The directorial debut of David Fincher never quite managed the effusive critical acclaim of his later films. Which isn't really his fault, since the production of Alien 3 sounds even more nightmarish than the eponymous, horrifying xenomorphs; previously accustomed to music video shoots, Fincher had to contend with a shoot and rewrite happening simultaneously whilst fitting in sets that had already been built for a previous version of the movie, which was cancelled well into pre-production. Filming was plagued by interference from executives, plus a worsening of cast member Jordan Cronenweth's Parkinson's disease necessitating his replacement by Alex Thomson. We're lucky it got made at all. The end product was divisive - Fincher himself hates it - but we don't think it's half bad. The tone is unrelentingly grim and there's not a whole lot of action, but it's got some novel ideas and Sigourney Weaver is excellent as per. He just about manages to live up to the immense pressure he was obviously feeling about following in the footsteps of directors like Ridley Scott and James Cameron, too. The mangled production began way before Fincher was even considered, however, and some of the mooted ideas for the second Alien sequel sounded so amazing, we're a bit sad that we never got to see them. After all, there had been treatments by cyberpunk author William Gibson, and a script involving a planet made of wood. Gibson's film lacked Ellen Ripley but made up for it with "bigger, meaner, faster" Alien Warriors affected by genetic tampering, Eric Red's draft took place entirely in a small-town USA city in a biodome in space and featured Alien mosquitoes, cattle, dogs and chickens, whilst Vincent Ward created a story about a partially wooden satellite that was a place of refuge for Luddite-like monks. The last one actually nearly got made before Ward was fired and replaced with Fincher but, honestly, we'd've liked to see any of these takes on the Alien franchise. Can't be worse than Alien Vs Predator 2.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
