It is often said that the human brain begins to develop implicit memories around the 2-year mark. While I can’t recall my earliest childhood years, I still remember sitting in a darkened California theater with my mom and older brother at the age of 4 on May 1992. I remember hearing the iconic 20th Century Fox fanfare descending from triumph to absolute dread through gigantic speakers in the dark, which was nothing short of terrifying.
Equally memorable were the opening credits spliced between shots that I could scarcely digest the first time—the spindly legs of a facehugger looming across the screen, the glass lid of Newt’s hypersleep chamber cracking, blood pooling beneath the white fabric of a t-shirt—but the soundtrack’s delicate, building dread reinforced the pervasive feeling that nothing was going to be ok. This was a far cry from Hook and Beauty and the Beast, movies designed to delight and entertain, but I remained transfixed instead of balling my eyes out. Why? Because I had no idea what this movie was up to. A lot of kids before my time had Star Wars and The Dark Crystal to blow their minds wide open, but for me, it was this dark, unrelenting vision of the future, where we see the corpse of a little girl being carved up, an alien creature exploding from the body of a dog before proceeding to slaughter a bunch of rapists and murderers, and the heroine committing suicide at the very end because she was doomed one way or the other.
The funny thing is that I can’t recall what my mother and brother thought of it or what was discussed after we left the theater, but I was enamored enough to beg my parents for the VHS copy when it was first released. Back then, we ordered new releases from the Columbia House catalogue, and seeing the poster for Alien3 splashed across the front page, Sigourney Weaver standing there in all her bald-headed glory, brought back the rush and uncertainty I felt just the year before. Ultimately, the delicate nature of the VHS format couldn’t stand up to the number of viewings I demanded of this movie.
Of course, this was before the days of social media and the constant expansion of critical analysis. If you wanted to know how a particular movie was received, you would either have to flip on the TV to see what the big critics thought (Siskel & Ebert, Schallert, Maltin) or crack open a newspaper. To find out what the fanbase reaction was, you’d have to pick up a copy of Fangoria or Starlog Magazine. I didn’t have much access to any of the above, nor did I care. It really speaks volumes of where we’re at currently because we can’t really experience a movie these days without carrying baggage into it beforehand. There are aggregated audience scores, Facebook debates, and endless reviews coagulating in the backs of our minds before we park our asses in a movie theater.
It wasn’t until many years later that I discovered how polarizing Alien3 was. A lot of fans were upset that Newt and Hicks, characters I wasn’t familiar with prior to seeing the film, were disposed of in such a quick and morbid fashion. The tone rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and while the ending was definitive (at the time), it was perceived as one last sucker punch by fans who were expecting the franchise to go in a much different direction.
Fortunately, the movie has experienced a resurgence in fan appreciation, which I suspect has a lot to do with the Assembly Cut that was released in 2003. Having seen that, it has deepened my pre-existing appreciation for the movie I saw at age 4, and upon learning about the kind of mess it festered in from the development stage to the actual shoot itself, I see Alien3 as a literal diamond in the rough. It’s not perfectly formed and each fan sees it differently, but it is still beautiful. I’m not sure how I would feel about it had my circumstances been different and I saw the original trilogy sequentially, but it’s how I was introduced to the franchise, and it was an unforgettable experience in its own way.
As I write this, I’m 31 going on 32, and in all the years preceding that, I have watched the original trilogy backwards and forwards. I also dove headfirst into the Dark Horse comics, which oddly enough started before Alien3 and continued the adventures of Newt, Hicks, and (eventually) Ripley. We have been treated to two variations of an alternate Alien3 that William Gibson was originally tapped to write before we were given the film we currently have, and Neil Blomkamp got super close to developing a post-Aliens sequel that would have negated the events of Alien3 entirely. The reason why the final product has prevailed in all the areas where those alternate takes have not is because the final story ultimately surrendered itself to the spirit of the universe that fostered its predecessors’ existence. It wasn’t crafted to be a “logical follow-up” to a movie that everyone loved and Hollywood typically wants, but to show us where Ripley’s journey ends, and when you realize how inconvenient and uncomfortable Ripley’s situation has been up to this point, it only makes sense that her last stand would take place on the very edge of despair—alone on a dusty, lice-infested prison colony with no conventional weapons, her surrogate daughter and potential love interest dead and gone, and the source of her nightmares literally festering inside of her.
As a concluding entry, it taught me a great deal about subverting expectations and the nature of endings in general. Sometimes it’s not a triumphant experience and the hero doesn’t always ride into the sunset. When Ripley needs her allies the most, they’re violently taken off the chess board. When the big beast is finally vanquished, there’s always a price to be paid. Those elements are a far cry from epic battles and tearful goodbyes, but it was the perfect way to close out a storyline that’s as fundamentally intimate as Ripley’s, and a universe as dark as the one in which the Alien resides.