What would you do with Alien 3 and Resurrection?

[Srelex]

Suppose that Q shows up and gives you the power to alter the Alien 3 and Resurrection as you see fit, within reasonable limits, be it via taking over the production at the time or altering them presently. How would you change the plot, the story, the characters, etc? And saying 'run them both into the ground to kill them' isn't going to cut it.

[Stark]

I'd remove the production problems in Alien 3. I'm not a crybaby so I don't have unreasoning hatred for it.

Alien 4 is so far in the future who cares what they do with it. It doesn't affect the 2174 setting.

[weemadando]

I got back to the one of the unfinished Alien 3 plots of a wooden planetoid space monastery. It's a way more interesting concept.

[TOSDOC]

I'd keep Hicks and Newt alive. Look at it this way--Ripley could have gone down to Fury 161 by herself while the other two got ejected in the other direction, and it wouldn't have made a difference to the Alien 3 plot, but it would have kept other sequels more interesting. Their characters were great, and them dying was a big finger to the audience.

The Newborn was a mistake from start to finish. They're supposed to alter our DNA to suit them, not the other way around. Making the Auriga crash into Earth after only a 3-hour voyage from unregistered space was ludicrous.

[TOSDOC]

Oh, and I liked Clemens too. I found him to be one of the most (if not the most) intelligent human characters in the entire series. Hicks had great common sense, from the decision to nuke the site from orbit to simply remembering to grab a fire extinguisher on the way to a fire. But I wish we got the chance to see Clemens actually knowing about the alien so that we could see him try to tackle that intellectually. What would he have come up with?

[DPDarkPrimus]

I wouldn't interfere with Alien 3 other than remove the interference from the studios.

Alien Resurrection would be more Alien Reboot, with a film still in the future but without Ripley. Not so fucking-far in the future that WY is gone or anything, but a bit after Alien 3. Don't ask me what the story would be about, I'm just the producer. I'll let the writers come up with the ideas and approve/nix them as necessary.

[Artemas]

I got back to the one of the unfinished Alien 3 plots of a wooden planetoid space monastery. It's a way more interesting concept.

Yeah, that was pretty fucking sweet. Also a bit out there, as studio pressure showed. And i also agree re Hicks and Newt. I think Aliens 4 would be a lot better if they removed the comedy and the largely needless badassery. Having wrist-mounted guns is silly, and the station's security behaved in a rather slap-stick manner. A lot of the scenes and the environment as a whole was very dark and grungy, which carries over from the first two movies, but seems out of place in a high-tech research facility. I was expecting a lot more hospital green, harsh flourescent lights, and sanitized white.

Whatever happens with the plot of Aliens 3, it should not be a frankensteinian monster of different ideas.

[Galvatron]

I'd justify the lack of weapons on the marine EEV, if only just a passing reference to the weapons locker being destroyed in the crash or lost at sea. I'd also try to make it clearer how in the hell an egg got on board the Sulaco.

[MKSheppard]

Suppose that Q shows up and gives you the power to alter the Alien 3 and Resurrection as you see fit, within reasonable limits, be it via taking over the production at the time or altering them presently.

OK.

Some of Alien 3's Plot is saveable. It did have an unique setting -- a former manufacturing colony/prison that was kept on past closing; and took us to a corner of the Aliensverse we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

But in order for the central plot to work; so many handwaves have to be done to get the egg onto the Sulaco. We're to believe that after almost dying at the hands of an Alien Queen that wedged herself into a dropship gear well, Ripley just goes into hypersleep without checking the Sulaco over?

Better to continue the story where Aliens left off; the Sulaco returns to Gateway Station, several months after she left.

Look at it from the viewpoint of the Interstellar Commerce Commission.

The last two times this woman has been out, she has been present at:

• The detonation of the engines of a M class star freighter, causing loss of craft and cargo, both of which have a substantial dollar value.
• The destruction of the colony of Hadley's Hope via Atmospheric Processor malfunction. Again, an installation with a substantial dollar value.

In both cases, the evidence she has in support of her story is very damn thin; depending on how the Colonial Marines handle video feeds. Are feeds received from helmet cameras stored only on the APC and transmitted to the ship intermittently? Or are they continuously relayed?

If the APC got trashed before the pre-set "send all data up" interval, then she's got no footage or life support readouts from the Marines.

There might be video footage of the Alien Queen emerging on the hangar deck -- it all depends on the angles and locations of cameras.

She also has three witnesses, but two of them might be inadmissible --Newt due to youth, and Bishop because he's a synthetic (can they even access synthetic memory logs to play back what they see in court)?

And of course, all detailed data on the Aliens, and the specific order from Burke, Carter J that holds W-Y liable for the loss of the colony went up in a mushroom cloud.

