Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Sure that You
Can't Be Serious Podcast. We are here today with our
special guest host Jeff Johnson from the A film by
podcast What's Up?
Speaker 2: Jeff?
Speaker 3: Not a whole lot d Thank you for having me
back again so soon. Had a great time with you
and Jason last time.
Speaker 1: Last time was a barrel of fun and matter of fact,
we've gotten together several times and the last couple of
big episodes that we got together on were another couple
of what the heck Happened episodes, and that was on
Jaws The Revenge and Superman The Quest for Peace and
What the heck Happened premise is something that my co
host Jason Colvin came up with because there are movies
that he just can't figure out what the heck happened with.
Speaker 4: That's right, Those episodes were a lot of fun. Today,
Not sure there's gonna be a lot of fun for
my part.
Speaker 1: Today, we are here to talk about Alien cubed. We
are here to talk about three where in the theater
everyone can hear you scream. Specifically, they can hear Jason
stand up at the credits at the opening and say,
what the fuck you can't kill Newt and Hicks and
then throw his popcorn at the screen. Guys. I figure,
with the depression that's going to ensue from this episode,
I decided we needed to start with a joke. You
guys ready for my joke?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you know what happens when you give David Fincher
a bunch of lemons? He makes lemonaien three.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, I know you're a father because that
is a dad joke. Okay, so you're kidding around, but
I was really I told Jeff today, I called you,
and I'm like, I am still angry and bitter about
this movie. I am so mad, and after doing my research,
I am more.
Speaker 1: Mad, more mad because it didn't have to be this way.
Speaker 4: It did not have these guys aft it up.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: Well, Jeff, I don't know. Do you hate this movie
as much as Jason does.
Speaker 3: I don't hate it at all. Point of fact, I
happened to like Alien three. You know, when we're talking
about theatrical cut and when we're talking about the two
thousand and three assembly cut, I happened to love it.
Speaker 4: So this cannot be true. Jeff.
Speaker 1: It is a true apologist.
Speaker 3: Much like the superintendent of Fury one six y one.
I am here for rumor control and to deliver the facts.
Speaker 1: So before we jump right in with this, you guys,
remember what you were doing in nineteen ninety two, other
than throwing your popcorn at the screen.
Speaker 4: I was so mad. Okay, So in ninety two, I
just completed my first year of college, excited for a
blockbuster year at the movies, and this got us kicked off.
May twenty second, nineteen ninety two, kind of early in
the summer. I was with my now wife Catherine, and
we went to see this movie and we both loved,
absolutely loved the James Cameron nineteen eighty six classic, which Jeff,
I told you that's the best movie of nineteen eighty six, right,
So I absolutely love Aliens. And when we saw it
in the theater, I was so mad, but I did
not leave. Stayed for the entire punishment of this movie.
So just a great time in my life. But this
was not a good day for me. I can remember
watching this in the theater. Was This would have been,
I guess the summer before my junior year of high school,
so I was at least driving at this point. I
didn't detest it, but I was really bored.
Speaker 1: I also was Aliens fan, right, I'm not the super
fan that you are, but I don't even know if
I had seen the original Alien at that point. I
loved Aliens, thought it kicked, but I saw that one
with my dad, really loved that one, was excited for
something like that in this and then when I got there,
I was just like, this is kind of dull. I
didn't have that visceral reaction that you did at the
beginning when the two died because I just didn't care
that much. But how it ultimately played out, I was
just like, Eh, this is kind of a letdown. That's it.
Speaker 3: So I'm turning sixteen this year. But I do remember
going to the movies to see Alien three with my buddies.
I didn't love it the way I love it now, because,
like you, I was expecting more of Aliens. But I
remember us walking out and one of my buddies going,
holy shit, they killed Hicks and Newt the little Girl,
and I'm like, no, holy shit, they killed Ripley. I
remember just leaving kind of stunned at the big risks
that the movie took at the time, and not really
feeling okay with them, but also still thinking like, Okay,
that was that was different. That was not what I expected.
It's not what I thought I was walking into. But
I still still dig it.
Speaker 4: I still like it, all right. So it's it's our
job to untangle the mass of problems that happened on
this picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you got for us? Man? Okay, so
we get done with Aliens. It's a massive monumental success, right,
mind blowingly good. Whole lot of people saying it's better
than the first one. Right, it's an yes, Jason among
those folks.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And by the way, guys, if you haven't heard our
Alien Versus Aliens episode, it's one of my favorites. We
talk about Dan O'Bannon and his journey to get this thing.
By the way, I sent a text to you, guys.
I was watching Alien three on Hulu and no less
than three times did the advertisement give me an advertisement
for medication for Crohn's disease. I was like, seriously, guys,
do you get the joke here? I mean, not only
did it inspire the author to have the chest burst scene,
but it also killed him. Yeah, yeah, how about that?
So that was a little weird too. In our episodes,
we talked about all of the stuff behind Alien Aliens
and those two pictures and which one we like better
of the two. Now, I'm not going to go into
all of that. We just know that after Aliens, we
have got a winner on our hand. Right, We have
got a series that potentially is getting better as it
goes along, right, and a following that is mirroring that
of like Star Wars or Star trek I didn't realize
how big the franchise follow in this world are, but
there's a lot of them that are hardcore as much
as Trekki's or what do they call these guys xenomorphs,
what do they call for xenaheads? Xenophiles?
Speaker 4: I don't know, but John Reid is one of them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, John is another Aliens three apologist, right he is.
Speaker 4: We'll hear from here a little bit.
Speaker 1: So Brandywine is the production company. You have Geiler and
you have Hill, the two main guys of brandy Wine.
They're the guys that are the force behind the movie
at the outset, and so they've got this property on
their hands, and Fox is like, let's make another one, guys,
and they are genuinely not that interested. What yeah, what right?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Doesn't make sense?
Speaker 1: Well, so it's not that they disliked the franchise. They
just thought, and this is a reasonable thought, they thought,
we want to make something new and different, and if
we're going to do something with Alien, we want it
to be new and different. And we don't know what
to do. We've had horror, we've had action. What do
we do next? And so they're like, okay, let us
give this to a young on fire writer and see
what he can do with it. And so they give
it to a guy that we've talked about before, mister
William Gibson, the guy who in the early eighties brought
us Neuromancer, the whole idea of cyberpunk. They say, hey,
we want you to write a script not just for
part three, but for parts three and four back to back.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So they approached James Cameron, and James Cameron said, listen,
I'm working on the Abyss right now, but if you
get Ridley Scott to do part three, I'll do part four.
Speaker 1: Yes, So do that? Right?
Speaker 4: Is that a no brainer of no brainers?
Speaker 1: Right? So you know what they did, They actually made
the right choice. They went to Ridley Scott. The problem
was Ridley was interested, but he was too busy as well.
He had other things going on and they wanted to
get this out. While I say, while the iron is hot,
this is late eighties, this is we haven't got to
the nineties either, right, and this is late eighties that
they're trying to get this problem solved. So he's not interested.
But they've got William Gibson working on the script and
he comes up with what he calls space commis hijack
alien eggs. You get a big problem in a mall world.
Speaker 3: Okay. So what happens in his.
