5. Alien 3
Before
Prometheus had everyone in the world abuzz about how it was connected with 1979s
Alien---there were 3 sequels that came and went. After James Camerons extremely successful
Aliens, it was apparent that a hit franchise was in the works and the green light for Alien 3 was almost a given. Directed by David Fincher---who has since disavowed the project and refused to be involved in creating a directors cut for the
Alien Quadrilogy box set---the third installment in the franchise had the most promise and arguably fell farthest. Fewer films have changed more from inception to production than
Alien 3. After
Aliens, 20th Century Fox approached David Giler and Walter Hill (producers of the series) to deliver two more sequels. The duo ultimately settled on a two part story that would see the corrupt Weyland-Yutani Corporation squared against an aggressive culture of humans who had separated from Earths society. The third installment would see only a cameo from Sigourney Weavers Ellen Ripley; focusing instead on Michael Biehns Corporal Hicks. Ripley would return in
Alien 4 in a massive battle between the humans and mass produced Alien Warriors. A dubious Fox agreed to finance the project and pushed for none other and Ridley Scott to direct. Trouble began when Fox President Joe Roth received a script without a Ripley and declared Sigourney Weaver as the centerpiece of the series. Weaver had agreed to being written out of the third film after scenes involving Ripleys backstory were dropped from the previous film---scenes she felt were crucial to the character. From this point, several drafts of a script were written, the first from William Gibson which focused on Hicks and Bishop. This script saw an evolution of the Xenomorph due to the films setting being a space station involved with genetic modification experiments. A concept made more enticing today thanks to the recent release of
Prometheus taking us
back to a prior point of the Xenomorphs evolution. A shipboard fire leaves Ripley in a coma and elevates Hicks to the level of protagonist. Hicks and a rebuilt Bishop would have investigated rumors of Weyland-Yutani developing Alien Warriors and would have culminated in a battle during the films climax that would have led directly into Alien 4 which would have begun the story of tracing the Xenomorph back to its source where it will be destroyed. This is another tantalizing concept given the recent release of Prometheus. The producers were unhappy with this script and requested revisions but Gibson declined, paving the way for Eric Red (The Hitcher, Near Dark) to take a crack at it. The Red script was the darkest, most horror-centric vision of the film. It jettisons the first two films by declaring all the survivors from the previous installment dead at the hands of the Xenomorph. The Sulaco instead delivers the Xenomorph to a rural type of bio-dome habitat where an all-out battle between the townsfolk of the biodome and the Xenomorph. This version of the script is also the first to feature a genetically mixed Alien-Human creature. Nothing of Reds script survived to the final draft stage, though the Alien-Human creature would appear in
Alien: Resurrection. After Red was dismissed from the project, David Twohy delivered a story that took place on a Prison Planet. The story centered around inmates on Death Row being usied for illegal experiments for Weyland-Yutanis bio-weapons division. A number of concepts from this draft appeared in
Alien: Resurrection, including a cloning scenario and victims blown through a small rupture in the outer hull. The story was dark, and was the first to feature a high number of different Alien types, though ultimately little of it would be saved for Alien 3 save for the setting of the Prison Planet. The most well-known draft is the Wooden Monastery script by Vincent Ward. This script has Ripleys escape pod crash landing on a satellite that houses a monastery of archaid design. The
Alien Quadrilogy box set features a lot of the development behind this idea, including set design that would have shown how this wooden planet would have been brought to life. As a story, the script centered on Ripley, confined to a dungeon attempting to defeat the Xenomorph on her own while coming to terms with the realization that a Xenomorph is gestating inside of her. This script has a large fan following, received a write up in
Empire magazine in 2009 and has extensive time dedicated to it on the
Quadrilogy DVD. Any number of the versions above had something to offer to this series as a continuation of James Camerons Aliens. Many of them better than the shooting script penned by Walter Hill and David Giler---sadly this was not to be. As is so often the case in Hollywood, the best stories are the ones never told. Did you enjoy the filmed versions better than the paths not taken in the scripts outlined here? Know of other stories Hollywood dropped the ball on? Sound off in the comments below!