Alien 3 (1992): What the Heck Happened?!

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Sure that You
<v Speaker 1>Can't Be Serious Podcast. We are here today with our
<v Speaker 1>special guest host Jeff Johnson from the A film by
<v Speaker 1>podcast What's Up?
<v Speaker 2>Jeff?
<v Speaker 3>Not a whole lot d Thank you for having me
<v Speaker 3>back again so soon. Had a great time with you
<v Speaker 3>and Jason last time.
<v Speaker 1>Last time was a barrel of fun and matter of fact,
<v Speaker 1>we've gotten together several times and the last couple of
<v Speaker 1>big episodes that we got together on were another couple
<v Speaker 1>of what the heck Happened episodes, and that was on
<v Speaker 1>Jaws The Revenge and Superman The Quest for Peace and
<v Speaker 1>What the heck Happened premise is something that my co
<v Speaker 1>host Jason Colvin came up with because there are movies
<v Speaker 1>that he just can't figure out what the heck happened with.
<v Speaker 4>That's right, Those episodes were a lot of fun. Today,
<v Speaker 4>Not sure there's gonna be a lot of fun for
<v Speaker 4>my part.
<v Speaker 1>Today, we are here to talk about Alien cubed. We
<v Speaker 1>are here to talk about three where in the theater
<v Speaker 1>everyone can hear you scream. Specifically, they can hear Jason
<v Speaker 1>stand up at the credits at the opening and say,
<v Speaker 1>what the fuck you can't kill Newt and Hicks and
<v Speaker 1>then throw his popcorn at the screen. Guys. I figure,
<v Speaker 1>with the depression that's going to ensue from this episode,
<v Speaker 1>I decided we needed to start with a joke. You
<v Speaker 1>guys ready for my joke?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>Do you know what happens when you give David Fincher
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of lemons? He makes lemonaien three.
<v Speaker 4>Oh my gosh, I know you're a father because that
<v Speaker 4>is a dad joke. Okay, so you're kidding around, but
<v Speaker 4>I was really I told Jeff today, I called you,
<v Speaker 4>and I'm like, I am still angry and bitter about
<v Speaker 4>this movie. I am so mad, and after doing my research,
<v Speaker 4>I am more.
<v Speaker 1>Mad, more mad because it didn't have to be this way.
<v Speaker 4>It did not have these guys aft it up.
<v Speaker 5>Man.
<v Speaker 1>Well, Jeff, I don't know. Do you hate this movie
<v Speaker 1>as much as Jason does.
<v Speaker 3>I don't hate it at all. Point of fact, I
<v Speaker 3>happened to like Alien three. You know, when we're talking
<v Speaker 3>about theatrical cut and when we're talking about the two
<v Speaker 3>thousand and three assembly cut, I happened to love it.
<v Speaker 4>So this cannot be true. Jeff.
<v Speaker 1>It is a true apologist.
<v Speaker 3>Much like the superintendent of Fury one six y one.
<v Speaker 3>I am here for rumor control and to deliver the facts.
<v Speaker 1>So before we jump right in with this, you guys,
<v Speaker 1>remember what you were doing in nineteen ninety two, other
<v Speaker 1>than throwing your popcorn at the screen.
<v Speaker 4>I was so mad. Okay, So in ninety two, I
<v Speaker 4>just completed my first year of college, excited for a
<v Speaker 4>blockbuster year at the movies, and this got us kicked off.
<v Speaker 4>May twenty second, nineteen ninety two, kind of early in
<v Speaker 4>the summer. I was with my now wife Catherine, and
<v Speaker 4>we went to see this movie and we both loved,
<v Speaker 4>absolutely loved the James Cameron nineteen eighty six classic, which Jeff,
<v Speaker 4>I told you that's the best movie of nineteen eighty six, right,
<v Speaker 4>So I absolutely love Aliens. And when we saw it
<v Speaker 4>in the theater, I was so mad, but I did
<v Speaker 4>not leave. Stayed for the entire punishment of this movie.
<v Speaker 4>So just a great time in my life. But this
<v Speaker 4>was not a good day for me. I can remember
<v Speaker 4>watching this in the theater. Was This would have been,
<v Speaker 4>I guess the summer before my junior year of high school,
<v Speaker 4>so I was at least driving at this point. I
<v Speaker 4>didn't detest it, but I was really bored.