Speaker 1: Script is the Silaco is boarded and towed to a
place called Anchor Point. And so that's why you'll sometimes
hear about the Anchor Point script. This is William Gibson's
original script. And I told you guys, ultimately he produces
this as an audiobook. He gets Michael Bean to come
in and voice, He gets Lance Hendrickson to come in
and voice. I mean this is decades later, so Lance
Hendrickson sounds like one hundred and five year old man.
But it's out there. If you guys want to hear
the William Gibson version of this script. You can download
the audio book.
Speaker 4: The fact that Hicks has lines I'm already liking this better, well.
Speaker 1: That was his big deal. So what happens in this
script is that Hicks becomes the protagonist. Ripley makes a
cameo appearance at the beginning, and then basically go into
a coma. Hicks becomes the guy who's the driving force
behind the plot of the movie, and he discovers that
I'm sorry, the Wiland Yanni Corporation Wayland Utani. Yeah, that's
why I'm not gonna say it, because they get it
wrong every time. All my vows mixed up. I'm just
going to call them the WY Corporation, all right. Or
the company finds out that the WY Corporation is manufacturing aliens,
and one of the guys who's helping in the manufacturer
knows this is a bad idea, and he basically tells Hicks,
you have to go back to the source of the
aliens in order to stop them. And so it becomes
this mission to go back to the home world. And
again it's more like Aliens, where you've got the marines,
heavy action. Let's go to the alien home world. And
kick some ass.
Speaker 4: Sounds great, Let's make it now.
Speaker 1: Like I said, this was late eighties and so this
was largely kind of allegorical for the Cold War. And
so he gives this script to Hill and Geiler of
Brandywine and they look at it and they're like, Okay,
it's good, but now it's kind of missing something. And
what they're thinking is it's missing the cyberpunk, which is
the reason we hired you in the first freaking place.
He's just basically written an Alien's Part two. So what
they do, of course, what they always do, They say, Okay,
we can't get Ridley Scott. We need to find another director.
And so the first guy that they go to is
Rennie Harlan because he has just finished with Nightmare on
Elm Street Part four, which was a Nightmare on Elm
Street back right. It was very well received Nightmare on
Elm Street. But Rennie only sticks around so long. By
the way, I'll ask this question, now, have you guys
seen the other alien movies? Like I've seen Alien Aliens,
Alien three, and about three quarters of Alien Resurrection. And
then when she had the Alien Baby, I walked out
of the theater. My popcorn was empty, or I would
have thrown it at the screen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have actually seen them all. I own them all,
with exception to the Alien Versus Predator spinoff movies that
that happened because I'm not a fan of those. My
feelings for them mirror Jason's feelings for Alien three.
Speaker 4: Yes, I have seen them. I'm like a heroin addict
who keeps going back and trying to get that high,
and I have yet to find anything coming close to
nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: Well, I really feel like there's hope because last year
Prey came out. I mean I would have felt the
same way about Predator and all its incarnations, and then
we got Prey and it was fan for fantastic.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's always hope. There's always hope that they
will really resurrect the Alien series. So anyway, I just
know from reading about it that this going back to
the Home World. They kind of recycled that for Prometheus, right, Yes,
give me a little bit of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, those movies suck too, but keep going.
Speaker 3: Well, they didn't suck that, okay, So they suffer from
the same thing that I think Alien three suffers from
is the allegiance to the Cameron Aliens film, which is stellar.
I love it. It's an awesome sci fi action war film.
But it was time to do something different. And while
we're on the William Gibson script, because Jason, I know
you said you love you love the idea, let's go.
Let's think about two things. First off, do you really
want to retread of Aliens? And secondly, remember, as d
pointed out, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley character, she is pretty much
the whole movie. She's in a coma. And why would
Sigourney Weaver sign off on something like that. Well, that's
because she was still upset with Fox over how they
treated the Aliens cut, because they cut out a bunch
of our backstory, which is thankfully available and the director's
cut of that film. So she was like, sure, I'll
show up and take a nap and just not do anything.
Speaker 4: Fine, I don't want to get us off track, but
let me just address what you're saying right there. I
don't want to retread of Aliens, but I think back
to there's like this alternate universe where we could have
had a movie where Hicks is the protagonist and he's
kicking butt. You know, we're not living in Ripley's unended nightmare,
So I think that there's there were just bad decisions made,
But I don't want to get off on that.
Speaker 1: Keep going well and and just to touch on it,
you know, I feel like she is a key factor.
She's a force in this storyline. But her perspective, I
think I share her perspective on it, Sigourney Weaver's perspective,
which is, where's my character going to go from here?
I mean, she's gone from blue collar worker to basically
Lieutenant Ripley leading and fighting the alien one on one,
becoming a mother figure when she had been very much
a solo figure before, right, even without the backstory, right,
And so she's like, I don't really know where else
this character is gonna go. And that's why she's good
to go to sleep for two thirds of the movie.
And then maybe she comes back at the end and
she's you know, God from the Machine or the Savior
or whatever, and that's great. But to have her be
absent from so much of the movie, when she's such
a key part, it's kind of tricky. It's could be
hard to pull off. So they said William Gibson try
it again. He said, I'm done. Thanks, guys, appreciate you.
So before Rennie leaves, before Rennie Harlan leaves, he says,
check out Eric Red. He can help you out with
the rewrites, and so Eric Red takes it.
Speaker 4: Eric Redd is the writer of The Hitcher, which Jack
on your podcast. That movie is spectacular.
Speaker 3: Love that movie, Eric Red. Now listen if you're leaving
Gibson behind, Eric Redd is a great way to go
because in addition to The Hitcher, Let's not forget, he
does one of the coolest vampire films ever, which happens
to Starlance Hendrickson. This is the guy behind Near Dark.
Speaker 1: His version kills everyone and has an entire new set
of characters fight the Aliens, talk about the worst of
both worlds. He not only kills Ripley right off the bat,
he kills Hicks and Newt as well. Right they're all
gone and there's an entirely new fight and it takes
place you're ready for this in a small town America
in space, which, of course, because you guys have seen it,
you know, they recycled this for Aliens Versus Predator Part two. Yeah,
when they got that They're like, you're fired. I mean
you killed everyone, right, Yeah, no, get the heck out
of here. So they fire him. So both Harlan and
Red are gone. So they hired David Toohey, who is
the guy who did Chronicles of Ritic. They hire him
to improve on William Gibson's original script. But by this time,
the Cold War is over. It can't be your source
material anymore because communism has fallen. So Tooey turns Anchor
Point into a space station that is populated by convicts. Yeah,
and so okay, so we're seeing the beginnings of what
we know will be the ultimate end. Again, the WY
Corporation is conducting illegal experiments on the inmates. At this point,
Joel Roth, who is the president of Fox Studios, says,
wait a minute, did you guys say you don't have
Ripley in the first two thirds of the movie. Yeah,
that's not going to be okay, you'd need to put
her back in. And so this, of course is what
switches and why Hicks gets killed off, which obviously Michael
Bean is not happy about that. I mean he's been
involved in this process the whole time. He thinks, oh,
I'm going to become the star of the show and
then he's told no you die in the opening credits.
Speaker 4: Not only is he not happy about it, he's megapisted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well so. And then Sigourney Weaver comes onto the
set because they're they're doing stuff.
Speaker 4: They're like, they're building set, they're.
