Sirk TV Book Review: ALIEN 3 - THE UNPRODUCED SCREENPLAY BY WILLIAM GIBSON [Titan]
The development of "Alien 3" was always an interesting thought process. The tricky element was who to bring back, how to make it function and how to up the stakes. Eventually, David Fincher made a more dark and brooding take, which while interesting, definitely had a more somber feel to it while lacking some of the thrill structure of the original opting for a more existential approach. That is why reading the novel adaption by Pat Cardigan of the unproduced "Alien 3" screenplay by William Gibson, plays so well. Maybe it has to do with reflection but this story takes the texture of the 2nd film and gives it a new area in which to play. Neil Blomkamp wanted to maybe do an older version of this kind of story but this takes into account Hicks and Bishop still in their prime. But the reasoning behind it being shelved is clear in the way it handles Ripley and Newt, which might have been what the studio was dealing with in terms of options and/or negotiation. One can see a little of "Alien: Resurrection" in a different way, but this story is much tighter and dynamic, more akin in certain ways to the Disney film "The Black Hole" than the previous "Alien" movie.
In the interest of not giving too much of the plot away, the Sulaco is picked up initially by people who don't quite see what they are dealing with but the twist of it is what makes it interesting. This might be due to Gibson's fascination with cybernetics or body horror but it makes sense, even if the science is a little flimsy. It all comes to bear in a later space station meant to be an outpost to Gateway. This structure in the case of what happens, the political structure and the pace is what really makes it work. It becomes a different approach for Hicks while establishing a whole new team mixing both civilian and military that needs to achieve a goal that perhaps can't be surmounted and achieved. What we loved about Bishop and Hicks is still there but made much more dynamic. Granted we are in their heads a little more but it could have been easily transferred to the screen by the right director.
Those different archetypes so prevalent in "Aliens" are definitely here in Jackson, Sorretti, Torrina and especially in Spence, who ends up being a fantastic character simply in the way it creates her arch in many different facets. Most of the sequences, save for a tricky one at the end, could have been primarily doable at the time (1992) though expensive (yet Cameron pulled off something just as big with "Aliens"). The adaptation here of Gibson's screenplay is every bit as detailed as the movie would have been and Cardigan does integrate in aspects of the previous characters in certain ways like ghosts on Hicks and, to a point, Bishop's consciousness giving a nice sense of connection and a chapter which would have been great. It would have sent the franchise in a much different direction than it did....but perhaps that would have been for the better. A
By Tim Wassberg