<v Speaker 1>I also was Aliens fan, right, I'm not the super
<v Speaker 1>fan that you are, but I don't even know if
<v Speaker 1>I had seen the original Alien at that point. I
<v Speaker 1>loved Aliens, thought it kicked, but I saw that one
<v Speaker 1>with my dad, really loved that one, was excited for
<v Speaker 1>something like that in this and then when I got there,
<v Speaker 1>I was just like, this is kind of dull. I
<v Speaker 1>didn't have that visceral reaction that you did at the
<v Speaker 1>beginning when the two died because I just didn't care
<v Speaker 1>that much. But how it ultimately played out, I was
<v Speaker 1>just like, Eh, this is kind of a letdown. That's it.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm turning sixteen this year. But I do remember
<v Speaker 3>going to the movies to see Alien three with my buddies.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't love it the way I love it now, because,
<v Speaker 3>like you, I was expecting more of Aliens. But I
<v Speaker 3>remember us walking out and one of my buddies going,
<v Speaker 3>holy shit, they killed Hicks and Newt the little Girl,
<v Speaker 3>and I'm like, no, holy shit, they killed Ripley. I
<v Speaker 3>remember just leaving kind of stunned at the big risks
<v Speaker 3>that the movie took at the time, and not really
<v Speaker 3>feeling okay with them, but also still thinking like, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>that was that was different. That was not what I expected.
<v Speaker 3>It's not what I thought I was walking into. But
<v Speaker 3>I still still dig it.
<v Speaker 4>I still like it, all right. So it's it's our
<v Speaker 4>job to untangle the mass of problems that happened on
<v Speaker 4>this picture.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, what do you got for us? Man? Okay, so
<v Speaker 1>we get done with Aliens. It's a massive monumental success, right,
<v Speaker 1>mind blowingly good. Whole lot of people saying it's better
<v Speaker 1>than the first one. Right, it's an yes, Jason among
<v Speaker 1>those folks.
<v Speaker 4>Absolutely.
<v Speaker 1>And by the way, guys, if you haven't heard our
<v Speaker 1>Alien Versus Aliens episode, it's one of my favorites. We
<v Speaker 1>talk about Dan O'Bannon and his journey to get this thing.
<v Speaker 1>By the way, I sent a text to you, guys.
<v Speaker 1>I was watching Alien three on Hulu and no less
<v Speaker 1>than three times did the advertisement give me an advertisement
<v Speaker 1>for medication for Crohn's disease. I was like, seriously, guys,
<v Speaker 1>do you get the joke here? I mean, not only
<v Speaker 1>did it inspire the author to have the chest burst scene,
<v Speaker 1>but it also killed him. Yeah, yeah, how about that?
<v Speaker 1>So that was a little weird too. In our episodes,
<v Speaker 1>we talked about all of the stuff behind Alien Aliens
<v Speaker 1>and those two pictures and which one we like better
<v Speaker 1>of the two. Now, I'm not going to go into
<v Speaker 1>all of that. We just know that after Aliens, we
<v Speaker 1>have got a winner on our hand. Right, We have
<v Speaker 1>got a series that potentially is getting better as it
<v Speaker 1>goes along, right, and a following that is mirroring that
<v Speaker 1>of like Star Wars or Star trek I didn't realize
<v Speaker 1>how big the franchise follow in this world are, but
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of them that are hardcore as much
<v Speaker 1>as Trekki's or what do they call these guys xenomorphs,
<v Speaker 1>what do they call for xenaheads? Xenophiles?
<v Speaker 4>I don't know, but John Reid is one of them.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, John is another Aliens three apologist, right he is.
<v Speaker 4>We'll hear from here a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>So Brandywine is the production company. You have Geiler and
<v Speaker 1>you have Hill, the two main guys of brandy Wine.
<v Speaker 1>They're the guys that are the force behind the movie
<v Speaker 1>at the outset, and so they've got this property on
<v Speaker 1>their hands, and Fox is like, let's make another one, guys,
<v Speaker 1>and they are genuinely not that interested. What yeah, what right?
<v Speaker 5>Right?
<v Speaker 3>Doesn't make sense?
<v Speaker 1>Well, so it's not that they disliked the franchise. They
<v Speaker 1>just thought, and this is a reasonable thought, they thought,
<v Speaker 1>we want to make something new and different, and if
<v Speaker 1>we're going to do something with Alien, we want it
<v Speaker 1>to be new and different. And we don't know what
<v Speaker 1>to do. We've had horror, we've had action. What do
<v Speaker 1>we do next? And so they're like, okay, let us
<v Speaker 1>give this to a young on fire writer and see
<v Speaker 1>what he can do with it. And so they give
<v Speaker 1>it to a guy that we've talked about before, mister
<v Speaker 1>William Gibson, the guy who in the early eighties brought
<v Speaker 1>us Neuromancer, the whole idea of cyberpunk. They say, hey,
<v Speaker 1>we want you to write a script not just for
<v Speaker 1>part three, but for parts three and four back to back.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah. So they approached James Cameron, and James Cameron said, listen,
<v Speaker 4>I'm working on the Abyss right now, but if you
<v Speaker 4>get Ridley Scott to do part three, I'll do part four.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, So do that? Right?