Speaker 1: Building sets, they're doing special effects, and she calls up
Michael Bean and she's like, hey, uh, did you give
them permission to like create a dummy of you? And
he's like, what are you talking about. She's like, I
was there and they have a full on chest burster
explosion dummy model with your face on it. And so
he gets on the horn with his agent and he's like,
no fucking way, man, and they're like, how about if
we pay you? And he says not all of the
money in the world. When I'm listening to him say this,
he goes, I was very young and stupid at that moment.
And so what we get is this kind of grainy
when we see the movie, you don't see his face,
but it's not recognizable as him.
Speaker 4: Right in the movie, there's like a steel beam that
goes through his face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't see his face at all?
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, well you can't in the theatrical cut.
Now in the assembly cut in two thousand and three,
it is, you know, and again it's a cleaner you know.
They went in, they cleaned up the movie. They did,
they did a lot more work on it before they
released it. And while you can't see that it is
Michael Bean, you can see what might have been left
of Michael Bean. And it's a gruesome shot because you
get a better the whole salvage operation of getting the
survivors there is much more clear, and his jaw is
kind of he gets impaled, and his jaw's kind of
like hanging like a skew, and it's pretty pretty, pretty gruesome.
Speaker 1: Eventually, the studio calls him back and they say, okay,
we're not going to use a model of you. We
would like to use your picture. And so he's smartened
up a little bit by this time, and he's like,
lots of money, give me lots and lots of money.
They end up paying him almost as much money for
the use of his picture as they did for the
first movie he was in.
Speaker 3: I had the opportunity to meet him a couple months ago.
Fascinating guy, a lot of fun to talk to, I
knew that this was a source subject, so I steered
clear of it. We never aliens never even came up
until we were leaving, and he was. He was gracious
enough to say, hey, if your listeners want something, let
him know.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 3: My favorite character that I ever played when we're talking
about a hero character is Corporal Hicks. I love that character.
I wish I could have done more with him.
Speaker 4: And I heard him talking about this. This is like
David Fincher's first duty as director. They're like, hey, mister director,
call Michael Bean and tell him that we're killing him off.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: So he's like okay, and they're like, oh, by the way,
ask him if we can.
Speaker 1: Use his picture.
Speaker 4: So David Fincher is like, you know, he's a young
guy and this is an opportunity to make a blockbuster
sequel and he's happy to have the job. Excuse me,
mister Michael Bean, this is David Fincher. I know you
don't know who I am, but I've directed music videos
on MTV. You've probably seen you know who Madonna is. Right,
we're gonna kill off your character. And Michael Bean said,
if you and if you guys for doing this to
me and just like went on a tirade, you know.
Dave Fincher's like, okay, all right, well how about a
picture no if you you know, And it was just
one of those phone calls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've they've at least got Weaver, who is, like
I said, only kind of partially interested in it in
the first place, right, and really bought in because she thought,
I'm only going to be in the third act, right,
That's the only part I have to worry about. But
they are saying, okay, well, we're going to give you
five million dollars, but you do have to be in
the whole movie. And so after that offer, she says, okay,
I have two conditions. The story has to be better
than it is right now and no guns. I'm sorry,
what what? And there's this famous bit where like during
the production of Aliens, she called James Cameron over and
she's like, hey, I get excited when I read a script,
and I don't necessarily read all of the side notes.
I'd kind of just read my lines and other people's lines,
and I didn't really realize how much gun play was
involved in this, and I'm not really comfortable with it.
I am anti gun and James Cameron says, you should
probably read the side notes.
Speaker 4: Okay, so let's talk about this for a second, because
that's one of the major problems with this movie is
they play hide and seek for two hours. There's nothing
going on, in my opinion, just just running around the
idea that your lead actor can have that kind of
influence and pull out there's no weapons, there's no real guns.
That's just stupid. Somebody should have stood up to her
and said no, no.
Speaker 1: I don't have any problem with the complicating factor of
there are no guns. I mean, in real prisons here
in the US today, even if you are law enforcement,
you cannot go into the prison with a firearm. They
don't let it happen. So it makes sense on a
prisoner world that they wouldn't have firearms. But it's not
as though those are the only weapons that exist. I mean,
in the first movie, you've got flame throwers if you
want to pull up Prey for example. You've got bows
and arrows, you've got spears, you've got clubs. You've got
all kinds of weapons that you can find a way
to use creatively. And they just didn't do a really
good job.
Speaker 3: Of that on this respectfully, I have to disagree while
I agree with Sigourney here, if not for anything else,
it levels the playing field because in the first movie,
like Jason said, we've got flamethrowers. Yeah, the Nostromo has
an intelligent crew that can at least use the technology
they have to create weapons. And then we up the
stakes in aliens because now we've got the colonial Marines.
We've got all the pulse rifles in the world. And
that's a good thing because now we've got a whole
hive of these things running around. So again the playing
field was level. Now we come to the third one,
and if we know the idea is we're going back
to basics. We're going back to the one loan alien
that's gonna hunt the people on Fury one six one.
We can't have all these guns because it's it's not
a fair fight, and it's not the tension, isn't there
for for someone like me, I I feel like, Okay, yeah,
it's a prison, and she points out, you know it's
a prison, Where's where's the weapons? And like d said,
in a real prison, you do not have weapons because
it's it's a safety threat. Because if the if the
prisoners get ahold of them, then you've got a real problem.
So I love the idea of them going we don't
have weapons, we don't have anything. Nothing works. You know,
this is a defunct, you know, mining operation, and we're
just the guys that are here as the Steward's you know,
keeping keeping the lights on. I think it works for
that that reason.
Speaker 1: I think that there's I think there is definitely an
opportunity to be creative that they but they missed it
and missed the opportunity to be care or on Writer
number three at this point David Towey, and now he's
got the task of writing it the way that Sigourney
Weaver wants it, and he's modifying writer number one script,
so he rewrites William Gibson's script with zero Guns. But
they still don't have a director yet because thet's he left,
So they approach Vincent Ward. Vincent Ward has just done
The Navigator. He's a young hot shot and so they're like,
we want you to come on and direct, and at
first he's like, no, I'm good. And if you look
at his body of work, I can't imagine him doing
a big budget studio picture like this. It's not his style.
But he ultimately comes back and he says, listen, I'll
do it, but I want to be able to rewrite
it with my own ideas. He tells what some of
those ideas are, and they're like, yeah, those sound great,
let's do that. And so he says, all right, I
got a writing partner. His name is John Fossano. That's
writer number four, keep and tally here including Sigourney Weaver
as part of the writing I don't know. Yeah, okay,
So he comes in to help him turn out a
full script. But part of what writers do, not just
as a professional courtesy, but as just kind of a
requirement with the WGA. If you're rewriting another writer script,
you call and you let them know what's going on. Well,
the problem is they had not mentioned to David Tooey
that they were having his script rewritten. So Fassano calls
Tuey and Twoy has no idea. He calls Fox and
they flat out lie to him. They're like, uh no, no, no, no,
the Faisano's working on Alien four, Alien four and two.
He's like, okay, all right. He calls Fasano back and
Fasano's like, no, I'm working on Alien three, I assure you,
And so he calls Fox back again and they're like yeah, okay,
so no, no, yeah, you're right, you're right, but we
will still use your script for part four, and Tuey
throws a hissy fit and just says, I'm just going
to satisfy my contract. I'm going to finish this script
and then screw you guys, I'm going home. Yeah that's
the fourth writer we've lost so far. Okay. So Ward
and Fersano they come up with a script that has
a wooden space station, a wooden planet, if you will.
