Quick questions about Alien 3 (1 Viewer)

[Andy Olivera]

I'll try to start at the beginning. Tell me if I miss anything...

The most plausible explanation that I've heard(or been able to come up with) for the egg on the Sulaco is Bishop. The platform wasn't unstable and he simply flew out to the derelict and picked up an egg. That leads to another question, though...

How would Bishop know which egg to take? You see, since there only was one egg, and that egg contained the "super facehugger"(I wish someone had come up with a better name for it), how would he tell the difference? I suppose Burke could've known the difference from the lab studies and informed Bishop, but why would he do that if he already had a plan to get the alien back?

John's second(fanfic) explanation is actually very good. There's still the question of what happened to the second queen, but it's pretty tight.

Now then, the original idea is the "super facehugger" could impregnate more than one host and was also capable of producing a queen. However, in Alien 3, one of the inmates finds it dead. It could be logically assumed that the "super"'s chief objective is to create a queen and that it would die soon after that. Since Ripley was the carrier and was impregnated first, why would it survive long enough to impregnate the dog, only to die after? Why not survive to impregnate more people with drones? You could argue it was dying while the dog was being impregnated, but there's no evidence either way.


Plot holes? What plot holes?

 

[Jason Walstrom]

ALIENS and ALIEN3 are both by completely different creators, ALIEN3 undoes what made everything special about the plot and characters special and ruins it to continue the cash cow. ALIENS has the Ripley as the mother undertones with Newt, She even risks her life to find newt, all of this is ruined by A3 knowing Newt is dead, why bother in the first place. Bishops is shown early in the film as a suspicious android because of Ash from ALIEN it is a device, smartly used by Cameron, to make the audience uneasy and not able to trust Bishop. All of the tension and and thrills of ALIENS is ruined knowing that all that RIPLEY worked and risked her life for is undone by a subpar piece of monkey sh*t sequel. I hate ALIEN3, it sucks for stepping all over the toes of a superior predecessor.

At the end of Aliens is not the sound of an egg opening, but a facehugger running around. Cameron has commented on this. And stated it was just for fun's sake, it wasn't setting up any elaborate plot device for some other director or writer.

BTW I have forgiven you, David Fincher. Like you care.

 

[Jason Walstrom]

BTW wouldn't anything the queen alien brought on board the deck of the SULACO been sucked out into space when the doors opened up? Has anyone noticed in the scene when the marines first arrive under the primary heat exchange and the aliens start hissing, Dietrich is grabbed by and alien and blasts Frost with a flame thrower, as Frost falls to his death, At the left of the frame you can see a foot pop into frame. Is it some prop guys boot or one of the missing plot lines that links ALIENS TO ALIEN 3.

 

[John Doran]

You should listen again then. It's there, at the very end of the end credits.

ahh....i thought the sound was allegedly at the end of the last scene of the movie, where ripley and newt's face fade out.

cool. i'm definitely gonna have to check that out again.

 

[John Doran]

Is it some prop guys boot or one of the missing plot lines that links ALIENS TO ALIEN 3.

i dunno. you tell me...

 

[John Doran]

a subpar piece of monkey sh*t sequel. I hate ALIEN3, it sucks

but seriously - tell us what you really think.

 

[Robin Warren]

and a royal guard to carry stuff if she wants, and wants to be cautious about the longevity of her brood. take your pick.

Like I said, it's easier to pretend Alien3 didn't happen. Or better yet, pretend it is a hallucination, dream or parallel universe.

 

[John Doran]

Like I said, it's easier to pretend Alien3 didn't happen. Or better yet, pretend it is a hallucination, dream or parallel universe.

you honestly believe that it's easier to believe that all of alien 3 - the whole movie - is a dream than it is to suppose that the queen had one of the aliens in the hive (which, incidentally, are not unreasonably thought of as special and are, in fact, described in subsequent alien literature as something like a royal guard) carry a couple of eggs to save them from destruction?

c'mon.

what you apparantly wanted was "aliens - the second chapter", with ripley, newt, and hicks and perhaps a new bunch of doomed charaters running around fighting impossible alien odds.

cool. but that doesn't make the actual plot of alien 3 any less probable.

but, hey. de gustibus non est disputandum.

- jd

 

[Robin Warren]

I just meant that it's easier for ME to pretend that ALIEN3 didn't happen....not trying to make others think that way...