<v Speaker 4>Is that a no brainer of no brainers?
<v Speaker 1>Right? So you know what they did, They actually made
<v Speaker 1>the right choice. They went to Ridley Scott. The problem
<v Speaker 1>was Ridley was interested, but he was too busy as well.
<v Speaker 1>He had other things going on and they wanted to
<v Speaker 1>get this out. While I say, while the iron is hot,
<v Speaker 1>this is late eighties, this is we haven't got to
<v Speaker 1>the nineties either, right, and this is late eighties that
<v Speaker 1>they're trying to get this problem solved. So he's not interested.
<v Speaker 1>But they've got William Gibson working on the script and
<v Speaker 1>he comes up with what he calls space commis hijack
<v Speaker 1>alien eggs. You get a big problem in a mall world.
<v Speaker 3>Okay. So what happens in his.
<v Speaker 1>Script is the Silaco is boarded and towed to a
<v Speaker 1>place called Anchor Point. And so that's why you'll sometimes
<v Speaker 1>hear about the Anchor Point script. This is William Gibson's
<v Speaker 1>original script. And I told you guys, ultimately he produces
<v Speaker 1>this as an audiobook. He gets Michael Bean to come
<v Speaker 1>in and voice, He gets Lance Hendrickson to come in
<v Speaker 1>and voice. I mean this is decades later, so Lance
<v Speaker 1>Hendrickson sounds like one hundred and five year old man.
<v Speaker 1>But it's out there. If you guys want to hear
<v Speaker 1>the William Gibson version of this script. You can download
<v Speaker 1>the audio book.
<v Speaker 4>The fact that Hicks has lines I'm already liking this better, well.
<v Speaker 1>That was his big deal. So what happens in this
<v Speaker 1>script is that Hicks becomes the protagonist. Ripley makes a
<v Speaker 1>cameo appearance at the beginning, and then basically go into
<v Speaker 1>a coma. Hicks becomes the guy who's the driving force
<v Speaker 1>behind the plot of the movie, and he discovers that
<v Speaker 1>I'm sorry, the Wiland Yanni Corporation Wayland Utani. Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>why I'm not gonna say it, because they get it
<v Speaker 1>wrong every time. All my vows mixed up. I'm just
<v Speaker 1>going to call them the WY Corporation, all right. Or
<v Speaker 1>the company finds out that the WY Corporation is manufacturing aliens,
<v Speaker 1>and one of the guys who's helping in the manufacturer
<v Speaker 1>knows this is a bad idea, and he basically tells Hicks,
<v Speaker 1>you have to go back to the source of the
<v Speaker 1>aliens in order to stop them. And so it becomes
<v Speaker 1>this mission to go back to the home world. And
<v Speaker 1>again it's more like Aliens, where you've got the marines,
<v Speaker 1>heavy action. Let's go to the alien home world. And
<v Speaker 1>kick some ass.
<v Speaker 4>Sounds great, Let's make it now.
<v Speaker 1>Like I said, this was late eighties and so this
<v Speaker 1>was largely kind of allegorical for the Cold War. And
<v Speaker 1>so he gives this script to Hill and Geiler of
<v Speaker 1>Brandywine and they look at it and they're like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>it's good, but now it's kind of missing something. And
<v Speaker 1>what they're thinking is it's missing the cyberpunk, which is
<v Speaker 1>the reason we hired you in the first freaking place.
<v Speaker 1>He's just basically written an Alien's Part two. So what
<v Speaker 1>they do, of course, what they always do, They say, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>we can't get Ridley Scott. We need to find another director.
<v Speaker 1>And so the first guy that they go to is
<v Speaker 1>Rennie Harlan because he has just finished with Nightmare on
<v Speaker 1>Elm Street Part four, which was a Nightmare on Elm
<v Speaker 1>Street back right. It was very well received Nightmare on
<v Speaker 1>Elm Street. But Rennie only sticks around so long. By
<v Speaker 1>the way, I'll ask this question, now, have you guys
<v Speaker 1>seen the other alien movies? Like I've seen Alien Aliens,
<v Speaker 1>Alien three, and about three quarters of Alien Resurrection. And
<v Speaker 1>then when she had the Alien Baby, I walked out
<v Speaker 1>of the theater. My popcorn was empty, or I would
<v Speaker 1>have thrown it at the screen.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I have actually seen them all. I own them all,
<v Speaker 3>with exception to the Alien Versus Predator spinoff movies that
<v Speaker 3>that happened because I'm not a fan of those. My
<v Speaker 3>feelings for them mirror Jason's feelings for Alien three.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, I have seen them. I'm like a heroin addict
<v Speaker 4>who keeps going back and trying to get that high,
<v Speaker 4>and I have yet to find anything coming close to
<v Speaker 4>nineteen eighty six.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I really feel like there's hope because last year
<v Speaker 1>Prey came out. I mean I would have felt the
<v Speaker 1>same way about Predator and all its incarnations, and then
<v Speaker 1>we got Prey and it was fan for fantastic.