That's no moon, it.
Speaker 4: Does it looks like a wooden dusk star.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's no moon. It's a terrarium.
Speaker 1: They change it to a wooden space station and monks
who are anti technology living on this wooden space station.
And then the monks believe that Ripley is sent to
them as a test of their faith, and the alien
is sent to them as punishment for their sins. And
again we have some of this carry over into the
actual movie, but apparently there was with Ward and Fasano's script,
there was a lot more Judeo Christian imagery and according
to the fan base, according to the Xenophiles, If you Will,
it is regarded as one of the best screenplays never made.
I don't know if I'm going to go out and
agree with that. If you've got a wooden space station
and monks fighting the alien sounds like a yawnfest to me,
But I haven't read it, so I don't know. So
now they say, okay, we like your script, but Ripley
has to live at the end. And Asano's like, uh,
thought she wanted to die. They like, we don't care
what she wants. She has to live. And so he's like, okay,
hang up, call Sigourney. Uh yeah, they said they want
you to live. She says, if I do not die
at the end, I am not doing any more on
this movie. And so he, I guess, tries to split
the difference. And so his solution is she dies almost
like the alien's like coming up. The monk has given
her some sort of herbal serum, and she hasn't eaten
the whole movie, right, Like she's basically pregnant with this
alien in her Yeah, and the monk gives her this
serum which is going to cause her to vomit up
the alien and then he takes it into himself and
then sends her off of the planet to let the
planet burn and kill the alien.
Speaker 4: These people should all be fired. These are all terrible ideas.
Speaker 3: I think this guy was probably just hung up on
an ending and maybe was watching The Exorcist the night
before it's due and goes, hey, that's a good idea.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll just great idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well no, I'm just talking like, all right, well
the demon is inside the person, I'll get it out.
I'll take it into me and then I'll kill myself,
you know, thut myself down a flight of steps, or
I'll burn down a monk's planet.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a terrible.
Speaker 1: Idea, right, well, so you know who else thoughts so Fox,
and they're like, wooden planet is a terrible idea. Let's
do something else. And Ward is like, no, wooden't planet.
I am dying on this hill. And they say, okay,
they're dead. Yeah, so there you go, Director number I
don't know, I've lost count is gone. They get rid
of the writer that came on with him as well,
of course, and they go to yet another writer, mister
Larry Ferguson, who brought us Beverly Hills Cop three pu Yeah,
so they bring him on, takes he takes another swing,
and he churns one out in only two months and
everyone loved it. No wait, I'm sorry, hated it. Everyone
hated it, and he immediately gets fired. So at this
point they have got a multitude of scripts, different drafts
of all of them. So Geiler and Hill basically take
all of these scripts and just start cutting and pasting
and ripping and shreading and trying to put a Frankenstein's
Monster together to make one good script. And so we
are once again no director, no writer. What do we do?
Bring in David Fincher. Why because he is one of
the greatest directors of all time. No, because he is
somebody that we can push around.
Speaker 3: They expect a yes man when they get this guy.
Speaker 1: Now, his big claim to fame was that he had
just won the Video Music Award from MTV for one
of his music videos. They bring him on to do
a follow up movie to two of the biggest movies
of all time. Oh, by the way, five weeks until
shooting has to begin, we have ten drafts of three
unfinished screenplays that nobody likes and seventeen million dollars of
your fourteen million dollars dollar b it has already been spent.
Oh yeah, they've also built the set based on the
Ward and Fasano script, which we're not using.
Speaker 4: That's a terrible way to come into a job. Yeah.
Now here's the thing. We all know David Fincher on
this side of history, right, Fight Club, Panic Room, Social Network, seven.
Speaker 1: Gone Girl, Girl, The Dragon Tattoo.
Speaker 4: Yes, I mean, brilliant, unbelievable movies. He's a talented guy,
he's a smart guy. This is a toxic situation.
Speaker 1: Right, and so with this toxic situation, the logical conclusion
as the director is, they're gonna give me some more
time to fix this multitude of problems. Right, They're gonna
they're gonna let me get this. You know, they're gonna
push things out so that I can get this done.
But here's the problem. The trailer had already been released, yes,
long before, and ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to
go watch the original trailer for Alien three, you are
going to be in incredibly surprised at what they have.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety two, we would discover on Earth, everyone
can hear you scream?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I just watched it clearly indicating that this
battle is going to happen on Earth.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The tagline for the trailer was on Earth, everyone
can hear you scream.
Speaker 4: Listen. Okay, stop right there. That's the best idea that
they've had the entire time they've been working on this. Yeah,
get this thing going on Earth. This would be amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it still would be.
Speaker 4: They could make this today. I'd go see them. Let's go, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, if your part three is the Aliens come
to Earth, and then you know that you're coming into
part four and you give us a to be continued
ending where it's like the only way that we can
defeat them is we have to go to their homeworld,
and so part four takes place on xenomorph world.
Speaker 4: Sounds great.
Speaker 1: Yes, those are two fantastic movies that don't seem like
they'd be that hard to write.
Speaker 3: You know what the problem with this is the three
of us aren't in the writer's room. That's right, nineteen two,
that's right.
Speaker 1: Because they would wait, what a order, backing this thing
throughout the whole process here. Gosh, So the trailer had
already set the release date. So Fincher comes into this
toxic waste dump, like you've said, and he has one
year to get everything shot edited. He didn't even have
a finished script. He says, will you give me ninety
three days for principal photography? Studio says seventy. James Cameron
had over twice as much time. Keep in mind, he
had Terminator under his belt at this point, right, Fincher
had the Vogue video.
Speaker 4: That's great video, by the way, it is good, but
it's hardly Aliens, right.
Speaker 1: True.
Speaker 4: Fincher said to all directors, hey, listen, don't take a
project like this unless you've got something big under your belt.
Cameron had Terminator, and he could push back and say, no,
I'm not doing this. Fincher head the Vogue video, It's
not happening, right.
Speaker 1: So then this is where the problems really begin. It
was not with the cast and crew. Everybody on the
cast absolutely loved Fincher. They revered him. They were like,
this dude has got it together. He knows what he's doing.
He's doing brilliant new things. Sigourney Weaver was talking about
the first time that they met and they have this
long talk about the script, and so at the end,
she's like about to leave and she's like, so, how
do you see my character in all of this? And
he says, I don't know, bald and she says, I
fell in love with him at that moment.
Speaker 3: Everyone was falling in love with this guy though, because
for all the problems that he was dealing with with
the studio, he wasn't bringing it to the workplace. He
wasn't bringing it to set. This is the guy that's
like twenty six, twenty seven years old. You know. One
thing I always think about is like Terry Rollins, who
was the editor on this movie, him and the crew,
they talked about how this guy he knows actors, he
likes actors. He was walking around the set going, hey,
I'm influenced by Hitchcock and john Ford and wait till
you see this shot is going to be a Hitchcock shot,
or this SHOT's gonna be a Fod shot. They're eating
him up. They love him, and I think that says
a lot about his character. He can come into such
a mess and not let it bleed out and deal
with the career. Because they're all like, oh, yeah, we
had a great time on the film. We had no
idea all these problems were existing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I got to tell you that, knowing what
he came into at this point, knowing what he came
into and seeing the movie that he put out that
he had so little control over, I have all the
admiration in the world for him, and I am impressed
that it is actually as good as it is and
that it got released in the first place. And he
even talks about that. He's like, you would think that
the studio would want to put out the best product
that they can, but what is more important to them
is just that it be released.
