Alien 3 (1992)

You want a clear-cut example of how a studio and producers can totally fuck up a film that had promise?

Look no further than this one.

If you want a more in depth look at this, I suggest you look up the documentary that came with the 'Alien Quadrilogy'-box. It is most enlightening and will show you how not only they messed up what could have been an excellent addition to the series, but also totally bashed on up-and-coming director David Fincher. Luckily for us, he didn't get too demotivated and struck back by bringing us 'Se7en'. So there's that.

You would do well to completely ignore the theatrical cut, by the way. It stinks to high heaven. The extended cut (not director's cut, as Fincher didn't want to be involved) is a very decent film that shows what might have been. So that is also the version I'm talking about here.

Ellen Ripley can not catch a break, can she? After escaping LV-426, it turns out there is a facehugger on board. The emergency pod crashes onto a prison planet and Ripley is the only survivor. But it doesn't take long before strange things start happening and she realizes that once again, there is a xenomorph on the loose. But it gets even worse than that...

'Alien 3' was meant to end the Ripley-run, that much is clear. The setting, ideas and tone all convey this. We went from a haunted house in space, to full blown action adventure and this is once again on a smaller scale and more haunting than you would think. The prisoners have become a sort of cult, which is something that translated from an early version of the script, where Ripley ends up with monks in space. The cast is comprised of a lot of well-known British character actors, which is nice. You'll recognize Pete Postlethwaite, for example. The always wonderful Charles Dance is Clemens, Ripleys link to humanity, in that he is a very sympathetic character. He knows she is hiding something, but doesn't press her because he realizes she has been traumatized. Their 'relationship' feels very natural, which is probably thanks to their respective talents as actors. Also, Charles Dutton is great as the gruff Dillon, who is more or less the priest to the inmates and who turns out to be of greater help than at first suspected.

Of course, when the xenomorph shows up, the tension mounts and because this time, it is a slightly different type,it is more unpredictable. It is cool that they tried to mix things up, and Fincher shows his chops through some cool POV-shots of the xenomorph. Heck, the 'AvP'-games pretty much took their ideas from this.

Now why is the Extended Cut so much better as a whole? Because here, the story isn't chopped up beyond repair and everything makes sense. Case and point is the character of Golic, played by a highly underrated Paul McGann. In the theatrical version, his appearance makes no sense, but here it is clear that Golic is mentally unstable and develops a sort of devotion to the xenomorph, which has its consequences, of course. But here, you can see where it comes from and how it evolves, whereas the theatrical cut just has this character whose actions make no sense, because all the key scenes have been cut.

Is everything top notch? Alas, no. The digital version of the xenomorph looks terrible. This is because the CG was unfinished and still used. Also, the overall colour scheme is pretty lacking and existing of tones of blue and brown. It makes everything feel a lot more depressing than it should, even though this is not a happy story in the least. But once again, the extented cut salvages a lot of short scenes that break up the otherwise drab colours.

The end might feel a little phoney, considering we already know that there was still another sequel coming, but at the time, this was a decent close to the franchise.

So I can't stress this enough: seek out the extended cut and marvel at what might have been. Disregard the theatrical cut. In fact, kill it with fire and blame the studio for pissing all over it, because they clearly had no clue and didn't trust their director enough. Glad he proved them wrong afterwards.