<v Speaker 4>That's true.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so there's always hope. There's always hope that they
<v Speaker 1>will really resurrect the Alien series. So anyway, I just
<v Speaker 1>know from reading about it that this going back to
<v Speaker 1>the Home World. They kind of recycled that for Prometheus, right, Yes,
<v Speaker 1>give me a little bit of it.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, Yeah, those movies suck too, but keep going.
<v Speaker 3>Well, they didn't suck that, okay, So they suffer from
<v Speaker 3>the same thing that I think Alien three suffers from
<v Speaker 3>is the allegiance to the Cameron Aliens film, which is stellar.
<v Speaker 3>I love it. It's an awesome sci fi action war film.
<v Speaker 3>But it was time to do something different. And while
<v Speaker 3>we're on the William Gibson script, because Jason, I know
<v Speaker 3>you said you love you love the idea, let's go.
<v Speaker 3>Let's think about two things. First off, do you really
<v Speaker 3>want to retread of Aliens? And secondly, remember, as d
<v Speaker 3>pointed out, Sigourney Weaver's Ripley character, she is pretty much
<v Speaker 3>the whole movie. She's in a coma. And why would
<v Speaker 3>Sigourney Weaver sign off on something like that. Well, that's
<v Speaker 3>because she was still upset with Fox over how they
<v Speaker 3>treated the Aliens cut, because they cut out a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of our backstory, which is thankfully available and the director's
<v Speaker 3>cut of that film. So she was like, sure, I'll
<v Speaker 3>show up and take a nap and just not do anything.
<v Speaker 4>Fine, I don't want to get us off track, but
<v Speaker 4>let me just address what you're saying right there. I
<v Speaker 4>don't want to retread of Aliens, but I think back
<v Speaker 4>to there's like this alternate universe where we could have
<v Speaker 4>had a movie where Hicks is the protagonist and he's
<v Speaker 4>kicking butt. You know, we're not living in Ripley's unended nightmare,
<v Speaker 4>So I think that there's there were just bad decisions made,
<v Speaker 4>But I don't want to get off on that.
<v Speaker 1>Keep going well and and just to touch on it,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I feel like she is a key factor.
<v Speaker 1>She's a force in this storyline. But her perspective, I
<v Speaker 1>think I share her perspective on it, Sigourney Weaver's perspective,
<v Speaker 1>which is, where's my character going to go from here?
<v Speaker 1>I mean, she's gone from blue collar worker to basically
<v Speaker 1>Lieutenant Ripley leading and fighting the alien one on one,
<v Speaker 1>becoming a mother figure when she had been very much
<v Speaker 1>a solo figure before, right, even without the backstory, right,
<v Speaker 1>And so she's like, I don't really know where else
<v Speaker 1>this character is gonna go. And that's why she's good
<v Speaker 1>to go to sleep for two thirds of the movie.
<v Speaker 1>And then maybe she comes back at the end and
<v Speaker 1>she's you know, God from the Machine or the Savior
<v Speaker 1>or whatever, and that's great. But to have her be
<v Speaker 1>absent from so much of the movie, when she's such
<v Speaker 1>a key part, it's kind of tricky. It's could be
<v Speaker 1>hard to pull off. So they said William Gibson try
<v Speaker 1>it again. He said, I'm done. Thanks, guys, appreciate you.
<v Speaker 1>So before Rennie leaves, before Rennie Harlan leaves, he says,
<v Speaker 1>check out Eric Red. He can help you out with
<v Speaker 1>the rewrites, and so Eric Red takes it.
<v Speaker 4>Eric Redd is the writer of The Hitcher, which Jack
<v Speaker 4>on your podcast. That movie is spectacular.
<v Speaker 3>Love that movie, Eric Red. Now listen if you're leaving
<v Speaker 3>Gibson behind, Eric Redd is a great way to go
<v Speaker 3>because in addition to The Hitcher, Let's not forget, he
<v Speaker 3>does one of the coolest vampire films ever, which happens
<v Speaker 3>to Starlance Hendrickson. This is the guy behind Near Dark.
