Alien 3 - What Happened?

[Music] i've seen things [Music] shall we play hey here we go that are alive you are coming with me there is no try i can handle myself yeah i noticed the sleeper has awakened [Music] [Music] and welcome back to another fantastically tragic episode of what happened the show that dips its toes into troubled or divisive pop culture media to get down to the when the why the how and the who with the who always being some meddling suit that ruined everything for everyone and speaking of ruining everything the alien franchise the the alien franchise ah there you go this legendary almost mythical sci-fi milestone of a movie series is often cited as one of the most influential in the genre inspiring a number of directors writers and other creatives with chilling displays of biomechanical horror one of these creatives was a cameraman who had worked on such films as return of the jedi and temple of doom man who was sucked into the vortex of space and corporate buffoonery a man named david fincher he was a fan of the franchise and like most people would thought he had lucked out by having his directorial debut be an anticipated sequel but was to come however was a proverbial galaxy of terror of reshoots unfinished scripts and cooperative animals in an absolutely ghastly phase of post-production all culminating in james cameron citing that the finished film was a i thought it was a huge slap in the face to the fans i mean look it was just it was just a mess i think it was a big mistake oh spicy so alien 3 what happened [Music] it is 1986 an alien is a monstrous success for 20th century fox and brandywine the production company behind the series despite there being a lot of onset tension between james cameron and those fox producers which by the way you should buckle the [ __ ] up for cause there's going to be way more the movie made almost 200 million dollars against a budget of 18. this has a substantial dollar value attached to it and while terminator was a great indicator of his talent it was aliens that really catapulted cameron into the stratosphere and sadly not piranha too fox wanted to launch into another sequel fairly soon and when i say fairly soon i mean immediately brandywine were a little apprehensive to tackle another sequel but nevertheless started to seek out writers to weave more wacky space stories about weyland-yutani's lack of business sense everybody wanted to make the sequel to alien kind of accept us we weren't so i mean we were happy to do it but we weren't all that enthused the original plan was to film two movies back to back with the first focusing on michael bean's character corporal hicks with a follow-up centering around lieutenant first class ellen ripley this plan changed when sigourney weaver was approached to return as she wasn't all that interested in more sequels especially with james cameron no longer behind the lens as he was busy prepping for the abyss eventually weaver relented with the caveat being that her character would take a back seat settling into more of a supporting role to hex this is where the creator of modern cyberpunk william gibson was hired to pen the script which focused on hicks bishop and ripley putting an end to weyland yutani's bio-weapon initiatives the script had a lot of cold war parallels which was kind of big in the 80s with the company displaying a lot of similarities with soviet russia in its ideology fox in their wisdom decided to pass on this script feeling by the time it would hit theaters the cold war would have been kind of passe eric red then took a stab at it focusing the story around a community of people on earth that you guessed it are threatened by a xenomorph threat on earth everyone can hear you scream and like the previous script you guessed it was also rejected by fox then the architect of the riddick first david twathy flothy had a go which fox also passed on which leads us to vincent ward's incredibly unique take which saw ripley crash landing on a partially wooden space satellite populated by technology hating space monks people that have read this treatment claim it's fascinating filled with religious iconography and some very bold choices at some point in one of those scripts i guess both hicks and newt were written out of the narrative leaving ripley as the sole survivor this was a change that stuck around for every subsequent script yes there's there's more coming and is often seen as a really bad terrible idea frustrated with how long this was all taking but seeing some potential in vincent war's bizarre vision series shepherd walter hill and his writing partner david glier took the wooden satellite changed it to a prison world and swapped out the space monks for a bunch of bald british space murderers fury 161 part of the weyland yutani family would be the final setting for the film a very bleak and very beige planet completely isolated from the rest of the galaxy now during all of this the director they had lined up renny harlan had been waiting for the script to be finalized so when he did a read-through of the rough draft of the prison planet version something quite removed from what had been thrown around before he simply quit the project altogether two months before shooting was scheduled to begin fox and brandywine started scrambling for a replacement and with all the time it had taken to even get to this point they needed someone who would simply do as they were told and just shoot the film yes if i hadn't mentioned that before this whole script writing process you know it's kind of important wasn't exactly a brief phase of development now let's see as the awesome gibson version wasn't finished until 88 carry the two four years it took four years for fox to approve of a script and the kicker it still wasn't even done yet as a studio we set out to make a release date and not make a movie yeah that makes sense [Applause] yes hell and gliar were still writing some scenes the same time as sets were being built david fincher as stated before had worked behind the cameras for lucasfilm in the 80s and had a number of commercials and music videos under his belt which fox assumed meant he could shoot fast and efficiently oh how wrong they were and action fincher was a big fan of ridley scott's alien and was more than happy to helm a film that was similar in its tone and pacing so with that mindset he felt he needed to go to great lengths to match it wanting the movie to be as perfect as it possibly could but when a creator wants to go for it to really try and make something special well that tends to take a good amount of work and a lot of patience which was something fox had very little of i invested in something called news corp that's fox they mandated that alien 3 had to come out by spring of 1992 no exceptions hey well we brokered action figure and crappy video game deals already so tick tock tick tock let's get back to sigourney for a sec the last time she had been consulted about a script ripley was going to have a supporting role so when she started to get wind of treatments that made her the central character again she began to hate that after she read through the fury 161 script she stipulated if she's going to be the star once again then ripley would absolutely 100 need to die in the end i'm telling you i want to die remember walter hill's original draft had her escaping to the stars for a third time this would ensure that her character wouldn't be able to appear in any future sequels which was thankfully a promise that fox made good on back to fincher and all the crap he had to deal with alien 3 was already in shambles when he inherited it after rennie harlan left 7 million had already been spent sets were being made that he hadn't approved of and actors were pissed that their characters had suddenly changed in the rewrites there was a lot to deal with what's more is that he was only given about five weeks of prep time before cameras started to roll whereas most directors on big tentpoles usually get several months once he got a handle on things very quickly fox and brandywine realized that fincher was anything but a yes man as he announced he would be doing additional rewrites to the script to flesh out certain characters