Alien³ (1992, David Fincher) (Patreon)

52/100

Second viewing, last seen 1997—four days prior to Resurrection's release, two months after The Game made me doubly curious about Fincher's vision, however studio-compromised. This time I watched the so-called "assembly cut," though my memory of the release version is so dim that comparing the two would be largely pointless. Still seems like a big ol' mess to me. If I prefer the assembly cut, and I suspect that I do, it's mostly thanks to a stronger opening sequence (didn't recall the details of discovering Ripley, but was very confident that I hadn't seen e.g. the lice before) and better differentiation among the prisoners, who'd previously come across like a single tiresome bald organism (excepting Charles D. and Charles S. D., with whom I was already familiar). More or less indifferent regarding dog vs. cow as the host organism, since the cross-cutting with Newt's funeral is clumsy and cheesy in both. In general, it does seem to me as if Fincher hadn't yet quite worked out the kinks in transitioning from music videos to feature films; atmosphere's fantastic, obviously, but he tends to shoot actors speaking dialogue from particularly graceless low angles.

Don't see any good reason for that—it's just what he thought looked cool at the time, probably. I'm not a fan. Nor do I much like the chase sequences' Raimi-esque POV shots (XenoVision!), which turn Giger's nightmare creation into oh christ I just now remembered that there are actual Alien vs. Predator movies (unseen by me). Was about to say "into a banal cousin of the Predators." Do we get dueling distorted POV-cams in those things? I hope never to find out.

On the flip side, my favorite Fincher-esque moment—unique to the assembly cut, I believe—gives us our first view of a facehugger in the most banal way possible, with someone off in the distance holding up a carcass (recognizable from its silhouette) and asking, with no trace of alarm, "What's this?" CUT. 

Ultimately, despite many specific complaints (some others, briefly: Ripley and Clemens fucking is lame; I don't buy Dillon's self-sacrifice for one second; the "real" Bishop showing up at the end is garbage fan service), my primary issue with Alien³ resembles my primary issue with David Gordon Green's first Halloween reboot: Conventional genre sequels tend to bore me, so I'm interested almost exclusively in the protagonist's unresolved trauma. Newt's autopsy is far and away this film's most intense and harrowing scene, allowing Weaver to tap into truly raw and primal emotions; for what seems like a small eternity, we witness a fear so overpowering that it drives Ripley (visually split in two, a ruptured blood vessel occluding one eye) to mutilate the body of her surrogate daughter. Shaving her head and surrounding her with what's effectively a religious cult was a potentially inspired idea...but not for a film that's eventually just gonna transfer the '79 original from a spaceship to space jail, with one xenomorph running around devouring everyone. (Having the craziest prisoner release it after it's captured doesn't make that significantly more effective, and I tend to think cutting most of Golic's subplot was the right move.) Just as I'd have preferred the 2018 Halloween without Michael Myers, I'd have preferred Alien³ without any xenomorphs. But of course those are the top two answers to the hypothetical Family Feud question "Name a movie Hollywood would never ever ever under any circumstances finance or make."