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Comment by BLKNSLVR | Hacker News Reader

I love Alien 3.

The grand bleak architecture and raw, basic reality of the lives and location. Initially I disliked (like everyone else) killing off Hicks and Newt so unceremoniously after their being Ripley's "great success" of Aliens. But it sets the consistent, depressing tone of the film, which is maintained throughout.

I think there's a Quake aesthetic as well, which I have a pronounced soft spot for (in addition the the first person alien view aspects towards the end of the movie).

I rewatch Alien 3 one every couple of years. I still love it.

Not to mention it's got some first rate actors too.

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Yes, I agree – I've defended Alien 3 several times over the years. It does trail off a bit in the second half or so, where it sort of devolves in to a "run from alien creature"-type film, which is a bit of a shame.

A major problem, as I understand it, were studio execs insisting on repeating the previous films because that's what made money, apparently not understanding that "more of the same" was not necessarily going to be the same success, and that "bastardised film that leave everyone equally unhappy" also isn't. To be fair, perhaps they were too busy stealing money with creative accounting or raping scores of women.

And I suppose this is also a big problem in general: no one can make a "Jurassic Park" film without approval of a certain type of Hollywood exec, not for a long time anyway (everyone reading this will be dead). Even something remotely similar would almost certainly invite a costly lawsuit.

Come to think of it, this is probably also why feathered dinosaurs are such a taboo in Hollywood: "oh no, we might frighten the audience if we show them something unexpected, and that might result in less ticket sales!"

Remember "48 Hours" with Eddy Murphy and Nick Nolte, that was a huge unexpected hit? The studio decided to do a sequel, "Another 48 Hours". Murphy and Nolte went on Jay Leno to promote it. They said that they analyzed everything in the original movie to see what worked and what didn't. Then they amped up everything that worked in the sequel.

You can guess the rest. The sequel bombed.

The tragedy of Alien 3 is that there was far better lore in the comics world. Newt had been returned to Earth but was kept in an institution to keep her experience secret and made to think she was crazy. That could have been a full TV series by itself. I loved the movie, but hated that it destroyed published continuity.

Not only was there better lore in the comics world, there was better lore in the first version of the script.

Plus David Fincher as director (I just rewatched Se7en). I haven't watched it since it first came out, but I might do now. The idea of a prison for double-Y criminals was suitably creepy.

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