FAQ

After escaping from the LV-426 colony, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Newt (Danielle Edmond), Hicks (Michael Biehn), and the remains of the android Bishop are in hypersleep in cryotubes on the Sulaco when an alien egg, hidden on the ship, hatches a facehugger. The facehugger breaks one of the cryotubes, cutting itself and dripping acid that causes the ship's defense system to eject the tubes into an escape pod that crashes onto a nearby planet, Fiorina "Fury" 161, which is an all-male prison planet inhabited by violent criminals serving life sentences. Newt, Hicks, and Bishop all perish in the crash and Ripley must contend with violent prisoners, another alien, and a horrifying revelation that can only lead to her doom.

Alien 3 is a sequel to Aliens (1986), itself a sequel to Alien (1979), which was based on an original screenplay by Dan O'Bannon. The screenplay for Alien 3 was written by producers David Giler and Walter Hill, and screenwriters Larry Ferguson and Vincent Ward. It was followed by Alien Resurrection (1997), Alien vs. Predator (2004), and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)). Alien Resurrection continues Ellen Ripley's story begun in Alien, whereas AVP and AVPR were written as prequels to Alien. Alien 3 was subsequently novelized by Alan Dean Foster.

The backstory may be inferred to some degree, but it's strongly advised to catch up. The Alien movies are written to tell a continuous story that starts with the discovery of the Alien creatures in Alien (1979). Subsequent movies detail their spread and Ripley's attempts to contain and destroy them. Understanding the history of the Alien encounter makes Alien 3 much more understandable than just viewing it as a standalone monster movie.

It was never explained in the film how the egg(s) got aboard the Sulaco, but there have been several explanations suggested as to how it happened: (1) Some believe that the Queen either carried the egg with her from the hive in Aliens (1986) and planted it on the Sulaco or simply laid the egg there, despite having torn off her ovipositor (the ovipositor being simply the means to lay the eggs, and not necessarily the source of the eggs), (2) Others think that Bishop was responsible, i.e., while Ripley was rescuing Newt, Bishop retrieved the egg and later planted it on the Sulaco, or (3) an Alien drone planted the eggs on the dropship when Bishop was inside taking care of Hicks and waiting for Ripley. However, none of these explanations are plausible and there is no conclusive evidence for any of them, and this is widely considered to be a plot hole in the film. Even director David Fincher himself has stated in interviews that it is something the audience just has to accept in order for the story to move along.

The number of eggs present is also debatable. As suggested in the previous films, each egg contains one facehugger, and they die once they have impregnated a host. Some therefore claim that there had to be several eggs and facehuggers on the Sulaco, as one facehugger impregnated Ripley while in hypersleep, a second one cut itself while trying to crack open Newt's cryotube (thus starting the fire on the ship), and a third journeyed with the crew in the EEV (escape pod) and later impregnated a dog/ox on Fury 161. It is also possible that there were only two-one which impregnated Ripley, and the other failing to impregnate Newt and therefore traveling in the EEV towards the planet. In the movie's opening credits, we see only one opened egg, and no version of the movie specifically shows more than one facehugger at any one time. However, the sight of one opened egg does not preclude the presence of other eggs offscreen.

The menu animations on the Special Edition DVD and Bluray editions of the film show that the egg was located in the landing strut compartment of the dropship, which was exactly where the Queen was hiding as the dropship returned to the Sulaco. This would hint to the theory that the Queen was able to lay at least one final egg before her death, carrying a facehugger with a Queen embryo. However, when looking at the background of the shot with the opened egg, it clearly isn't inside the landing strut compartment.

Alien 3 famously went through a turmoiled production with frequent script rewrites and re-shoots, but in the shooting script, there was supposed to be a special type of facehugger that came down with the EEV, and carried a Queen embryo. Making-of documentaries show that it was to be much darker than normal, due to fortified skin plating and webbings between the fingers. The creature can actually be seen very briefly in the longer Assembly Cut of Alien 3, when prisoners Murphy and Frank discuss what killed the ox, and Murphy finds the creature. Some viewers speculate that this "super facehugger" carried both a Queen and a normal Alien embryo, so it impregnated the ox/dog and Ripley. But due to re-shoots, only a normal facehugger was seen in the Theatrical Version.

