Essay/Term paper: Alien 3

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Culture

It was in 1979 that the nightmare began, when the

spaceship the Nostromo landed on an unknown planet to

answer a rescue message and later explore an abandoned

vessel. That"s where the crew met for the first time a

creature as deadly as beautiful, the Alien. This creature and

it"s environment, created by the talented Swiss artist H.R.

Giger, were the main antagonists from the movie « Alien »,

directed by Ridley Scott and featuring Sigourney Weaver

as the only survivor of the Nostromo crew when the Alien

penetrated it. This movie was the first chapter of a cult saga

still active these days. From the four movies featuring the

Aliens, the third one is considered as the worst one. Even

though it"s visual quality was exceptional, it"s poor scenario

deceived most Alien fans throughout the world, leaving not

much place for improvement for a forth movie. But most

people don"t know that the critically acclaimed cyberpunk

author William Gibson wrote an alternative scenario to

Alien³, much more researched, focusing on future

technology and human contacts rather than on explosions

and gratuitous violence.







Both Alien³ and Gibson"s script have a similar opening,

where the audience learns that a Face-Hugger (a

crab/spider-like creature whose function is to implement an

embryo inside a chest cavity from a living organism) has

been able to hide in the Sulaco, the ship with which Ripley

(Sigourney Weaver), Hicks (an injured marine soldier),

Newt (a 12 years old girl) and Bishop (an android seriously

damaged) escaped from the Alien colony in the previous

movie, Aliens. But this similarity between the to scripts is

maybe the only one. From now on, the two stories will take

completely different courses. In Alien³, an electric

malfunction (usually attributed to the Face-Hugger) causes

the ship to crash on a planet called Fiorina 161 containing a

disaffected mining colony now used as a high-security

prison. This leads to predictable, violent, confrontations

between Ripley (the only survivor from the crash) and the

prisoners. From now on, the viewers knows that the movie

will be based on sexist debates and on useless violence.

However, in Gibson"s version, the Sulaco does not crash

on a planet but rather continues on it"s original path but

with a small deviation. This deviation makes the ship enter

an area claimed by the Union of Progressive Peoples, or

UPP, a somewhat clear analogy to the late USSR.







It is rumored that this similarity contributed to the demise of

Gibson"s script. The presence of a political force in the

story would have been the first apparition of any kind of

political debates in all the Aliens movies. And at the same

time, the audience learns that there"s not only one powerful

government controlling the world, but at least two of them,

and maybe more. This shows that Gibson wanted to have

new possibilities for the story. From now on, the rest of the

story will not be based only on the survival skills of the

protagonists in hostile environments as in the other movies,

but more on human debates and political arguments. In

fact, most part of the story is unfolding on an immense ship

called the Anchorpoint. The Anchorpoint is a big

permanent station, where there are people living, there are

malls. It"s like a small city in space.







Then a Commando composed of three soldiers infiltrated

the Sulaco and discovered an egg, rooted in Bishop"s

torso. A Face-Hugger attacked The Commando, killing the

leader and the remaining soldiers left with Bishop"s

truncated body. As the story unfolds, the spectators

discovers that the Queen (the Alien in charge of laying eggs

which contains Face-Huggers) which boarded the Sulaco

in Aliens somehow deposited genetic material in the ship,

causing two more Aliens to attack the second Commando

which boarded the Sulaco. This scene is one of the most

important because of it"s consequences on the story. In this

part, as the battle rages on in the Sulaco, Ripley gets

terribly burned by a soldier who was trying to cremate an

Alien with a flame-thrower. So Ripley will not be active

throughout the rest of the story because she lies in a coma,

making this movie the first one where Ripley is not the

leading character. Another very important difference

between the two stories is the supporting characters. In

Alien³, most of the prisoners are against Ripley, she is

really the most important character from all the movie. But

in Gibson"s version, there are a lot of new characters very

important to the story. Each new character plays a

different, small role in the action. Most of them are useful

against the Aliens and they have their own personality. The

story is more based on the characters personalities than on

their physical capabilities. But, strangely enough, one of the

most important character of Aliens, Newt, is sent back to

earth to see her grand parents. She does not play any

important role in the story.