Speaker 4: I'm with you. I don't put any of this on Fincher.
In fact, I think it's admirable the job that he did.
In fact, I'd like to talk to you guys about
a few things that I think they got right.
Speaker 1: This is perfect time to talk about it. Okay, I
was just about to hit that spot in my notes.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, my number one thing is what did they
get right? Number one?
Speaker 1: Not much?
Speaker 4: Okay, not much, But in my opinion, here's what they
did right. Sigourney Weaver. She is a great actress. We
love Ripley. They brought her back. Number two David Fincher. Yes,
they handcuffed him. I mean, they made life impossible for.
Speaker 1: Him to work.
Speaker 4: But he is a brilliant director and ultra talented. They
got lucky, I think. And then some of the effects
I thought were really good, particularly the close ups of
the aliens I thought looked great. Some of the other
stuff it looked like a marionette. I didn't like all
the effects, but the close ups. In the tone of
the movie I thought was dark and scary for the
most part. That's all I got. I mean, Jeff, what
did they do right in your eyes?
Speaker 3: Well, in addition to Sigourney Weaver and David Fincher, the
main villain for me in this movie is the studio execs. However,
I'll give them credit because they knew how to market
a movie. And I'm not talking about the bait and
switch they do with this teaser, this little thirty second
teaser where on Earth everyone can hear you scream. I'm
talking about what they did with Fincher's work. Let's think
about this for a quick second. I think there's three
iconic images when you talk about the Alien franchise, and
you could just put them up on a screen and
everyone goes, ooh, I know that. If it's alien, we're
talking about the cracked egg. Right. If it's aliens, I
always think of Ripley. She's got Newton one arm, she's
got a pulse rifle in the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is the one that is probably one of
the more terrifying iconic images because I'm talking about that
tight shot, that close up of the alien right in
Sigourney Weaver's face, and it's amazing because he says, Hey,
we're gonna do this this. The execs say, no, we're not,
don't do that. We don't want to ever see a
face to face with them. He says, hell with these guys.
He shoots it anyways, and then it gets back to
him and then they go ooh, we love it.
Speaker 1: Right he snuck away and did it handheld himself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, this guy's awesome. So you know, I
give him full credit for it, but I give the
marketing team credit for saying this is what's going to
put butts in the seat. One thing I think they
definitely got right is Tom Woodriff Junior, who plays the alien. Now,
this is a situation where Jason, you mentioned like, hey,
the close ups, the shots look good, the movement of
the alien itself. This is a situation where for the
first time it's got a little bit of a character.
And we can thank Sigourney Weaver for that because according
to Woodriff, who was just a visual effects guy, he
takes the job of playing quote unquote the alien and
she says, she pulls him aside. She says, hey, don't
be a guy in a suit, be an actor.
Speaker 4: Act.
Speaker 3: So he gives this this creature a little bit of
personality for the first time ever. We got to remember
this is one of the last films shot with the
old school optics, you know, before everything goes digital. The
rod puppets that they use for the dog alien as
it's known, and a lot of those are Woodroff just
jumping around and jumping out of corners. They got it
right when they let him give the creature a little
bit of personality. And then the last thing they got right, well,
one of the last things I think they got right,
this nihilistic, desolate atmosphere. Ripley is just she's how much
more trauma can one person take? And I think that
the location kind of ups the Annie once again and
puts her in a really nasty environment where she's now
Ripley's going up against the alien, she's going up against inmates,
and she's got to go up against the company. You know,
waylan Utani is waiting there as like the final boss,
you know, for her to defeat.
Speaker 1: Every good thing I have to say about this probably
has to do with David Fincher, because this movie does
not look like any of the other Aliens. Like you,
it has not the same look. Granted, Aliens seemed like
a far cry from what Alien was, but it is
nothing compared to how different Alien three looks than all
of the other movies. You got to credit him with
that because it's not just the set design, which is fantastic.
He does these camera angles that are bizarre. I mean,
he's he's got stuff from floor shots up and it's
not stuff that you see in Scott's or Cameron's visions.
It is his own ideas and it's cool. And he's
the guy who gives us the xenomorph camp, you know,
the kind of weird fish eye running through the hallways.
It's great. It's like Jaws. It's like the sharp vision
in Jaws. I loved it. I thought it was perfect.
It raises the steaks. You see the guys running away
in fear, which is more terrifying most of the time
than actually seeing the monster chase them. Even with the
part that you hate, Jason, it is that every act
of destruction is an act of creation. It's without without
destroying Newt and Hicks, you don't have the storyline that
gives us the entire movement. And then I also will say,
you know, great job to these actors because they all
have shaved heads, and they almost all have British or
Irish or some UK accent, and they're all distinct even
though they've got that. It's I mean, there are some
that I'm like, okay, this is a wash. I don't
know which guy this is. But there are a handful
of guys that set themselves apart as we are characters
beyond just the bald head and the different accent.
Speaker 4: Okay, once again, I would say that that's a terrible
decision made by the execs or the people in charge.
The actors did the best they could. But when everybody
has that thick British accent, they're all white, they're all
shaved heads, it is very difficult for me to tell
anybody apart.
Speaker 1: Let me finish my story. Go ahead, because even though
when you think nothing else can go wrong, here's what happens. Right. So,
we've lost writer after writer, director after director. We've had
no wiggle room at all from the studio who's thrown
us into a toxic waste situation. But hey, good news.
We have got Jordan Croninwealth, the guy who gave us
the cinematography for Blade Runner. We are bringing him in
and he's going to be the DP for this show.
Fantastic excited, the crew said. The cast and the crew said,
this is the guy that David Fincher would speak to
with absolute reverence, like he was like a student at
his feet. Just loved talking to this guy. The problem
was is that the first assistant notices these little ticks
that he's having, And because the first assistant's dad has
passed away from Parkinson's, he realizes that Jordan cronin with
is at the last stages of Parkinson's disease. And he says,
you can't keep trying to fight this. I mean, think
of all the things going wrong. You can't keep trying
to fight this battle. You will kill yourself doing this.
