Alien 3

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.