Alien^3

>>79412933

The Assembly Cut is the ONLY cut of Alien 3 anon.

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>>79412933

This is my attempt at figuring out who-is-who in the movie. Basically, there are four groups of people/droids(?) in the movie, that have to be accounted for: the sulaco four (4), the prison staff (3), the prisoners (25), and the "rescue" team (about a dozen or so, only two of whom have lines). This amounts to about forty characters, not including any animals or alien life forms. Depending on the cut you watch, the vehicle for the alien's birth is either Spike the dog, or Babe, a recently deceased ox which was used in a team to drag the EEV to shore. In one line, it is noted that there are, with Babe's death, seven oxen left at the prison. In the abbatoir, there are also some caged live fowl, among various butchered animals.

So among this group, the basic task is to figure out: who's who, and in what order do they bite it? I will develop this thought below, with reference to the AC.

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First, among the Sulaco four, Hicks and Newt immediately bite it during the opening credits sequence, and so their deaths can of course be positively attributed to this flick. The order of death is unclear however, so we must content ourselves with saying that Hicks and Newt (in no particular order) are the FIRST AND SECOND DEATHS. As far as I'm concerned, Bishop is a toaster who is turned on for a few minutes later, so I'm not terribly concerned about him, but we could call his final shutdown his death, later.

What I want above all is a NUMBER for the PRINCIPAL CAST for the body of the film. In Alien, this number is seven. In Aliens, it's 16. In this film, it's 29. How? There's Ripley, a prison staff of three, and a PRISONER head-count which is explicitly established in multiple lines to be 25, no more, no less - and no, this number does not include Clemens, a former prisoner. This custodial staff of 25 PRISONERS is down from about 5000 PRISONERS, per a related early line from Clemens.

Now here's the point about these 25 PRISONERS. They are an easily confused bunch. Several are not explicitly named during the film. There are not even names and actors explicitly mapping to all 25 prisoners. This is quite different from the previous two films, where there is a clear demarcation of who's who and exactly who dies or "gets got", and when.

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So, to account for this PRINCIPAL CAST of 29 (many of whom are not actually even present as actors, just a theoretical head count), we have to proceed step-by-step, as it were. The main "kill-events" of the movie are the botched "burn-it-out" Plan A, which basically ends the second act, and the later bait-and-chase Plan B. These easily explain the extra deaths of unseen, un-portrayed extra bodies among the 25 prisoners.

But meantime, the alien has to be born first, again, depending on cut, either Spike the dog or Babe the ox dies to give birth to the alien, during the Newt/Hicks funeral. After this, is where the "proper" body count begins IMO, the above caveats aside.

Victim ONE, resetting the count, now, is Murphy, named by Clemens upon investigation. This is the guy scraping shit IN THE YEAR 7510. Even in the AC, without actually seeing any Spike the dog, Murphy calls out for "Spike", so we can assume that the dog is an unseen character even in this version, that might be alive somewhere. Murphy interacts with Frank in the nice abbatoir set, and discovers the facehugger that impregnated Babe.

One failed rape attempt later in the film, the next vic TWO is RAINS, the white hat guy in the tunnel, followed immediately by vic THREE BOGGS, the black cross-forehead tattoo guy. Golic comes back up, is suspected and isolated, but next is vic FOUR CLEMENS, followed immediately by vic FIVE ANDREWS. This read on the first five-of-twenty nine leaves just Ripley, Aaron, and 22 prisoners left (only three prisoners have been killed thus far).

There's a pretty comprehensive account of the development & production hell this film went through on wikipedia. They basically didn't have any solid idea for a movie and ended up with pieces of three different scripts by a dozen writers smooshed together over years. I don't like the film but after reading about it I'm surprised that it isn't even worse than it is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_3#Development

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Now it's Plan A time, and the burn-out fails, which is implied to have killed several. Exactly how many I'll backtrack later, since I haven't actually worked it out yet.

Vic SIX is FRANK, who is killed going up the ladder, which touches off the firefight.

The next SEVERAL VICS are the unseen prisoners, depicted by burning, careening stuntmen, and an awful aftermath. But there is enough time for Junior to partly redeem himself and LURE the alien into the trap, being the next VIC.

Shortly afterward, the black Arthur, standing guard on the trap, is killed - but not by the Alien, but by an insane Golic. Still, I don't care about that detail, so I note Arthur's order in the body count here. Immediately afterward, Golic frees the alien, is promptly killed for his efforts, and these deaths set up both Plan B, and endgame, where it becomes possible to make sense of remaining people.

An important scene about this endgame setup is a scene where the remaining people meet and hash out what to do, a nice stage piece desu. Aaron sits solitary-left on a fence, and the prisoners are grouped in three vertical clusters, with a cynical loner Morse on top, in one of the ovoid portals. Ripley and Dillon are "stage-right". The point of this, is that there are clearly only eleven people left, at the meeting anyway.

One later complicating factor is that a vic is identified as "Vincent", and yet none of these people, credited actors with lines and parts, actually /is/ one "Vincent".

The endgame chase goes in abooout this order, in my reckoning: "Vincent", William, Troy, David, Kevin, Jude, Gregor, Eric. So all the bit-part prisoners are wasted by this point. Finally, it's Dillon, [the alien itself], Aaron, and Ripley. Morse is the sole survivor of the group.

>>79412933
Positive? What happened to this film is fucking happening right now to batman and affleck, history people hope youre watching

Should have taken place in a space monastery like it was originally going to. So much potential for cool imagery.

I tried watching Aliens a few days ago and got bored after 40 minutes.

It's like they took out all the atmosphere and soul the original had.

I'm sure for it's time it was a remarkable film but nowadays it just seems to be a better than average action film.

>>79414615

You stopped right before things got going. Right, immediately, before. Assuming you've never seen it before, you don't even understand the structure of the pacing in order to be able to meaningfully or intelligently comment on Alien's status as an action film. You have to actually get to the action for that. But you stopped just short of it.

>>79414661
I wasn't bored due to lack of action, I was bored due to lack of interest. Alien was enthralling from the first minute.

>>79412933
I always felt that it was strange that the assembly cut changed the xenomorph coming out of the ox instead of the dog yet kept the more canine appearance.

I don't know if this was the original sequence where the ox host just made it a quadruped that the studio heads wanted redone because the xeno looks like it has more canine traits, or is this was done with reshots in post production to make it align with the script before being dropped more with the final monster design as a place holder, or what I don't know. My guess is the former as the concept art for the creature was pretty consistent from the beginning and the were rewrites being done to the script even after they started shooting but who knows

>>79412933
This seems like an odd premise for a thread but I like Alien3 so whatever. Despite the aesthetic being grungy bordering on brutalist I still think it's the best looking Alien movie by far. And cast are still interesting as hell even though so many of them are shallow.

>>79414981

OP here, I don't find it /too/ jarring. The xenomorph will naturally be a far more hostile genetic version of its host, and always with the characteristic morphology. The switch from one mammalian quadruped to another doesn't upset me too much.

However I listened to the commentary track (Fincher was of course unavailable, which left more time for techs to talk details about their end), and it was mentioned how for the theatrical, it was decided that a dog was a better host because it was a "faster, more aggressive" creature that better explained this alien. I can appreciate this POV.

>>79415203

Thanks for the input. I sincerely disagree about both of your latter detailed points, however, preferring the original in both cases.

>Morse writes a suppressed/banned account of his experiences entitled "Star Beast"

>this is a punning play on the original working title of the original Alien screenplay