So Ultimately they lose cronin with and they bring in
Alex Thompson, who's not bad. He had done Legend by
Ridley Scott, so not a bad replacement. But they've lost
again a major player that seemed to be something that
was on the positive category for this movie. So Fincher
starts arguing with Hill and Geiler about the script or
the lack thereof John Lando, the executive, is involved in
these arguments. You know, They're like, well, we'll go to Fox,
and they go to Fox, and Lando's like, I agree
with Fincher's He's right, you guys are messing us up
and screwed it up. And so finally Hill and Geyler
are like, screw you guys. We'll go back home, and
so they go back to La. So he doesn't Fincher
doesn't have to argue with the Brandywine guys anymore. But
now he has to justify every single take and every
single expense that he's that he has with Landau, the
Fox executive that used to be the guy, the Brandywine
guy's job. Now he's got to do it. So he
would shoot all day long and then at midnight he'd
get on the phone call Fox and start trying to
persuade them to pay for what he wanted to shoot
the next day. So now he and Landau are arguing
so much that Fincher just finally says, ship me back
home and take my name off of this piece of
Landau shuts down the production. He brings everybody back. They
put together a rough cup and they say he's going
to like, we're going to figure out what we're missing
and we're going to go from there. So there's three
hours of footage in the rough cut. The studio says,
cut all the gore, and you've got all these subplots
going on. They're confusing. Our test audience was confused. They
don't mention that their test audience was a bunch of
eighteen year old kids. They just said, too confusing. Let's
get rid of those. Now they have to reshoot things
because there's these giant holes in the plot because they've
taken out the subplots. And Fincher says, okay, you give
me one day, one scene of shooting and I can
fix it all. And the studio said no, no, and
so they end up shooting some other scenes. Sigourney Weaver's
hair has grown back at this point, she's wearing a
bald cap through parts of the movie. Gosh. So finally
Fincher is able. He's got all his footage, he's able
to sit down, he's ready to start editing, and the
studio says, oh, yeah, by the way, we need to
have this under two hours runtime. And he's like, why,
oh well, if we have it under two hours, they
can show up more times in a day, and so
that'll be more money from the theater. He puts his
middle finger in the air and says, I'm gone, and
he does not come back. During the promotion of the movie,
he gave one interview where he complimented the cast and crew,
complimented the special effects, and bit his tongue. He has
never done any other press, no promotion, never even went
to a screening of this movie. When they came to
him to do the director's cut, he said, I'll do
the director's cut if you let me burn the negative
and reshoot the entire movie.
Speaker 4: Yes, let's go. Okay, you've unleashed the tiger in me. Okay,
I'm jeff I'm sorry if I'm stepping on you here,
but I take solace in the fact that I hate
this movie. Okay, I burn with passion against this movie.
But I love the fact that David Fincher is out
there and he says, you know what, I hate it more.
I hate it more. I've even seen a quote where
he says that in nineteen ninety two the La riots,
the fires were coming close to the I hope the
fires come close enough with it catches the negative on fire. Jeff,
I'm sorry, I can't. I can't go with you, man,
I can't. I can't go with you on this. Let's
let's talk about what so we know what happened. Let's
talk about the bad stuff in this movie.
Speaker 3: Okay, let me.
Speaker 4: Just start off with Newt. Hicks and Bishop are killed
in the first three minutes of this movie, literally in
the opening credits. That totally screws the Cameron movie. The
great victory at the end of the Cameron movie is
Ripley saves Hicks, she saves Bishops, she saves Newt. They
get off the planet and it explodes, and that's the
great victory and it steals that from Aliens. So to me,
it's impacts a movie that I love. Number two, I
think everybody else sucks like I. All the other characters.
I care nothing about, even guy who plays Dylan. I
mean Dylan's okay, Dylan does some stuff and then they
run around and they play hide and seek the whole
time and nothing happens, literally nothing. They just guys are
getting picked off.
Speaker 3: Here and there.
Speaker 4: And then finally, you know, one of the things that
bugged me is the hair thing. And I know this
is a fincher deal. Sigourney Weaver shaves her head because
they make one mention about space Liise, they never revisit it.
There's no impact. We don't ever see them. Nothing ever
happens with this. It's totally weird, and we get to
look at a weird looking Sigourney Weaver the rest of
the movie.
Speaker 3: Man, I offer a rebuttal to you your three concerns.
Speaker 4: I'm ready, man, Okay, help me, O got this movie.
Speaker 3: I'll try. But but let me touch on the the
three things you just mentioned. Okay, So there's nothing wrong
with what you said about Aliens and what it does,
but we have to remember Aliens. You know, it's a
war movie in space. It's got the themes of the
nuclear family and the heroic military saviors. It's a product
of its time. It's a Reagan era thing where we
were We love it. I mean I still love it,
we all still love it, but we can't do that again.
We can't just remake it. When Fincher comes along, the
one idea that he shares with most of these writers
and directors that were in the mix is we got
to do something different. So while I hate the idea
of Hicks meeting an unfortunate end, I understand why it
had to happen. If we're not going to do the
script with him leading the resistance against Whylan Utani, and
we're not gonna do the script where he's on the
anchor point, we had to do something new. And this
is what we get. With regards to the characters. You know,
I think these are some of the coolest characters we
can get in this franchise. Because, yeah, everyone's running around
with the shaved head and their inmates that are kind
of this religious sect. I get that, But I love
Charles Dancing. This as the one soft person that Ripley
can finally bond with after all the trauma. She could
just have one moment of comfort with somebody, and Charles Dance.
We know he's an inmate, but when we find out
the story behind why he's there, you're like, yeah, it's bad,
but it's not like he's a psychopath. It's not like
he's a serial murder and rapist like Dylan, who is
played amazingly by Charles S. Dutton. This is a situation
where you got Charles and Charles. I love both these
guys in this film. The moment where he has that
scene in the mess hall after the funeral and she's
offering thanks, and you know that whole you don't want
to know me, lady. What she says to him, it
lets me know, lets the audience know, Hey, you know what, Ripley.
She might be damaged, but she is still very strong,
she's still very cold, she's still very fearless because she
delivers that line where you're like, what, that's how you're
coming back to I'm a murderer and rapist of women.
She's awesome in that moment. And lastly, with the lice.
This is a situation where I might apologize for Alien
three theatrical cut, but I will applaud the assembly cut
because it's one of those things where you got you
gotta remember there's like thirty three minutes of footage not
in the movie that you haven't seen. It answers all
the plot holes and it explains things, you know. It
doesn't just clean up the movie and give it some
better digital effects. Those missing scenes are paramount to the
movie story. You would care more about Clemens, who's played
by Charles Dance. There's a conversation that he has when
they're on the way to the morgue. It's a whole
conversation about newt and it kind of lets you know, like, hey,
this guy he means well, he's one of the good
guys in this place, and you bond with him over
that conversation. The opening is entirely different, you know, because
again we see a little bit more of how the
Sleucco gets into trouble. We see the crash, him finding
Ripley on the beach is it just looks fantastic, And
that's where you really get to see the life situation.
This whole planet is infested with these large lice. And
the fun fact they actually use you know, and you
can see the lice and there it's gross. The fun
fact here is that they actually use baby crickets for
all those scenes. So every time they come in and
they slough off their jackets and they're covered in lice.
Or every time the dog or in the assembly cut,
the oxen they're moving around, they're covered. You know, Ripley's
covered in these little creepy crawly things. So you get
a lot more of that and you understand that in
the assembly cut. So it's again it's one of those
things that everyone shaves their heads. Is it just the
cool thing to do? Is it the look on Fury
one six one? Or is there an epidemic? And it's
it's because there's a serious problem with lice.
Speaker 4: Interesting, So you get to see that in the assembly cut.
Speaker 3: Yes, the movie, the assembly cut is superior to the
theatrical cut. While I'm not gonna tell you, I promise
you'll love Alien three when you watch the Assembly cut,
but I think you walk away from it going Okay,
that wasn't bad, but still no Hicks, no money. You know,
I'm still not happy. So because you're not gonna get
Hicks in the assembly cut.
Speaker 4: But there's no version where Hicks and Newton Bishop live.
Speaker 3: Huh No, the mega terrific happy ending for those guys
does not exist. And I'm sorry for that, but I
think if you if you had the chance to see
the assembly cut, some of your frustrations would be abated.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, that's good, I'll check it out. I do
think just to rebut your rebut if at the beginning
of Return of the Jedi, if we started off in
the first three minutes of Return the Jedi we found
out that han Lea and Chui were killed off screen,
there would be rioting in the streets.