<v Speaker 1>His version kills everyone and has an entire new set
<v Speaker 1>of characters fight the Aliens, talk about the worst of
<v Speaker 1>both worlds. He not only kills Ripley right off the bat,
<v Speaker 1>he kills Hicks and Newt as well. Right they're all
<v Speaker 1>gone and there's an entirely new fight and it takes
<v Speaker 1>place you're ready for this in a small town America
<v Speaker 1>in space, which, of course, because you guys have seen it,
<v Speaker 1>you know, they recycled this for Aliens Versus Predator Part two. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>when they got that They're like, you're fired. I mean
<v Speaker 1>you killed everyone, right, Yeah, no, get the heck out
<v Speaker 1>of here. So they fire him. So both Harlan and
<v Speaker 1>Red are gone. So they hired David Toohey, who is
<v Speaker 1>the guy who did Chronicles of Ritic. They hire him
<v Speaker 1>to improve on William Gibson's original script. But by this time,
<v Speaker 1>the Cold War is over. It can't be your source
<v Speaker 1>material anymore because communism has fallen. So Tooey turns Anchor
<v Speaker 1>Point into a space station that is populated by convicts. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and so okay, so we're seeing the beginnings of what
<v Speaker 1>we know will be the ultimate end. Again, the WY
<v Speaker 1>Corporation is conducting illegal experiments on the inmates. At this point,
<v Speaker 1>Joel Roth, who is the president of Fox Studios, says,
<v Speaker 1>wait a minute, did you guys say you don't have
<v Speaker 1>Ripley in the first two thirds of the movie. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's not going to be okay, you'd need to put
<v Speaker 1>her back in. And so this, of course is what
<v Speaker 1>switches and why Hicks gets killed off, which obviously Michael
<v Speaker 1>Bean is not happy about that. I mean he's been
<v Speaker 1>involved in this process the whole time. He thinks, oh,
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to become the star of the show and
<v Speaker 1>then he's told no you die in the opening credits.
<v Speaker 4>Not only is he not happy about it, he's megapisted.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well so. And then Sigourney Weaver comes onto the
<v Speaker 1>set because they're they're doing stuff.
<v Speaker 4>They're like, they're building set, they're.
<v Speaker 1>Building sets, they're doing special effects, and she calls up
<v Speaker 1>Michael Bean and she's like, hey, uh, did you give
<v Speaker 1>them permission to like create a dummy of you? And
<v Speaker 1>he's like, what are you talking about. She's like, I
<v Speaker 1>was there and they have a full on chest burster
<v Speaker 1>explosion dummy model with your face on it. And so
<v Speaker 1>he gets on the horn with his agent and he's like,
<v Speaker 1>no fucking way, man, and they're like, how about if
<v Speaker 1>we pay you? And he says not all of the
<v Speaker 1>money in the world. When I'm listening to him say this,
<v Speaker 1>he goes, I was very young and stupid at that moment.
<v Speaker 1>And so what we get is this kind of grainy
<v Speaker 1>when we see the movie, you don't see his face,
<v Speaker 1>but it's not recognizable as him.
<v Speaker 4>Right in the movie, there's like a steel beam that
<v Speaker 4>goes through his face.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you can't see his face at all?
<v Speaker 3>Right, Yeah, yeah, well you can't in the theatrical cut.
<v Speaker 3>Now in the assembly cut in two thousand and three,
<v Speaker 3>it is, you know, and again it's a cleaner you know.
<v Speaker 3>They went in, they cleaned up the movie. They did,
<v Speaker 3>they did a lot more work on it before they
<v Speaker 3>released it. And while you can't see that it is
<v Speaker 3>Michael Bean, you can see what might have been left
<v Speaker 3>of Michael Bean. And it's a gruesome shot because you
<v Speaker 3>get a better the whole salvage operation of getting the
<v Speaker 3>survivors there is much more clear, and his jaw is
<v Speaker 3>kind of he gets impaled, and his jaw's kind of
<v Speaker 3>like hanging like a skew, and it's pretty pretty, pretty gruesome.
<v Speaker 1>Eventually, the studio calls him back and they say, okay,
<v Speaker 1>we're not going to use a model of you. We
<v Speaker 1>would like to use your picture. And so he's smartened
<v Speaker 1>up a little bit by this time, and he's like,
<v Speaker 1>lots of money, give me lots and lots of money.
<v Speaker 1>They end up paying him almost as much money for
<v Speaker 1>the use of his picture as they did for the
<v Speaker 1>first movie he was in.
<v Speaker 3>I had the opportunity to meet him a couple months ago.
