Director: David Fincher
Writers: Vincent Ward, David Giler, Walter Hill, Larry Ferguson
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Charles Dance, Charles S. Dutton, Paul McGann, Brian Glover, Ralph Brown, Lance Henrisken
Runtime: 145 mins. (114 mins. theatrical)
1992
Rather than the theatrical cut of Alien³, I watched (and will be reviewing) the "assembly cut" first released in 2003. For most films, the only difference between the theatrical and extended cut is that the latter is a bit shaggier, but for Alien³ it makes all the difference. After an endless mire of pre-production, dozens of abandoned scripts, and millions of wasted dollars, Alien³ was always going to be a hot mess. It's just that the theatrical cut, cobbled together after David Fincher stormed off the project, is hotter and messier than it needs to be. All manner of connective tissue is stricken from the theatrical version, including a stellar opening sequence that sets the mood and establishes the world. The assembly cut, even with the added bulk of thirty-odd extra minutes, flows smoother than the original. Their final scores would be notably disparate.
Were I to go into the details of Alien³'s notoriously hapless production cycle, this review would turn into quite an extensive history lesson. Suffice it to say that unlike Aliens, in which Fox delayed production so that James Cameron could make The Terminator, Alien³ is a case study in bureaucratic obstruction. Creatives were fired, factions were split, actors were artistically manhandled*--all manner of horsey nonsense.
*As Ralph Brown tells it, his character Aaron was originally supposed to be savvy and resourceful, but his intelligence got nerfed in the rewrites. When he complained about playing a dummy, the writers gave his character the disparaging nickname "85," after Aaron's officially reported IQ.
So it is quite an achievement, and a great testament to the talents of then-undiscovered visionary David Fincher, that Alien³ (the assembly cut, mind you) is compelling and worthwhile in a number of ways. This is as good a time as any to admit something dastardly. Although by any and every objective standard Cameron's Aliens is the superior sequel, I prefer what Fincher is up to in Alien³. Specifically, I'm a fan of Alien³'s most controversial and besmirched decision: the immediate, ruthless, offscreen deaths of Aliens heroes Hicks and Newt. The chipper happy ending of Aliens, though perfectly earned, has always struck me as dissonant with the heartless fatalism of Alien. The extermination of Aliens's happy ending is an inspired statement of intent, both setting the tone for Alien³ and kicking off Ripley's darkest arc.
Never in my memory have I encountered quote unquote 'popcorn entertainment' as nasty as Alien³. It's baffling to me that a production so crippled by executives' desire to make the movie palatable ended up being so deeply offensive to so many people. Alien³ is a panegyric against life, a tale of survival at its wit's end, a dark parable of the End Times set on a lice-infested prison planet. The prisoners, however, are there more or less voluntarily. Fiorina "Fury" 161 doubles as something of an industrial monastery. The occupants, vile rapists and murderers, have taken a vow of abnegation and become practicing members of a neo-Christian religion. They wait out their days in a dirty imitation of piety, hoping for apocalypse and judgment to steal them away. So it does, in the form of twin temptations: sex (Ripley) and death (the alien).
Ripley also desires the end. Desperate, exhausted, never given a proper rest between encounters with her interplanetary stalker, she simply wishes to die. She is left further bereft by the deaths of her surrogate family. The discovery that an alien queen grows inside of her body like a malignant tumor is the twist that finally breaks her survival instinct. The seed of evil is inside of her.
Alien³ is drab. Even before the titular creature arrives, the tenants of Fury are clutching at something resembling hope with sheer willpower alone. Fincher shoots the prison complex/refinery beautifully, playing up everything that is claustrophobic and depressing about Norman Reynolds and Michael White's design. The characters opine about faith and the cycle of life, but the soul-crushing architecture speaks for itself.
The themes and visuals intersect to provide most of the quality that Alien³ has to offer, as the nitty gritty scene-to-scene content is patchy at best. Fincher doesn't display Cameron's facility for deftly establishing minor characters in your memory, nor does he replicate Scott's tight control of narrative economy. It doesn't help that nearly everyone in the movie is a shaved-head white guy. Further mangling the narrative is Charles Dance's character, Clemens. Although Weaver and Dance reportedly didn't speak during filming, their onscreen relationship is fascinating; yet it is bizarrely kneecapped by the script's insistence that their every dialogue should be about requesting crucial information from each other, then promptly denying each other that request. Then, just when Dance's character opens up about halfway through the movie, the alien punches a hole in his head. It's a dirty trick, and one that feels more like edgy posturing than that other dirty trick with Hicks and Newt.
Alien³ is all about the dichotomous relationship between Ripley and the alien, and these are the pillars upon which the movie must stand. Ripley exists in an eternal deadly dance with this creature and must find a way to break the cycle. This paradigm is compelling, and Weaver brings severity to her role. This isn't a career best performance, but she keeps the film on life support in places where it ought to flatline. The alien, meanwhile, is suitably threatening. Its impact is lessened by a questionably necessary quadrupedal redesign by H.R. Giger, and further sullied by some unimpressive rod puppet compositing. Fincher pulls some interesting stuff with alien-POV camerawork during the climax, but the sequence is so protracted and geographically baffling that the innovation begins to feel tiresome.
Luckily, we will always have the film's highlights. The alien menacing Ripley. The heartbreaking revival of a decimated Bishop (Lance Henriksen's likeness). And most of all, the bold choice of Ripley's final sacrifice, a well-earned and worthy conclusion to a tragic trilogy. That at least feels like a victory, even if Fincher had to give a lot of ground to make it happen. At any rate, I'll take an interesting, ambitious failure over a safe mediocrity any day.
3 / 5 BLOBS
No comments:
Post a Comment