(I am assuming that Burke was smart enough to erase the evidence of his directive on his end).

Either way, I can foresee a hold up of several days to a week, before the ICC decides that their stories all check out.

Once everyone's freed from ICC Quarantine/Investigation; we can segue into our next point -- the corporate/governmental asscovering likely to follow tenable proof of a virulently hostile life form.

From the talk of the Marines on the Sulaco on the way to Acheron, it's implied that there have been infestations of this type before with local life forms, requiring help for the colony to put down. But nothing as virulently hostile as the Aliens themselves.

It is possible at this time that the ICC manages to discover paperwork in W-Y's archives via government injunction -- namely paperwork related to the original order that had the Nostromo land on LV-426 in Alien.

The question then becomes....what's the corporate and governmental liability from this whole mess?

The W-Y execs can argue for a legal settlement that admits no wrong-doing and pays a simple lump sum of money to the next of kin of the Nostromo Crew, the Acheron Colonists, etc.

The ICC demands that W-Y pay for that, plus the deployment of additional security forces to colonies in that region of space. This is not cheap.

Things deadlock. Ripley is all disgusted; we show Hicks in the Hospital, Newt with her closest living relatives on Earth, and Bishop being rebuilt or uploaded to a new body.

In the middle of all this, a message comes in from a W-Y prison/mine code named Fury-161.

While drilling deeper into the mountain or what for more materiel to cast stuff from...they bust into a vast underground chamber.

Because some basic information got sent out by the ICC regarding this horrible new lifeform, the prisoners do the sensible thing and upon discovering this strange new thing; they only briefly take photos, then wall the chamber up and call for help.

So once again Ripley is brought on as a Consultant, this time working for the ICC, to help clear out whatever it is they've found on Fury-161.

The rest of the gang is still out of it enough to not go with Ripley.

From there on you can substantially adapt most of the plot of Alien 3; including Ripley getting impregnated by a queen egg, while cutting out the stupid and making it less of a copy of Alien.

For example, instead of a bunch of bald people running around in the darkness (compared to people with 1970s hair running around in the darkness), you can have it be more of a xenoarchaelogical dig gone bad.

The horror aspect of the Alien or Aliens stalking people can still be there; just not as overarching.

Alien Resurrection on the other hand; we can't save the plot.

The only thing we could save would be the idea of a secret military spaceship out beyond known space doing highly illegal and unethical research.

[MKSheppard]

Shroom suggested to me just now that you could change the format of Aliens 3 by having it being a chase -- a race against time or something, in which the humans HUNT the aliens, rather than it being the other way around.

[adam_grif]

The early Alien 3 teasers had it hinting at being set on or around Earth, but iirc that was before they had even written the script for it. Bringing Cameron back for A3 would be ideal but probably impossible.

[Fluffy]

I rather liked Alien 3, I think it got such a negative reception because people were expecting a fast-paced, action filled shooter like Aliens. I'm glad the "wooden planet" idea was scrapped...The extended edition is a better film too.

There are a number of plot holes in the last two films that need explaining, like how the egg got onboard the Sulaco and how the Auriga managed to travel from unregulated space in a matter of hours. 500 years of improved engine design I could buy, but not with the people being transported in "freezers".

[adam_grif]

They're transported in freezers because the FTL in alienverse has "inverse time dilation", i.e. time passes faster for you than it does on the outside, and the further past lightspeed you go, the worse it gets. They thus require cryostasis to prevent themselves from aging on the journey.

[MKSheppard]

I always liked that aspect of Aliensverse FTL -- "sure, we can break physics and travel faster than the speed of light, but there are problems involved in raping physics like that."

[adam_grif]

On the more extreme side of FTL with consequences, there is, of course, Revelation Space 'verse.

[Shroom Man 777]

Shroom suggested to me just now that you could change the format of Aliens 3 by having it being a chase -- a race against time or something, in which the humans HUNT the aliens, rather than it being the other way around.

Yeah. Have it be on Earth or some colony, but you can change it from "bunch of fatties in a isolated environment getting eaten one by one by monstrosities" or "bunch of fatties with guns in an isolated environment getting into action scenes and firefights before being eaten by monstrosities" into something more like... take the colony in Aliens, something similar happens, but Ripley and Hicks or whoever arrive BEFORE the colonists get eaten or facehuggered or implanted. They have to defend a small group of hapless people, but it's not from a single xenomorph ala Alien/Alien3, but from a group of them ala Aliens. Combine the premise of a group of civilians from Alien/Alien3 with multiple aliens. Except maybe it won't be an established hive, ala Aliens, but it will be a beginning hive - so there's just a few drones, and a single very young Queen who has only just begun laying eggs. So it is a race against time, they have to improvise ways to kill the few xenomorphs and protect themselves and rescue their friends BEFORE the xenomorphs can kill them all, or capture and implant enough eggs and create even more xenomorphs to overwhelm them all with.