and scenes he was a perfectionist so if a fake body exploded and didn't look exactly as he envisioned he would call for as many takes as it took until it did that's fine yeah that's better you shoot a thousand takes but there's bound to be one that's good right with lots of money on the line and a schedule to meet however fox and brandywine producers felt it best that fincher needed to realize who the boss really was one of the first unpleasant things among many that they made him do was to contact actor michael bean and to explain why hicks was now being killed off michael for his part was on another movie still waiting on a call from fox as to when they would start shooting the last he had heard was that hicks was going to be the star of alien 3. i got a call from david fincher saying please can we just we'd we'd really like to use your character and first of all i was all like you for not putting me in the movie yeah i was pretty pissed off so i said you for even calling me go yourself now i wish i had him because now now he's david fincher but i was upset at the fact that i wasn't in the new movie what i said was you for having that happen to my character there was no way i would ever let my character have a monster burst out of his chest so you can forget about that even happening jim cameron wasn't happy about that either so they dropped that idea and then they came back and then they said well we want to use your picture then and i was like okay well you can use my picture it's gonna cost you though and it's gonna cost you a lot absolute [ __ ] legend this whole scenario as you can imagine create a lot of tension between producers and director which was something that a lot of the cast noticed one of sigourney weaver's male co-stars charles dance you might know him as tywin goddamn lannister recalled alien 3 with mixed emotions well look it wasn't a nightmare despite what you may have read or heard but it certainly wasn't an easy shoot what was on the screen was quite removed from what was in the script but with that said i don't regret that i was a part of it i mean i knew going into alien 3 that it was this big franchise pitcher and there are lots of cooks in the kitchen on these types of things one of the it wasn't an easy shoot types of things he's referring to is that the entire alien design had to be scrapped just as they started principal photography [Music] in the original script a facehugger attaches itself to an ox which will result in a large intimidating xenomorph variant that would cause major damage throughout the entire film after shooting scenes with the facehucker puppet and the ox separately they wanted to do some additional shots with both but the boisterous bovine wasn't cooperating you can see this alternate origin by the way in the assembly cut of the film producers then suggested they switched the animal to a dog and rewrote scenes to reflect that fincher fought against the change of course but eventually agreed the idea was that a faster smaller creature will lead to more scares and be able to hide more effectively but the main alien suit was always built to house a human actor which is why you see wildly different changes in size for the star beast from scene to scene in some shots it's no bigger than a dog but in others it's a towering 8-foot behemoth to deal with this change the special effects team figured they can make a specially designed latex suit for a small dog to actually wear on set but with very little time to actually train the pupper it rarely hit its mark and the idea was eventually scrapped the producers decided to use computer generated imagery for these wider shots which turned out to be quite a shitty decision this incredibly late game change affected many parts of the film including the finale which employed in erratic and many would say unnecessary dog cam which had followed the alien's perspective as it darted around the prison speaking of this finale it's where the majority of the casts meet many off-screen deaths including one of the more prominent characters golic a psychologically damaged inmate who simply disappears from the theatrical cut altogether in fact much of the cast since they all looked and sounded similar had trouble standing out and establishing their characters because all those scenes were chopped out in editing scenes fincher felt were integral to flesh out the film once alien 3 had actually wrapped further reshoots were then ordered by fox and brandywine but fincher wanted nothing to do with the project by that point so he opted out of the editing process altogether and refrained from all interviews and press junkets charles dance again had his own take regarding this now and i need to stress this any problems i had with the making of alien 3 had nothing to do with david fincher in fact the minute david fincher first walked onto the set i thought my god this guy is going to go far he was fantastic and i hope i get to work with david at some point he was dealing with a lot of outside interference on that movie during those aforementioned reshoots producers felt that when ripley died spoilers there needed to be a shot of the alien also bursting out of her chest as she falls this was done so hastily and so far after the initial shoot that sigourney needed to be fitted with a bald cap after a whole bunch more of chopping and slicing the film finally hit theaters in may and the response was tepid to say the least by both critics and abject rage by fans the movie robbing ripley of the happy ending at the end of aliens was seen by many as cruel and mean-spirited which as we discussed was shared by many people who had worked on the 86 blockbuster the patriarch of the lannister family wasn't exactly glowing in his review either i had no idea how people who loved aliens would receive it i did go and see alien 3 at the cinema when it came out and i thought it was ok yeah it was ok in space no one can hear you say yeah it was okay in terms of profitability while the sequel costs more than double the price of its predecessor 50 million dollars wound up making between 150 and 175 million worldwide despite the critical backlash it has been examined discussed and dissected where exactly things went wrong and while the assembly cut is widely considered to be superior it's pretty clear that the clashing between producers and director and the sloppy editing were the main culprits in the last few years fans have grown more frustrated with not so much the finished film but rather the ones that weren't the william gibson script is seen in some circles as the real alien 3 and was even turned into an audio book with michael bean and lance henriksen returning to their roles you can't keep ripley and newt and myself aboard this station there is however a percentage of fans and critics that have softened on alien 3 since its debut especially when comparing it to some later projects we leave on david fincher who is ready to leave the industry all together and very much did for almost three years until new line cinema approached him with a project called seven giving him complete authority over its production so yeah since then he's you know done pretty well for himself decades later he still recalls his experiences filming alien 3 um shall we say rather bitterly when asked about the film in a 2009 interview he simply stated no one hated it more than me hey kids as you saw this particular episode of what happened is sponsored by in search of tomorrow the new sci-fi documentary that's currently wrapping up its successful kickstarter now i don't take sponsorship deals usually but i felt this was a great fit for the channel and if you click the link in the description to take you to their kickstarter page you'll be helping out the channel in the process there's still lots of neat rewards you can pledge at before the campaign ends so if you're like me and i know i am classic 80 sci-fi is your bag so please check it out if you know of any other fumbling film foibles or vitriolic video games let me know in the comments below or drop down to the flophouse vip patreon 5x5 to nominate the subject of our next video it's the only way to be sure see you next time and thanks for watching so [Music] you