Moreover, the shooting script as well as the film's novelization describe the opening scene as it was originally intended. A facehugger hatched from the egg, and it broke Newt's cryotube, injuring itself in the process. In the novelization, the facehugger died from the injury (impaled by a shard of glass) which started the fire. In the original shooting script, it was attached to Newt and impregnated her when its blood started a fire and the EEV was ejected from the Sulaco, coming along on the trip to Fury 161 (though this seems unlikely as Newt's body would have visible burns). After the crash, Newt's broken tube was flooded and she drowned. Since the Alien embryo required a living host, it escaped through Newt's mouth, swam to Ripley (whose tube had been shattered during the crash), forced her mouth open and crawled into Ripley's esophagus (explaining why Ripley has a sore throat). Ripley finally swam or washed out of the crashed EEV and ended up ashore, where she was discovered by the population of the prison facility. Due to the many re-writes and re-shoots, inconsistencies in the opening scene piled up: in the Theatrical Version, Ripley's cryotube is seen in varying states of damage, and Ripley is alternatively clean and muddy. The Assembly Cut is more consistent with the shooting script, but in both versions, the facehugger attacking the tubes appears to be a normal one and not the super facehugger, and the scene that should have depicted the Queen embryo entering Ripley's mouth was not shot. In both versions, we are thus led to believe that Ripley was the one impregnated, but it was probably the intention to have one facehugger that caused all the events seen in the movie's opening. So it is really up to the viewer to decide what happened in either version, because neither gives a definitive answer.

It is established in Alien³ that the Alien inherits its host's physical characteristics. In this film, the Alien comes from a canine host (Theatrical version) or a bovine host (Assembly cut) rather than a human one, so it inherits different physical characteristics. The creatures also appear to use color as camouflage. In Alien, the creature had a steel color that allowed it to blend in with the ship's pipework. In this film, large leadworks that had a very rusty-brown colour to the piping and brickwork led to the creature taking on a brownish appearance. Thus, the creature adapts to its surrounding colourization like a chameleon.

No. During the furnace scene, Ripley and Dillon (Charles S. Dutton), the spiritual leader of the prisoners, are trying to convince the others to act as bait to trap the alien. Naturally they refuse, so Dillon tries a little reverse-psychology mixed with guilt. He says, "Alright fine, you can all just sit here on your asses. Fine. Me and (Ripley) will do all the fighting." To which prisoner Morse says, "How 'bout if I sit here on my ass?" To which Dillon replies, "Fine, *oh* I forgot! You're the guy that's made a deal with God to live forever, huh? And the rest of you pussies can sit it out, too." Dillon was clearly being sarcastic, as he was trying to convey the point that eventually everybody dies and they may as well die trying to kill the alien so that perhaps some of them may survive and to avenge their fallen brothers. As Dillon says; "You're all gonna die. The only question is how you check out. Do you want it on your feet? Or on your fuckin' knees, begging. I ain't much for begging. Nobody ever gave me nothin'. So I say *fuck* that thing! Let's fight it!" Morse didn't actually expect to live forever, and neither did any of the rest of the inmates.

The producers of Alien³ wanted each film to be different in tone and style. It is apparent that they did not want to make Aliens (1986) and made a conscious decision to shift away from the action genre. This also serves to remove the simple solution Aliens presented-that the aliens can be killed quite easily if you have the guns to do so. The producers removed the guns to increase the threat to the characters. Sigourney Weaver also served as executive producer on the film and she is very anti-gun, though it is she herself who refuses/avoids handling firearms, not necessarily refusing their presence in a film in which she stars, as evidenced in Aliens and Alien Resurrection (1997).

It wasn't for want of interest. After the release of Aliens (1986), director James Cameron mentioned the possibility of a third installment in the series, concentrating on the last three survivors: Ripley, Hicks and Newt. Cameron thought it would be interesting to further explore the family dynamic established in the previous film. In interviews, Michael Biehn admitted being interested in reprising his role. Over the next few years, several different scripts were written for a sequel film, including one by novelist William Gibson which had Hicks as the primary protagonist, with Ripley being in a coma for most of the film. However, successive script revisions moved further away from this concept, until, eventually, the characters of Hicks and Newt were not included at all. When Biehn learned this, he stated that he was "heartbroken". Biehn's agent actually went to the studios when Alien³ went into preproduction (still under the impression that the Hicks character would, at the very least, make an appearance) to negotiate his participation but learned that the producers didn't wish to make use of Biehn's services. On his way out of the studio, the agent walked past the special effects workshop and saw several artists working on a dummy in Biehn's likeness with a hole in its chest (he wrongly assumed that Hicks was to die from an alien bursting out of him, but this was never the case). Upon hearing the news, Biehn threatened to sue the production for using his likeness without his approval. The studio offered him money but Biehn refused, saying he didn't want to end up as a chestburster victim in the movie, no matter what amount of money he was offered. (Biehn joked that he "was really stupid back then.") The studio then offered him money to use his picture in one of the movie's scenes, to which he agreed, since the character was never intended to be a victim of the Alien anyway. This picture is Biehn's entire appearance in the movie (the impaled Hicks is a dummy that cannot be facially identified). Biehn admitted that this fee for his picture was about the same as his entire salary for Aliens.