Basically its like Alien 3 but with multiple xenos, and maybe some of them are armed. I don't know how different this would be... but yeah.

But it's really hard to do any more Alien movies since unless you can think up with more variations, you either end up with sci-fi horror/slasher flick where a bunch of people get killed one by one by an Alien, or a bunch of guys fighting for their lives against multiple Aliens.

If you attempt to make more variations, you run the risk of ending up with typical Hollywood bullshit also. Alien and Aliens benefited by keeping their premises rather simple. If you add more extraneous bullshit, you risk shitting it up. Blah.

[TOSDOC]

Does anyone else find the Queen Alien a concept not quite alien enough? In other words, the hive parallels to ants and bees were just a little too conveniently terrestrial in thought, while the original concept for the alien in the first movie's deleted scene actually turning it's prey into more eggs (something not found here on Earth) seems to be even more horrifying a concept.

Getting facehuggered is creepy, but having myself captured and slowly eaten by an embryo facehugger, watching my body become an egg like Brett's in that scene, that's really creepy too.

(EDIT--Add)

This might be another concept to explore--you'd be going back to an additional concept from Alien for Alien 3, but the characters could be further shocked by this ability of the Alien. It could be a transition point to make more eggs and aliens until a Queen is established, instead of having dedicated "Queen" facehuggers or something else which makes a Queen specifically. It bugs me that the aliens of the first two movies all seemed to have unknown agendas, a purpose, while the alien in the third movie appeared to be no more than a very aggressive lion, just killing for sport but not really doing anything with the bodies to further its own kind.

[sirocco]

I'd have a colony having to face 2 alien's hives trying to take out each other.

Keep also Ripley being infected. That would make her safe from some of the aliens and well hunted by everyone else.

[MKSheppard]

But it's really hard to do any more Alien movies since unless you can think up with more variations, you either end up with sci-fi horror/slasher flick where a bunch of people get killed one by one by an Alien, or a bunch of guys fighting for their lives against multiple Aliens.

I once read something that described ALIEN as a bunch of everyday men and women...who just happen to work in space; encountering an unspeakable horror.

In fact I believe the filmmakers of ALIEN described the Nostromo crew as a "bunch of truck drivers"; who don't care about exploring space, or any of that bullshit. They're just interested in a paycheck; witnessed by the sparring over the amount of shares that some crew members feel are owed them.

This same theme of "everyday people who just happen to work in space" carried over into ALIENS, where you have nurses, corporation executives, dockworkers all living or working on Gateway Station.

Same thing with Hadley's Hope -- in the Special Edition of ALIENS, there's a scene where a kid rides a BIG WHEEL with a W-Y license plate through the corridors of Hadley's Hope. Likewise, when the Marines are getting out of their APC, you can see a neon sign announcing "BAR" flickering dimly in the background.

They even have hamsters in the living quarters...in habi-trails of course.

In the last two films; there was much less of this emphasis of regular people living in space. There was just enough humanity left in the inmates of Fury-161 and what they did to make it work on a minimal level.

But by Resurrection?

Who gives a shit about these fucking losers on the Auriga or the Betty?

[Stark]

I'd have a colony having to face 2 alien's hives trying to take out each other.

Keep also Ripley being infected. That would make her safe from some of the aliens and well hunted by everyone else.

Oh jesus, not the comic books. Anything but that.

[Fluffy]

They're transported in freezers because the FTL in alienverse has "inverse time dilation", i.e. time passes faster for you than it does on the outside, and the further past lightspeed you go, the worse it gets. They thus require cryostasis to prevent themselves from aging on the journey.

However this is obviously not the case in Resurrection, where they travel from what is implied to be a great distance outside "civilized" space, to Earth, in a matter of hours.

[Uncluttered]

I've always been partial to the Darkhorse script.

Hicks rescues and adult Newt from a mental hospital on earth. Meanwhile, a death cult gets hold of the queen, and all hell breaks loose on earth.

[Shroom Man 777]

It wasn't Hicks and Newt, but the characters may have been just the same though.

[Stark]

I've always been partial to the Darkhorse script.

Hicks rescues and adult Newt from a mental hospital on earth. Meanwhile, a death cult gets hold of the queen, and all hell breaks loose on earth.

While that's already really stupid, did you forget that the Space Jockeys show up for revenge?

Ugh. Awful.

[MKSheppard]

It wasn't Hicks and Newt, but the characters may have been just the same though.

No actually, I have that comic series; I got it long ago in a trade.

When the comic's overall plot and script were approved to be used as the beginning of the licensed ALIENS novels; Newt and Hicks had died in Alien 3; so the names were changed to Billie and ??.