As soon as Hicks and Newt are in good shape the movie

ambiance takes a different turn. Advanced technology is

used more often and not only as gadgets as in most science

fiction movies. Technology takes a more and more

important part of the plot as the story unfolds. This is a

major difference with Alien³, which was more primitive,

there were no weapons and nothing was automated, almost

everything was mechanical. First of all, the UPP recovers

all the data about the new species stored in Bishop"s brain,

erase any kind of genetic material left on his body and

recreates his legs using some cheap materials. After that,

Bishop"s memory is altered so that he does not remember

his visit to the UPP ships and he is sent back to the Sulaco.

Then they plan to use their newfound friends (the Aliens) to

create a new kind of weaponry, or the « perfect soldiers ».

The same thing is happening at the Anchorpoint, there are a

lot of scientists working on the Aliens and trying to find

something useful to do with them. In fact, they are working

directly on their DNA, at some point in the story they are

trying to find a way to combine an human DNA with an

Alien DNA to fight cancer.







That"s where the « action » begins, where the Aliens

become dangerous. The scientists then discover that the

Alien DNA automatically combines with human DNA to

create a hybrid of the two species. But what is fascinating

about this discovery is that this transformation occurs very

quickly, in matter of seconds. But an accident happens and

two scientists are splashed with organic fluids. For the

moment everything is correct, they get decontaminated and

they go back to work. But later, as they are talking in a

meeting with their superiors, one of the two scientists

(which are important characters to the story) begins to

mutate. In a very short period of time the scientist"s skin

disappears, biomechanoid tendons growing from beneath

the skin, leaving place to an exoskeleton just like the

Alien"s shells. The physical and mental properties of the

victim is disappears completely and a new species is born

in less than a minute. This scene is a very important chapter

of the story since it creates a completely new creature, and

this creature will change the way the audience see the

Aliens for all the movies to come. It adds a new twist to the

action since the new « monster » is not fastest, more

powerful and reproduces very quickly. In fact, the new

Queen"s reproduction method is by launching spores in the

atmosphere. So now anybody that breathes these spores

will be contaminated. And if it was not enough, more than

one Chest-Buster (the second phase of the Alien"s life, it"s

at this stage that the embryo living in the chest cavity of the

victim is « bursting » the chest of the unlucky carrier) is

created at a time. This part of the story is very, very

different from the Alien³"s plot, there are so much new

possibilities to come with the Aliens. But such possibilities

are impossible according to the original story.







The rest of the story is more or less an action packed

sequence, where there are dozens of Aliens and Soldiers

dying. The important facts to know are that only Bishop,

Hicks and some soldiers survive the inevitable nuclear

explosion of the Anchorpoint (as in most movies, the

infested environment is destroyed), and that Hicks have

sent Ripley"s hospital bed in a rescue ship to the earth with

a map to Newt"s house.







William Gibson"s script is very different from the actual

Alien³ script. Technology plays a crucial role in the story,

as well as human foolishness. But a thing that will probably

never change in all the Aliens movies, including Alien³, is

the fascination the Army has for the xenomorphs (scientific

name for the Aliens). In all the movies, there are always

been someone, human or android, trying to discover how

the creature functions. This is the only similarity beside the

characters in all the movies. But this similarity is present in

many science fiction movies, by example E.T. Maybe it is

in human"s nature to always want to have more and more

knowledge...



















Movies cited



Alien. Dir. Ridley Scott. 20th Century Fox. With Sigourney

Weaver, Ian Holm and John Hurt. 1979







Aliens. Dir. James Cameron. 20th Century Fox. With

Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Lance Henriksen and

Michael Biehn. 1986







Alien³. Dir. David Fincher. 20th Century Fox. With

Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance, and

Brian Glover. 1992







E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Dir. Steven Spielberg.

Universal. With Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore and

Robert MacNaughton. 1982







Movie Script







Gibson, William. Alien III, Revised first draft screenplay

from a story by David Giler and Walter Hill. Unknown

date, Not published.