the famous tagline of the first film, but the action doesn't take place on Earth at all. The final action scene is dreadful largely because Fox became impossible to deal with for Fincher at that point, and after Fincher finished his film, the studio lopped off a full half-hour of the movie so as to allow more viewings in theaters--this was the pre-multiplex era, after all, and Fox wanted to get as much people to see the movie as possible. As it turned out, the cuts weren't necessary, as the movie was a big, fat bomb. And rightly so. The theatrical version is horrid. The half-hour removed contains a subplot in which one of the prisoners tries to make a deal with the alien (shades of Judas), completing the Christ allegory. In addition, the subtractions destroy the pacing of the movie, and add a crowd-pleasing ending that lacks the beauty of the original one. The whole story about the making of the film is available as part of the recent Special Edition, and I highly recommend both it and the extended version of the film. As regards the theatrical version, it is an interesting curiosity, but a bad film that generally contains the same themes as the first, but much of the character development is cut out, and the aforementioned pacing problem and shorter running time make the response upon the end of the film more in the "who cares?" realm than the intellectual and emotional impact with which the more recent version culminates.
All in all, Alien3 is a study in contrasts and paradoxes. Despite its failings, the movie has many moments where it just connects and finds considerable impact. It does require a certain level of intrepidness, however. On the grand scale of artistic achievement it does not quite belong among the first rank of human endeavor in the arts, and probably not even the second, but it is a solid work of art, and the best of the Alien films, largely because it is the most human of those films. I defy anyone to watch the film (in the extended cut, of course) and not remember that last scene where Ripley makes her sacrifice. People who watch that scene, knowing what has led to it, and find themselves unmoved are more alien than any other kind of creature in the film.