Speaker 3: Would you riot if Lando had been killed?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: Okay. The reason I make that point is because you're
talking about gloved characters that we have been with since
It's the beginning. Everyone you mentioned was in Star Wars
and then they were all an empire and we wanted
them to come back in Jedi. We've been with Ripley
since the beginning, and these are a couple characters that
she picked up in the second movie. While we love them,
we haven't bonded with them the way we've bonded with Ripley.
I love Bishop, I love Hicks, and I love Newt,
but I didn't have the same connection to them the
way I did with Ripley because I've been with Ripley
since the Nostromo.
Speaker 1: Here's my two cents on that opening three minutes. Okay,
I don't have a problem with the death of major
characters in the movie. I think it raises the stakes
of the movie. You know, spoiler alert for the new
Star Wars movies, even though they're years old at this point.
Like I started crying before Hans Solo died because I
knew it was about to happen, and I still loved
it because it was special and meaningful. They could have
killed off Newt and Hicks in the first twenty five
minutes instead of the first three minutes, and it would
have been a much more compelling story. But what they
did instead is they do it in the opening credits.
I think, probably largely not to have to pay people
to come back and be actors. The other problem that
I have with the first three minutes is you immediately
see the alien. This is ultimately based on a horror movie.
You can't show the monster in the first thirty seconds
of the movie. There's got to be mystery. There's got
to be a question mark. If the ship had crashed
and their pods were wrecked and we didn't really know
what had happened, and there were signs that were curious,
but we don't really know whether this is a result
of the wreck or is this alien acid, blood or whatever.
And then you've got the other question mark of have
they been infected, have what's gone on with them? And
do we ultimately lose them along the way, which they
did well with Ripley, but they could have easily done
with the entire crew there, and then potentially we lose
Newt and Hicks in that first act. But it's not
an outrage because you're given closure. You're not suddenly faced
with the immediate death of people who you had grown
attached to and were rooted four at the end of
part two, I.
Speaker 4: Totally agree with that. If there had been a mystery
and you know, crash landing and here are the bodies
and they're in a coma or whatever, and you know
they've got a hookup Bishop to find out what happened,
that would have been better. I wrote this down. So
at one oh nine into the movie you have the
opening of an alien egg, which number one, how did
in the freak did that alien egg get on the ship?
At one twenty six, Newts glass breaks. Okay, at four
minutes and twenty five seconds, Newt drowns and Hicks dies
when the ship crashes into the ocean. John Reid actually
made a joke with me. I told him I was like,
I was out at that point. I was done. I
was out of the movie. He said, So in your case,
Alien the Little Three stood for three minutes before I
was done with the movies. Yep, Alien Three.
Speaker 1: I love John.
Speaker 4: I told you I have a softball metaphor for you
on this Okay, So my softball metaphor for this movie
is you were coming off one of the best movies
of the nineteen eighties. The bases are loaded. Oh by
the way, the count's three to zero. All we need
is one run to win the game. You don't have
to hit a home run, and you swing at a
bad pitch and you ground out to the picture. This
is what this is. It is a horrible, blown opportunity.
I told you, it's not just that the movie's bad.
It's that it destroys a line and a character and
a movie that I loved. And to me, they committed
the unforgivable sin the first three minutes the end, huh.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you a question.
Speaker 4: Tell us how you really, but let me ask you
a question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, let's let's go to the alternate universe where
we can watch the movies that we want to watch. Yes,
because what the danger there is that there's certain movies
that don't exist because of decisions made here. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's.
Speaker 3: Say Fincher is a yes man, and let's the studio
bully him around and make the movie that they think
should be made. Okay, Or I'll do you one better.
Let's say he's a yes man and we get one
of the multiple scripts where Hicks is saving the day.
So now you've got basically you've got an alien's reducs
with Fincher at the helm. Okay, and it probably is awesome.
It probably we're today years later, we're probably talking about
how it was pretty awesome. But I mean it's kind
of like aliens say, the same way that The Force
Awakens is basically Star Wars all over again.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I feel like that's what Fincher would have done. Now,
if that would have happened, I think we miss out
on the Fincher that we love today. If Fincher goes
down that road, then we don't get seven, we don't
get the social network, we don't get all of these great, dark, nihilistic,
gritty David Fincher films that we love him for. If
he gives us the Colvin cut of Alien three, I don't.
I don't think it happens.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 4: You're asking me to choose between myself and David Fincher's career.
That's tough, man, because I love his nineties work.
Speaker 3: Think of the greater good here Jason.
Speaker 4: Calvin Cutt goes by the wayside.
Speaker 1: I think it's obvious in listening to the cast talk
about him that he was already This movie wasn't going
to destroy him, but it obviously hit him pretty hard.
I mean, this came out in ninety two. He had
a TV episode to go direct after this, and that
was all he had. But fortunately somebody threw a script
on his desk called seven Yeah, and so thank the
Lord that that one got greenlit before before he decided
to go do something else. But I think the lessons
that he got from this movie probably made him not
just a great director, but made him We're talking about
classic for history. This guy is going this guy's is
it should be in any top ten list of all
of the directors of all time.
Speaker 4: I think there's a case to be made. That really
Scott made one of the best movies of the seventies,
James Cameron made one of the best movies of the eighties,
and that David Venture made the best movie.
Speaker 1: Of the nineties, the best, the best. You're calling seven
the best movie I've seen?
Speaker 4: It is in the conversation Wow.
Speaker 3: I had the opportunity to speak with Dayton Johnson on
the docum based seventy seven podcast about seven. I can't
rightfully say it might be the best movie of the
nineteen nineties, but it is absolutely in the conversation. I
remember what I was wearing when I left the theater
with my co host Brad Kozo, and we just walked
out of the theater and there was about ten minutes
of silence because we couldn't believe the ending to seven
that we just saw.
Speaker 1: I felt the same way about Light Club.
Speaker 4: All Right, guys, we got anything more to say about
Alien three.
Speaker 1: Well, at least we know what the heck happened.
Speaker 3: I'll go on banging the drum for Alien three, primarily
the assembly cut, because it really capped off a great
what I feel would be a good trilogy for this franchise,
because the first time out, we got a haunted house
movie in space, and the second time out we got
a war movie in space. And this third time out,
they said, let's pick a new sub genre. And they said, okay,
how about prison drama in space? And it works. You know,
from the cold gray white of the first movie to
the cool, hazy blues of the second movie, we devolve,
I should say, into this Cipia tone, these yellows and browns,
and it's grimy and Finnure gives us a situation where
it's claustrophobic and we want to get out just as
bad as Ripley does. And for that, I think it's
a good movie.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. When I got done with it,
I literally I saw it in the theater. I have
not seen it since then until I watched it yesterday.
At the end, when she's throwing herself into the fire,
I thought, how the heck do we get Alien Resurrection?
So I actually keep in mind, this is one of
the very few movies that I walked out of. Yeah,
I put Alien Resurrection on to see what they did,
and some no name guy named Joss Whedon wrote this
ridiculous script and I watched for the I probably watched
it for five minutes and I see them growing a ripley.
I'm like, well, of course it was a clone. Yeah,
she predicted that when when asked about what's going to
happen if they kill you at the end of this, Oh,
I'm sure I didn't really die, or somebody's going to
clone me. And she does end up getting cloned, and
somehow the clone of her also has the alien baby
still in it. I could have walked out at that point.
