From: bz978@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Charles E Gibbs)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.movies
Subject: Re: What's wrong with Alien^3? (long)
Date: 21 Aug 92 01:50:55 GMT
Reply-To: bz978@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Charles E Gibbs)
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)


In a previous article, caruso@socrates.umd.edu (John Caruso) says:
>	First of all, Alien^3 was relentlessly mean-spirited.  When
>we're told that Newt and Hicks have died in the crash, my first reaction
>was surprise and disappointment.  But I thought about it for a few moments
>and decided, ok, they want to take this film in a new direction, away
>from Aliens; let Newt and Hicks go and see what happens.  Unfortunately
>I was wrong...they wouldn't let them go.  Instead we were treated to
>the scene of Newt lying dead on a slab, and Ripley probing for a growing
>alien (ignore the illogic of thinking the embryonic alien could survive
>in a dead host).  Probing wasn't enough, though--now Ripley demands an
>autopsy, though it obviously would be sufficient just to cremate both
>Newt and Hicks.  Why do an autopsy, then?  So you can show the audience
>a little girl having her chest split open with a bone saw.  Because gore
>sells and the audience will love it.  For the sake of accuracy, we don't
>actually see Newt being sliced open...we just hear the crunch of the bone
>and get to watch her blood trickle out into the pan.

Actually, this isn't my gripe against A3.  It was interesting in the sense
that we knew what she was looking for although the prisoners were somewhat 
cluless.
>
>	This same ethic informs the rest of the film as well.  We see
>the inmate sweeping out the exhaust chute, and we see the giant fan
>just past him, and it's easy to put two and two together.  But that's
>never enough in this film; instead, after he's killed and takes the
>painfully obvious slide into the fan, we're treated to the sight of
>the scattered chunks of his flesh hanging from the chute.  Later there's
>the dog.  No, it's not enough that it lies down and starts to whimper
>and we know exactly what's going to happen; we get to watch the entire
>sequence of the alien bursting through its ribcage.  It makes me wonder
>how Fincher would have filmed the ending of Old Yeller.
>

Well, it was somewhat more gorier than the first two.  However, overall
I think FLincher did the best job possible with the script available.  If
anyone needs to be stoned for this movie, it's the writers.

>	Ok, so Alien^3 was a gritty, brutal film that just showed life
>like it is, and I'm a whining pantywaist who can't deal with Real Life
>Movies.  What drivel!  This is the kind of nonsense spewed by people who
>can only address an argument by attacking the person.  There are plenty
>of films that use violence effectively and in different ways; take Witness,
>Toxic Avenger, and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer as wildly varied
>examples.  The violence in Alien^3 (with just a few exceptions) is unlike
>that in any of these films--it's more in keeping with the spirit of Friday
>the 13th, where the only reason for showing graphic deaths is to pull the
>audience into the vicarious thrill of.  Alien^3 pretends to be an "art"
>film, but the style of its violence reveals it for the exploitist crap
>that it is.  Courage, sacrifice, loyalty, passion--things that were at
>the heart of Aliens--are thrown aside in Alien^3, and not with any lofty
>artistic intent.  It's just an ugly, sordid little film.
>

Again this comes down to the script.  The writers couldn't have watched ALIEN 
and ALIENS that carefully.  If so, they should have realized that the violence
in these two movies was more controlled; suspense and the sense of a growing 
threat is what distinguished these movies.  Many of these violent scences
that you talk about could have been rewritten to fit that mood better.

By the way, who said that ALIEN^3 was an art film?

>	But to even talk about Alien^3 in these terms is to give it far
>more credit than it deserves; I've gone right past the complete incoherence
>and rampant idiocy of the plot itself.  Ripley goes to find the alien so it
>can end her life, but she's already fully aware--has had it graphically
>demonstrated to her--that it won't kill her because she's a host.  We're
>shown the doctor as an enigmatic character with some world-shattering
>secret, but once it's revealed it seems almost trivial...and then after
>he's had more character development than anyone else on the planet, he's
>offed anyway, so it becomes a moot point.  The prisoners have evolved
>their own religious system and a society based around it, so the movie
>explores this, gives it dimension and meaning, right?  Maybe a good film
>would.  In Alien^3, the whole religion angle was just that, an angle--
>window dressing thrown on to make the film appear deep and intellectual.

An angle that had potential but wasn't properly covered.  The beginning was 
fine; the ending was fine.  In the middle, however, was the problem.  The
two characters we knew the most about (the doctor and the jailer) were dead
halfway through the film.  Little to no suspense with anyone's death, and
a poorly written seen with the fire/explosion.  Again, the bottom line is
that the script needed two or three more drafts.

>	The dialogue was laughable.  It's a sad statement when the single
>funniest line in a movie is "Fuck!".  There wasn't a single event in the
>film that was surprising or suspenseful; in many cases, potential suspense
>was destroyed because we were shown the danger immediately, and it became
>just a matter of waiting for the hammer to drop.  The direction was painfully
>obtrusive in so many scenes, like the "looking up at the doctor through the
>cage of the elevator" or the "drifting down to the level of the prison
>warden" scene (and so many others like them).  I won't even talk about
>the one time interesting but relentlessly beaten-to-death "twirly alien
>down the passage" scenes.  The final scene, with the Christ-like backwards
>swan dive into the pool of flame, is so overbearingly pretentious it defies
>belief--and again shows that this film takes itself very, very seriously.
>
>	If Alien^3 had been only a laughably inept attempt at moviemaking
>I would have just walked out of the theater, felt ripped off for a moment,
>and then forgotten it.  But it wasn't.  Alien^3 wasn't content to be bad
>on its own; it reached out and tainted the other films as well.  As people
>have pointed out, the sacrifice and struggle in Aliens is made meaningless
>by the events in Alien^3.  This is absolutely true.  You can't take Alien^3
>in a vacuum; it's part of a continuum.  And as a conclusion to the Alien
>story it falls far short, and leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
>
>- John
>

Well, I think they had a workable premise.  If MIchael Biehn had signed
on, it might have been a different story.  However, if there is another
movie, there still might be salvation for this one.

CHarles Gibbs