I would have been happy with ALIEN 3 - a proper continuation of the alien series. Not the hack job that we got. IMHO. And I haven't read a lot of ALIEN literature so the Royal Guard theory is out.
I don't think the plot of ALIEN3 is improbable, it just doesn't flow that easily from the hard work that Scott and Cameron put forth.

 

[George Monroy]

Well if you have Alien 3 as a dream then you have to have Alien Ressurrection be a dream since it plays off of Alien 3. I think it is easier to just say that the Queen and/or Royal gaurd brought 1 or 2 eggs on board. Most likely it would be one egg with a Super Face Hugger. I think the Super Face Hugger maybe carries 2 eggs one of which is a queen and one of which is one gaurd for her and then it dies off. What I want to know is if the plot of 5 is for Ripley to go to the homeworld of the Aliens then which Ripley is it? It would have to be the clone so we would have anothe movie with a clone of Ripley. I don't think I would like that. Maybe having 3 and 4 a dream is not so bad afterall.

 

[DAN NEIR]

Well, as I've stated numerous times I think Alien3 is utter crap and should be removed from film history. It destroys everything good about the second and before anyone here asks since I read a few of the posts above, no I don't think Alien sucked because there is no kid to be protected.
I really don't get why people have to constantly defend this piece of crap, if you liked it great, that's good for you but please realize that most people and fans of the series hated this movie. We're not gonna change your minds and you're not gonna change ours so let's just leave it like that. (But I'm sure that won't be the case because someone will respond to what I just said and tell us again how the movie is such a masterpiece)
I agree that they should have made the events of 3 a dream in 4 and now if they want to go and do a 5 w/ Ripley then they should make both a dream.

 

[John Doran]

... duplicate post ...

 

[John Doran]

I really don't get why people have to constantly defend this piece of crap, if you liked it great, that's good for you but please realize that most people and fans of the series hated this movie.

hey, man - i'm not trying to convince anyone to like this movie at all. not even for a second.

but look - there is a radical difference between saying :

1) i don't like this movie

and

2) this movie is bad

they mean the same thing for movies about as much as they mean the same thing for baseball players :

1) i don't like the baseball player barry bonds

obviously doesn't entail

2) barry bonds is a bad baseball player


the problem is, when people say that a movie is crap, they typically don't just mean that they don't like it - they also mean that they believe the movie is a bad example of a movie - i.e. fails to exemplify all or any of the criteria that make a film a competent one.

thus, people say, for instance, "i don't like alien 3 because there's no good explanation as to how the eggs got on the sulaco", or "...because it obviates all that was accomplished by aliens", and so on.

these are not simple statements of preference. by saying this stuff, you are not just expressing your dislike for the movie - that would be totally unobjectionable and beyond dispute.

you are also making claims about the movie which have nothing to do with you or your preferences, as is obvious from the fact that these extra things you're saying are quite capable of being stated coherently on their own: for example, "there is no good explanation for how the eggs got on the sulaco" is a complete, well-formed sentence and can be asserted quite apart from, and without knowing, whether or not you liked the movie. and those are precisely the sorts of claims that can be right or wrong, more or less probable, or more or less worthy of assent.

for instance, i don't like martin scorsese's movies. i don't like any of them - for whatever reason i find them sterile and completely unengaging. however i also recognize that at least some of those movies are brilliant - brilliantly scripted, shot, acted, etc..

but what i say is just that: "i don't like taxi driver". but imagine if i were to go on an add something like "...because deniro acts the part poorly", or "...because scorsese has no sense of visual composition"....

similarly, i like some movies that are, judged as pieces of cinema - absolutely terrible. to take an extreme example, there's robot monster an plan 9 from outer space. these are utterly wretched pieces of film-making. but i love them, nonetheless.

so. i couldn't care less if you don't like alien 3, or if no one else on earth liked it. i do like it. and not only could i also not care less about convincing anyone to like it, i don't even think trying makes sense. so i don't try. and i'm not trying now.

i am interested, however, in taking issue with statements made by people that have got nothing to do with their preferences, and which seem to me to be mistaken.

like "a triangle has 4 sides". or "alien 3 makes everything accomplished by ripley in aliens, worthless"....

- jd

 

[Alex Spindler]

I'll join in the defense of Alien3.