I'd like, what what it produces, the parasite that was
implanted in from her? What?
Speaker 3: I want to be careful because I know I'm dangerously
close to to explaining or defending alien resurrection and I
am not here to do that. I said, I owned
the movie, and I own it that for the same
reason I own Superman The Quest for Peace. It's part
of the box set. Okay, doesn't mean I'm gonna watch it.
I had to take with the rest of them had Yeah,
it was they're handing them out. I had to take it.
But the whole idea, and I don't like the idea,
but we have to remember when Clemens is, you know,
attending to her, you know, he does take blood you
know he does. You know he does what a surgeon's
going to do. So the blood sample has Ripley's DNA
and the xenomorph DNA, and that's how you get this
ridiculous I'm not I know you shake. I see you
shaking your head, and I'm not telling you. Hey, it's
a good idea. I'm just I'm just trying to clarify. Well,
you know, it had the DNA of both, and that's
how you get this. So, you know, so superhero Ripley, we've.
Speaker 1: All forgotten that the xenomorphous blood is acid. Did we
forget that part? Oh? Yeah, this is the same as
human blood with chromosomes, just like every other thing, except
that it burns through everything.
Speaker 3: What hey, I'm not here to teach xenomorphinatomy. I can't
speak to that. I got one more thing. COVID COLVID
did not make me aware of the b biology on
this episode.
Speaker 4: I got one more thing for you guys. Okay, So,
after watching Aliens a billion times, I find it hard
to believe that the mother alien could poot you out
a couple of eggs that somehow got inside the escape
ship that ends up killing Newton Hicks and all this problems. Right,
I'm not buying it from the get go. I'm like, no,
that's bull crap. The eggs. She didn't have time to
lay eggs inside the ship. Okay, So here's a theory
that I saw on the internet. Bishop actually placed the
eggs there, that he was a double agent for the
company the whole time and managed to save those eggs,
and that Bishop is actually a bad guy.
Speaker 3: I col hate that. No, Na, not after what he did,
not after the sacrifice he made for Ripley and new
I'm not buying that that dog won't hunt.
Speaker 4: I don't like it either, But somehow those eggs got
inside that ship.
Speaker 1: Well, guys, you've heard our take on Alien three. I
am middle of the road. Jeff is a defender. Jason
is an eviscerating hater. Imagine the scene between the Queen
and Bishop at the end of a That is how
Jason feels about Alien three. But we have our dear
friend Joan Reid from the thirty something Movie podcast who
has an opinion on this as well. To hear his thoughts.
Speaker 5: Hey, everybody, this is John Reid from the thirty something
Movie Podcast. Thank you so much. Jason and Dee for
invite me to come on and send you all a
surely showcase for Alien three as part of your what
the heck Happened comparison with Last Action Hero. I'm going
to start off real quick by saying thanks a lot,
guys for giving me what maybe two to three minutes
to talk about one of my favorite movies, when you
know I could talk for two to three hours. My
history with the Alien franchise is I watched Alien with
my dad when I was a kid, I watched Aliens
with friends, and then when Alien three was coming out,
I was actually living in England, so it was being
filmed over there. There were comics, there were books, there
were behind the scenes features, there were live events, all
kinds of stuff. I was hooked on the Alien franchise immediately.
What do I love about Alien three? I love the performances.
Charles S. Dutton as Dylan is amazing. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley,
She's been developed over the course of the last two movies,
and I really think this movie gives her an opportunity
to take that even further. Charles Dance as Clemens is
also a great character in this movie. I love the visuals.
This movie really goes back to what I think the
heart of the Alien franchise is, and it is that
things are bleak, things are dark, they are sickly and diseased.
There This movie is kind of yellow and brown tones
and very dark, whereas things were a little bit lighter
and sci fi blue in Aliens. I love the spiritual
religious aspects of this movie and kind of the motherhood
aspects that come into the whole franchise. But some of
the early comic books I read around about the time
when I first started getting hooked on Aliens, that there
was a kind of almost a cult that had grown
up on Earth around the idea of the Aliens and
maybe how they were an image of God. And I thought, well,
that's that's not what I believe, but that's really interesting.
So I really kind of got interested in some of
those stories and kind of what it brought to the
Alien franchise, And of course this one, the religious guys
on the prison Planet take that a step further. Absolutely,
this is the biggest thing for me. It continues the
message that was set up in Alien. You are a
cog in the machine. If you want to look at
this as a metaphor for capitalism. You're just a cog
in the machine and the company does not care about you.
The state of life in space is, to quote Hobbes Leviathan, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short. And then here's my favorite one, even when
you win, you lose. Ripley won in alien but ultimately
she lost because she came back and her daughter had
died of old age and she was gone. Everything had
been lost. She regains a daughter in Aliens. But then
in this one, even though I know it's gut wrenching,
I absolutely agree with the death of Newt and Hicks
at the beginning of this she loses everything again. I
think that fits perfectly with the message of the Alien movies.
The Alien Queen even seemingly wins but ultimately loses. And
if you want to find a better scene for this,
you gotta watch. You should watch the assembly cut of
the movie. But then at the end switch it over
to the theatrical cut. That's a much better When when
we get to the end of the movie and you
want to see that part of it, switch to the
theatrical for when Ripley dives off the platform, it's a
much better ending to the movie in my opinion, Guys,
thank you so much. Love what you're doing, love your show.
This has been John Reid, last surviving fan of Alien three,
signing off.
Speaker 4: Okay, Jeff, you and John can go hold hands.
Speaker 3: Hey John, Yeah, I just want to thank John for
zooming in like Bishop did on that platform at the
end of Aliens, because I appreciate the support. Thank you, brother.
Speaker 1: I got to say, when I listen to the thirty
something movie podcast, I start thinking things as they're talking,
and literally as I think those things, then John says
the things that I think. It blows my mind how
much we are on the same page. My mind is
equally blown at this point at how much we are
not on the same page as far as this movie.
Speaker 4: G Jeff, will you come back next week with us
so we can talk about Last Action Hero and what
the heck happened with that movie?
Speaker 3: You know I will be glad to do that. We
covered Last Action Hero a couple months back on its
anniversary date. We had Andy Frye with us on that episode,
and you know, I feel like that was good training
between what him and Brad had to say about Last
Action Hero and the shots they were taken. I feel
like that was like the the undercard fight for for
what I probably am walking into next week when I
show up again.
Speaker 1: Here I at this moment, I've still not seen The
Last Action Hero.
Speaker 2: Not once.
Speaker 1: Didn't see the theater, didn't rent it. Never ever have
I seen it except like, you know, it's been what
thirty how many years?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: Thirty? It's ninety three, so it's been thirty years since
the movie came out. So there have been times where
I'm channel surfing back when I still did that, and
I was like, oh, this looks like a good movie.
Oh wait a minute, this I've heard this is terrible
and I didn't watch the rest of it. So I've
caught little bits here and there, but I have never
seen the movie from beginning to end. So I can't
tell you whether I'm going to be an advocator or
a denouncer.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is the last movie I walked out of,
jeff If you'll come back with us, we will dive
in next week to Last Action Hero.
Speaker 3: Happy to do it.
Speaker 1: Bye, guys, see you guys next week later.
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Madamy, Absolutely not, man.
Speaker 3: I love these kinds of episodes.
Speaker 4: Are you kidding me, good, good, okay,