<v Speaker 3>Fascinating guy, a lot of fun to talk to, I
<v Speaker 3>knew that this was a source subject, so I steered
<v Speaker 3>clear of it. We never aliens never even came up
<v Speaker 3>until we were leaving, and he was. He was gracious
<v Speaker 3>enough to say, hey, if your listeners want something, let
<v Speaker 3>him know.
<v Speaker 1>This.
<v Speaker 3>My favorite character that I ever played when we're talking
<v Speaker 3>about a hero character is Corporal Hicks. I love that character.
<v Speaker 3>I wish I could have done more with him.
<v Speaker 4>And I heard him talking about this. This is like
<v Speaker 4>David Fincher's first duty as director. They're like, hey, mister director,
<v Speaker 4>call Michael Bean and tell him that we're killing him off.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 4>So he's like okay, and they're like, oh, by the way,
<v Speaker 4>ask him if we can.
<v Speaker 1>Use his picture.
<v Speaker 4>So David Fincher is like, you know, he's a young
<v Speaker 4>guy and this is an opportunity to make a blockbuster
<v Speaker 4>sequel and he's happy to have the job. Excuse me,
<v Speaker 4>mister Michael Bean, this is David Fincher. I know you
<v Speaker 4>don't know who I am, but I've directed music videos
<v Speaker 4>on MTV. You've probably seen you know who Madonna is. Right,
<v Speaker 4>we're gonna kill off your character. And Michael Bean said,
<v Speaker 4>if you and if you guys for doing this to
<v Speaker 4>me and just like went on a tirade, you know.
<v Speaker 4>Dave Fincher's like, okay, all right, well how about a
<v Speaker 4>picture no if you you know, And it was just
<v Speaker 4>one of those phone calls.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they've they've at least got Weaver, who is, like
<v Speaker 1>I said, only kind of partially interested in it in
<v Speaker 1>the first place, right, and really bought in because she thought,
<v Speaker 1>I'm only going to be in the third act, right,
<v Speaker 1>That's the only part I have to worry about. But
<v Speaker 1>they are saying, okay, well, we're going to give you
<v Speaker 1>five million dollars, but you do have to be in
<v Speaker 1>the whole movie. And so after that offer, she says, okay,
<v Speaker 1>I have two conditions. The story has to be better
<v Speaker 1>than it is right now and no guns. I'm sorry,
<v Speaker 1>what what? And there's this famous bit where like during
<v Speaker 1>the production of Aliens, she called James Cameron over and
<v Speaker 1>she's like, hey, I get excited when I read a script,
<v Speaker 1>and I don't necessarily read all of the side notes.
<v Speaker 1>I'd kind of just read my lines and other people's lines,
<v Speaker 1>and I didn't really realize how much gun play was
<v Speaker 1>involved in this, and I'm not really comfortable with it.
<v Speaker 1>I am anti gun and James Cameron says, you should
<v Speaker 1>probably read the side notes.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, so let's talk about this for a second, because
<v Speaker 4>that's one of the major problems with this movie is
<v Speaker 4>they play hide and seek for two hours. There's nothing
<v Speaker 4>going on, in my opinion, just just running around the
<v Speaker 4>idea that your lead actor can have that kind of
<v Speaker 4>influence and pull out there's no weapons, there's no real guns.
<v Speaker 4>That's just stupid. Somebody should have stood up to her
<v Speaker 4>and said no, no.
<v Speaker 1>I don't have any problem with the complicating factor of
<v Speaker 1>there are no guns. I mean, in real prisons here
<v Speaker 1>in the US today, even if you are law enforcement,
<v Speaker 1>you cannot go into the prison with a firearm. They
<v Speaker 1>don't let it happen. So it makes sense on a
<v Speaker 1>prisoner world that they wouldn't have firearms. But it's not
<v Speaker 1>as though those are the only weapons that exist. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>in the first movie, you've got flame throwers if you
<v Speaker 1>want to pull up Prey for example. You've got bows
<v Speaker 1>and arrows, you've got spears, you've got clubs. You've got
<v Speaker 1>all kinds of weapons that you can find a way
<v Speaker 1>to use creatively. And they just didn't do a really
<v Speaker 1>good job.
<v Speaker 3>Of that on this respectfully, I have to disagree while
<v Speaker 3>I agree with Sigourney here, if not for anything else,
<v Speaker 3>it levels the playing field because in the first movie,
<v Speaker 3>like Jason said, we've got flamethrowers. Yeah, the Nostromo has
<v Speaker 3>an intelligent crew that can at least use the technology
<v Speaker 3>they have to create weapons. And then we up the
<v Speaker 3>stakes in aliens because now we've got the colonial Marines.