In America, Alien³ was generally disliked by the public and by film critics when it came out. However, many reviewers outside the US hailed its bleak and uncompromising vision-and the film was more successful internationally.

The Special Edition (also known as the Assembly Cut) is a workprint which was created in 1991 as the film was still in production. When the Alien Quadrilogy DVD box set was released in 2003, this version of the film was also included as a bonus feature. This version is longer than the original theatrical version, and includes new sequences as well as some later-completed digital effects.

Not directly. The original production (i.e. shooting) of the film in England began after David Fincher was officially signed on to direct, and following a radical script revision. All that existed at that point was a dozen or so abandoned script ideas, and almost two million dollars worth of sets that had been entirely or partially constructed for a script that had been rejected weeks earlier. While re-writes were still being done, Fincher was informed that he needed to incorporate as many of the creative ideas the producers wanted as possible, and that he needed to write scenes around the sets that had already been built, in order to justify the cost of their construction. As a result, Fincher was forced to effectively write, shoot, and edit the film, all at the same time. While he was attempting this almost impossible task, the producers were continually requesting that changes be made on a variety of levels on an almost daily basis. As a consequence, the production became more complicated and difficult. The film went overbudget and behind schedule rather quickly, and although the film neared completion, the studio shut down production and asked for what is called a "work print" or "assembly cut". You might think of this as an audit. They wanted to see what all their money had been spent on before they allowed any more.

David Fincher created a work print in collaboration with editor Terry Rawlings. This was done in order to see which shots still had to be filmed and how the story worked so far. Everyone agreed that essential footage was missing, so the studio allowed additional filming days (albeit far less than Fincher had requested), and Fincher spent several more months shooting and editing the result. He and the rest of the cast and crew were under the impression that this was to be the initial cut of what would be the final film, and that very few additional pick-ups and changes were necessary (other than those requested by Fincher himself). The studio, however, eventually rejected this version of the film, and ordered a radical re-edit, requesting that entire plot points (including the beginning and ending of the film) be either scrapped, or altered and entirely re-shot. After the hellish production of the film, the news that Fincher's vision of the story would not be the one that would ultimately make it to the screen was enough to make the director walk entirely. The alterations and new scenes were created without him, despite the protests of most of the crew which had worked with him. In fact, a lot of the scenes, including the new ending, were shot in Los Angeles with almost an entirely new crew. Most of the ideas were incorporated into what would become the Theatrical Version.

For the extended 2003 Assembly Cut of Alien 3, producer Charles de Lauzirika and editor David Crowther reassembled the earlier work print, and a small crew finished music, sound effects and visual effects in the additional scenes to the best of their abilities on the limited budget (e.g. there was no time or money for additional dialogue recording, etc). Based on what they had to work with, this version was as close as they could get to Fincher's original shooting script and production notes. It should be noted that this was not the film that Fincher had set out to shoot, only the compromised version he would have been "okay" with releasing before the studio demanded the re-shoots. Fincher was invited to create his 'Director's cut', but refused, citing that a director's cut would mean burning all the original negatives and starting over from scratch. He had very little creative control over the original production and for his true "director's cut" to ever really be realized, they would have to shoot a whole new movie. De Lauzirika said that he had Fincher's blessing in creating the Assembly Cut, as long as it wasn't called a 'Director's Cut'. In a 2009 Q&A session, Fincher said that he never looks back at anything after it is done, and that he has never seen this version, so he has no comments on it. The Assembly Cut released on DVD in 2003 met with generally very favourable reviews. This version was further polished in 2010, when the Alien series was released on Blu-ray disc; the notoriously bad audio quality of some additional scenes (for which only on-set audio with no re-recorded dialogue was available) was finally replaced by a high-quality soundtrack matching the original one, as the actors were brought back in to re-loop their dialogue. You can see evidence of this if you compare the 2003 DVD version of the scene where Clemens tries to revive Ripley after finding her on the shore to the 2010 Blu-ray version of the same scene.

No, the sequences of the Alien running during the third act of the movie was not computer generated, but was rather a third-scale rod puppet that was filmed in front of a bluescreen and photochemically composited into the film.