My support for this film is from a number of different angles. I was supremely happy that a new perspective was being given with this film, namely approaching it as a tragedy. Killing Newt off sets the tone of the film, as Ripley has lost everything that reminded her of being human (namely husband in Hicks/Clemens, child in Newt) that she discovers that she is a host herself. The 'no hope' perspective is perfectly original within the series itself and makes the other films better.

I say it makes the other films better because I do not believe it invalidates Aliens. The triumph of surviving LV-426 was that none of them died to the Aliens. You may consider it bittersweet, but that they never had to experience the chestburster is what still makes Aliens valid and exciting for me. As shown in Alien3, they netted them little extra life, but it was a victory over the Alien species by killing the queen and nuking the hive. And then Ripley gets to close the circle by removing the final remnants of her very first encounter with the species by accepting her role as the final sacrifice.

So, I can say that I like Alien3 because I didn't need to have a happy ending with an open opportunity to create even more sequels. I needed to have closure, and I thought it was a brave and satisfying conclusion that they went for.

 

[DAN NEIR]

That didn't take long.
Alien3 makes everything that Ripley accomplishes worthless because it takes away her second chance at motherhood. Ripley's second chance is washed away by poor writing and this is what angers so many fans.
But to move off that theme, another reason I found it to be crap was the use of 1 alien again. I felt the natural progression of the story should have been, Alien-1 alien that they find, Aliens-they go back to the planet, Alien3 SHOULD have dealt with the origin of these creatures and where they came from( a theme I've heard Scott would like to explore).
If this movie were so good, then why was the "it was all just a dream" ideas suggested for 4. If the movie was such a hit and so loved by the fans then why would the film makers want to make such a masterpiece nothing more than a dream that Ripley had. Hmmmm.

 

[Aaron Cohen]

Unfortunately, this is an issue that is ENTIRELY left up to the fan's imagination. David Fincher, when asked about the whole egg matter, is quoted as saying that he did not think people would ever wonder why the egs were there....

I believe it was juts a plot device, plain and simple. I do like Alien 3 as a movie, I like the feel of it, but I don't like the way it closed off all possibility of the series continuing without an extremely silly gimmick (resurrection of Ripley thousands of years in the future). I loved Newt and Hicks. It just felt cheap to me for them to die so quickly after going through so much. That being said, I stil think the movie is quite good and can't wait for the possibility of a possible director's cut version. The special effects all seemed pretty good except for some of the shots of the Alien where he looked absolutely HORRIBLE. The puppet or wherever they used for him in Alien 3 looked amazing but the CG shots just look bizarre and at several points appear to be glowing green.

I also wish though, that for the Alien series' sake they could somehow say that the last two movies were just a dream. I really don't think it would alienate the remaining fans. If anything, it would bring back those turned off by 3 and 4 who are relishing the thought of seeing the series continue the way they felt it should....

As for the egg sound at the end of Aliens, it is most definitely there. I don't think that was a sign that there were eggs on the ship though. It probably was just a nifty little audio thing they did at the end. Stuff like that doesn't mean that's what's going to happen next. Hell, there was vader breathing at the end of Star Wars: Episode 1 and I didn't see any big tall guy wearing a dark suit, cape, and breathing apparatus in episode 2. I think it was just for fun in both instances, possibily to creep the viewer out a little bit.

 

[John Doran]

Hmmmm.

indeed.

- jd

 

[John Doran]

but I don't like the way it closed off all possibility of the series continuing without an extremely silly gimmick (resurrection of Ripley thousands of years in the future).

see, why does ripley's death end the possibility of continuing the series? i mean, it certainly ends the possibility of continuing the series with ripley in a non-gimmicky way, but so what? the series is called "alien", not "ripley".

if you want to see even just a vanishingly small fraction of the creativity that is possible using the alien species, all you have to do is take a look at a few of dark horse comics' alien miniseries.

no ripley in sight. no newt, or hicks, either.

- jd

 

[Jason Walstrom]

the first five minutes of Alien 3 feel like it was concieved by a room of board executives.

 

[Aaron Cohen]

Good point. I read and love many of the Dark Horse Alien comics. Leading up to the potential of a fourth Alien movie, there were so many quotes from studio execs about how they couldn't do another Alien movie without Ripley.... Perhaps they should've considered trying it. Because of the way the studio wanted to continue it though it would have made more sense if they hadn't killed Ripley.

As it stands, Alien: Resurrection made less than Mortal Kombat: Annihilation its' opening week. Annihilation is possibly one of the worst movies of the last 50 years.