<v Speaker 3>We've got all the pulse rifles in the world. And
<v Speaker 3>that's a good thing because now we've got a whole
<v Speaker 3>hive of these things running around. So again the playing
<v Speaker 3>field was level. Now we come to the third one,
<v Speaker 3>and if we know the idea is we're going back
<v Speaker 3>to basics. We're going back to the one loan alien
<v Speaker 3>that's gonna hunt the people on Fury one six one.
<v Speaker 3>We can't have all these guns because it's it's not
<v Speaker 3>a fair fight, and it's not the tension, isn't there
<v Speaker 3>for for someone like me, I I feel like, Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it's a prison, and she points out, you know it's
<v Speaker 3>a prison, Where's where's the weapons? And like d said,
<v Speaker 3>in a real prison, you do not have weapons because
<v Speaker 3>it's it's a safety threat. Because if the if the
<v Speaker 3>prisoners get ahold of them, then you've got a real problem.
<v Speaker 3>So I love the idea of them going we don't
<v Speaker 3>have weapons, we don't have anything. Nothing works. You know,
<v Speaker 3>this is a defunct, you know, mining operation, and we're
<v Speaker 3>just the guys that are here as the Steward's you know,
<v Speaker 3>keeping keeping the lights on. I think it works for
<v Speaker 3>that that reason.
<v Speaker 1>I think that there's I think there is definitely an
<v Speaker 1>opportunity to be creative that they but they missed it
<v Speaker 1>and missed the opportunity to be care or on Writer
<v Speaker 1>number three at this point David Towey, and now he's
<v Speaker 1>got the task of writing it the way that Sigourney
<v Speaker 1>Weaver wants it, and he's modifying writer number one script,
<v Speaker 1>so he rewrites William Gibson's script with zero Guns. But
<v Speaker 1>they still don't have a director yet because thet's he left,
<v Speaker 1>So they approach Vincent Ward. Vincent Ward has just done
<v Speaker 1>The Navigator. He's a young hot shot and so they're like,
<v Speaker 1>we want you to come on and direct, and at
<v Speaker 1>first he's like, no, I'm good. And if you look
<v Speaker 1>at his body of work, I can't imagine him doing
<v Speaker 1>a big budget studio picture like this. It's not his style.
<v Speaker 1>But he ultimately comes back and he says, listen, I'll
<v Speaker 1>do it, but I want to be able to rewrite
<v Speaker 1>it with my own ideas. He tells what some of
<v Speaker 1>those ideas are, and they're like, yeah, those sound great,
<v Speaker 1>let's do that. And so he says, all right, I
<v Speaker 1>got a writing partner. His name is John Fossano. That's
<v Speaker 1>writer number four, keep and tally here including Sigourney Weaver
<v Speaker 1>as part of the writing I don't know. Yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 1>So he comes in to help him turn out a
<v Speaker 1>full script. But part of what writers do, not just
<v Speaker 1>as a professional courtesy, but as just kind of a
<v Speaker 1>requirement with the WGA. If you're rewriting another writer script,
<v Speaker 1>you call and you let them know what's going on. Well,
<v Speaker 1>the problem is they had not mentioned to David Tooey
<v Speaker 1>that they were having his script rewritten. So Fassano calls
<v Speaker 1>Tuey and Twoy has no idea. He calls Fox and
<v Speaker 1>they flat out lie to him. They're like, uh no, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 1>the Faisano's working on Alien four, Alien four and two.
<v Speaker 1>He's like, okay, all right. He calls Fasano back and
<v Speaker 1>Fasano's like, no, I'm working on Alien three, I assure you,
<v Speaker 1>And so he calls Fox back again and they're like yeah, okay,
<v Speaker 1>so no, no, yeah, you're right, you're right, but we
<v Speaker 1>will still use your script for part four, and Tuey
<v Speaker 1>throws a hissy fit and just says, I'm just going
<v Speaker 1>to satisfy my contract. I'm going to finish this script
<v Speaker 1>and then screw you guys, I'm going home. Yeah that's
<v Speaker 1>the fourth writer we've lost so far. Okay. So Ward
<v Speaker 1>and Fersano they come up with a script that has
<v Speaker 1>a wooden space station, a wooden planet, if you will.
<v Speaker 1>That's no moon, it.
<v Speaker 4>Does it looks like a wooden dusk star.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's no moon. It's a terrarium.
<v Speaker 1>They change it to a wooden space station and monks
<v Speaker 1>who are anti technology living on this wooden space station.