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 315,229

Rating: 4.9302387 out of 5

Keywords: Alien 3, Aliens, Xenomorph, David Fincher, What Happened?, wha happun, Matt McMuscles, Flophouse, movie disasters, documentaries

Id: QXC3-jb2m1c

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/JessieJ577]

Watch the making of documentary. It's the most transparent I've seen a studio release something that just says "our product was a awful and here's the footage to see it go from a small flame to dumpster fire.

[u/NorrisOBE]

I still want William Gibson's Alien 3 as either a film or a video game.

[u/Coypop]

I've never been able to get Vince Ward's Alien 3 out of my head, the medieval space station, the luddite monks, writing the alien as a shapeshifting psychic demon.

http://vincentwardfilms.com/project/concepts/alien-3/unrequited-visio/

https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/wooden-world-vincent-wards-alien-iii/

It'll never happen but my dream sequel to Isolation is just take Ward's treatment, and retool it for a dash of psychological horror in the survival horror pot.

[u/Lithogen]

The people in this sub who immediately downvote Matt videos suck.

[u/The_Draigg]

It’s a shame that Alien 3 got meddled with, there’s still some legit cool stuff in it. That quadruped Alien design is still rad.

[u/jamsbybetty]

I think the assembly cut is a pretty decent film overall, even if they couldn't do much with the last forty minutes or so

[u/SlowOcto]

Really never understood the initial decision to make Hicks the protagonist. I could be alone in this, but I always felt he was the least interesting of the marines.

[u/fizzguy47]

How do you guys feel about Resurrection? It has a very different feel from the 3 movies before, especially with how Sigourney's character interacts with the others, which makes sense in the movie, but it really feels weird, for some reason. Also, seeing Tuco from Breaking Bad playing a Space Marine was funny

[u/Mutant-Overlord]

A common misconception regarding Alien3 is that the Dragon was portrayed in wide shots through the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI). While this is false — the aforementioned rod puppets and optical compositing were used to depict the full creature on screen — some CGI was used to help portray the Dragon. Digitally implemented shadows were added to the rod puppet once it had been composited into the live-action footage, and mattes to enhance motion blur in scenes where the creature is moving quickly were also added digitally.[17] The only time in the film that the Alien itself is portrayed with CGI is a very brief shot of its skull cracking moments before its body explodes through thermal shock.[17]