Alien 3 (film)edit
From Xenopedia
| Alien 3 | |
 The original 1992 theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | David Fincher |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Gordon Carroll David Giler Walter Hill |
| Written by | Characters: Dan O'Bannon Ronald Shusett Story: Vincent Ward Screenplay: David Giler Walter Hill Larry Ferguson |
| Starring | Sigourney Weaver Charles S. Dutton Charles Dance Brian Glover Ralph Brown Paul McGann Danny Webb Pete Postlethwaite Lance Henriksen |
| Music by | Elliot Goldenthal |
| Cinematography | Alex Thomson |
| Editing by | Terry Rawlings |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
| Release date(s) | May 22, 1992 |
| Running time | 114 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $50,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $159,773,545 |
| Previous (series) | Aliens |
| Next (series) | Alien Resurrection |
| Prev. (production order) | Predator 2 |
| Next (production order) | Alien Resurrection |
| Prev. (in-universe chronology) |
Aliens |
| Next (in-universe chronology) |
Alien Resurrection |
Alien 3 (styled as Alien3) is a 1992 science-fiction film directed by David Fincher and starring Sigourney Weaver.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
In deep space the Colonial Marine spaceship Sulaco experiences an onboard fire and launches an escape pod containing Ellen Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and the damaged android Bishop in cryonic stasis. The pod then crashes on Fiorina 'Fury' 161, a foundry facility and penal colony inhabited by all-male former inmates with "double-Y" chromosome patterns. As the inmates recover the pod's passengers, an alien Facehugger is seen approaching their dog. Ripley is taken in and awakened by Clemens, the facility's doctor, and learns that she is the only survivor of the crash. Many of the ex-inmates have embraced an apocalyptic, millenarian religion which forbids sexual relations, and Ripley is warned that her presence among them may have extremely disturbing effects.
Suspicious of what caused the escape pod to jettison and what killed her companions, Ripley demands that Clemens perform an autopsy on Newt. She fears that Newt may be carrying an alien embryo in her body, though she does not share this information. No embryo is found in Newt's body, however, and the colony's warden becomes increasingly angered that Ripley's unusual behavior is agitating the prisoners. They perform a funeral for Newt and Hicks in which their bodies are thrown into the facility's gigantic furnace. In another part of the facility the dog goes into convulsions and a alien erupts from its body. The alien soon begins to attack members of the colony, killing several and returning one man to his former insane state. Ripley tells the warden of her previous encounters with the aliens and demands that the group hunt it down, but he does not believe her and informs her that there are no weapons at all in the facility. Their only hope of protection is the rescue ship being sent for Ripley by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Ripley recovers and reactivates the damaged Bishop, who reveals that there was an alien facehugger stowed away with them on the Sulaco.
Back in the facility's infirmary Clemens is killed by the alien, which also approaches Ripley but does not kill her. She runs to the mess hall to warn the others, only to witness the alien kill the warden. Using the Sulaco's medical equipment Ripley discovers that she has the embryo of an alien queen growing inside her. She also finds that what the Corporation really wants is the queen embryo and the adult alien, hoping to turn them into biological weapons. Deducing that the alien will not kill her because of the embryo she carries, Ripley begs Dillon to kill her. He agrees to do so only if she will help the inmates kill the alien first. After a failed attempt to trap the creature that results in several deaths, they form a plan to lure it into the foundry's molding facility and drown it in molten lead. The plan results in the deaths of nearly all the remaining prisoners including Dillon, who sacrifices himself to keep the creature in the mold. The alien, covered in molten lead, escapes the mold and is killed when Ripley sprays it with water from the fire sprinkler, causing it to cool rapidly and shatter.
Just as the alien is killed the Weyland-Yutani team arrives, including a man who looks like Bishop and claims to be the creator of the android. He attempts to persuade Ripley to undergo surgery to remove the queen embryo. Ripley refuses and commits suicide, throwing herself into the gigantic furnace just as the alien queen begins to burst forth from her chest. The film ends with a sequence showing the facility being closed down, the last survivor, prisoner Morse, being led away, and a shot of the escape pod playing the recording of Ripley's final lines from the original Alien.
[edit] Special Edition DVD
An alternate version of Alien³ (officially titled the "Assembly Cut") with over 30 minutes of additional footage was released on the 9-disc Alien Quadrilogy box-set in 2003. Nearly ¾ of the scenes in this version contain footage not included in the 1992 theatrical release. Director David Fincher, although giving 20th Century Fox permission to release this enhanced version on DVD, was the one director from the entire franchise who declined to participate in the box-set, even to record a commentary track.
The Assembly Cut edition has several key plot elements that differ from the theatrical release. The alien gestates in an ox rather than a dog, and one of the inmates discovers a dead facehugger which is visually different from those seen in the previous films. Some scenes are extended to focus more on the religious views of the inmates. Most notably, in the Assembly Cut the inmates succeed in their attempt to trap the alien, but it is later released by the disturbed inmate Golic. Some differences in the final scene include the alien queen not bursting from Ripley's chest as she falls into the furnace.
Also of note in the Assembly Cut's opening foreword, and throughout the movie, are several pieces of audio that are of noticeably lower quality, which feature often during footage not included in the theatrical release--the lower quality is attributed to damaged audio which had not been used in years.
[edit] Cast
- Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley
- Charles S. Dutton as Dillon
- Charles Dance as Jonathan Clemens
- Brian Glover as Harold Andrews
- Ralph Brown as Francis Aaron
- Paul McGann as Golic
- Danny Webb as Robert Morse
- Pete Postlethwaite as David
- Lance Henriksen as Michael Bishop
- Tom Woodruff, Jr. (uncredited) as the Alien
Additional prisoners were played by Christopher John Fields (as Rains), Leon Herbert (as Boggs), Christopher Fairbank (as Murphy), Phil Davis (as Kevin), Vincenzo Nicoli (as Jude), Deobia Oparei (as Arthur), and Carl Chase (as Frank).
[edit] External link
- Alien 3 at the Internet Movie Database