<v Speaker 1>And then the monks believe that Ripley is sent to
<v Speaker 1>them as a test of their faith, and the alien
<v Speaker 1>is sent to them as punishment for their sins. And
<v Speaker 1>again we have some of this carry over into the
<v Speaker 1>actual movie, but apparently there was with Ward and Fasano's script,
<v Speaker 1>there was a lot more Judeo Christian imagery and according
<v Speaker 1>to the fan base, according to the Xenophiles, If you Will,
<v Speaker 1>it is regarded as one of the best screenplays never made.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know if I'm going to go out and
<v Speaker 1>agree with that. If you've got a wooden space station
<v Speaker 1>and monks fighting the alien sounds like a yawnfest to me,
<v Speaker 1>But I haven't read it, so I don't know. So
<v Speaker 1>now they say, okay, we like your script, but Ripley
<v Speaker 1>has to live at the end. And Asano's like, uh,
<v Speaker 1>thought she wanted to die. They like, we don't care
<v Speaker 1>what she wants. She has to live. And so he's like, okay,
<v Speaker 1>hang up, call Sigourney. Uh yeah, they said they want
<v Speaker 1>you to live. She says, if I do not die
<v Speaker 1>at the end, I am not doing any more on
<v Speaker 1>this movie. And so he, I guess, tries to split
<v Speaker 1>the difference. And so his solution is she dies almost
<v Speaker 1>like the alien's like coming up. The monk has given
<v Speaker 1>her some sort of herbal serum, and she hasn't eaten
<v Speaker 1>the whole movie, right, Like she's basically pregnant with this
<v Speaker 1>alien in her Yeah, and the monk gives her this
<v Speaker 1>serum which is going to cause her to vomit up
<v Speaker 1>the alien and then he takes it into himself and
<v Speaker 1>then sends her off of the planet to let the
<v Speaker 1>planet burn and kill the alien.
<v Speaker 4>These people should all be fired. These are all terrible ideas.
<v Speaker 3>I think this guy was probably just hung up on
<v Speaker 3>an ending and maybe was watching The Exorcist the night
<v Speaker 3>before it's due and goes, hey, that's a good idea.
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, I'll just great idea.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Well no, I'm just talking like, all right, well
<v Speaker 3>the demon is inside the person, I'll get it out.
<v Speaker 3>I'll take it into me and then I'll kill myself,
<v Speaker 3>you know, thut myself down a flight of steps, or
<v Speaker 3>I'll burn down a monk's planet.
<v Speaker 5>You know.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that's a terrible.
<v Speaker 1>Idea, right, well, so you know who else thoughts so Fox,
<v Speaker 1>and they're like, wooden planet is a terrible idea. Let's
<v Speaker 1>do something else. And Ward is like, no, wooden't planet.
<v Speaker 1>I am dying on this hill. And they say, okay,
<v Speaker 1>they're dead. Yeah, so there you go, Director number I
<v Speaker 1>don't know, I've lost count is gone. They get rid
<v Speaker 1>of the writer that came on with him as well,
<v Speaker 1>of course, and they go to yet another writer, mister
<v Speaker 1>Larry Ferguson, who brought us Beverly Hills Cop three pu Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>so they bring him on, takes he takes another swing,
<v Speaker 1>and he churns one out in only two months and
<v Speaker 1>everyone loved it. No wait, I'm sorry, hated it. Everyone
<v Speaker 1>hated it, and he immediately gets fired. So at this
<v Speaker 1>point they have got a multitude of scripts, different drafts
<v Speaker 1>of all of them. So Geiler and Hill basically take
<v Speaker 1>all of these scripts and just start cutting and pasting
<v Speaker 1>and ripping and shreading and trying to put a Frankenstein's
<v Speaker 1>Monster together to make one good script. And so we
<v Speaker 1>are once again no director, no writer. What do we do?
<v Speaker 1>Bring in David Fincher. Why because he is one of
<v Speaker 1>the greatest directors of all time. No, because he is
<v Speaker 1>somebody that we can push around.
<v Speaker 3>They expect a yes man when they get this guy.
<v Speaker 1>Now, his big claim to fame was that he had
<v Speaker 1>just won the Video Music Award from MTV for one
<v Speaker 1>of his music videos. They bring him on to do
<v Speaker 1>a follow up movie to two of the biggest movies
<v Speaker 1>of all time. Oh, by the way, five weeks until
<v Speaker 1>shooting has to begin, we have ten drafts of three
<v Speaker 1>unfinished screenplays that nobody likes and seventeen million dollars of
<v Speaker 1>your fourteen million dollars dollar b it has already been spent.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, they've also built the set based on the
<v Speaker 1>Ward and Fasano script, which we're not using.
<v Speaker 4>That's a terrible way to come into a job. Yeah.
<v Speaker 4>Now here's the thing. We all know David Fincher on
<v Speaker 4>this side of history, right, Fight Club, Panic Room, Social Network, seven.
<v Speaker 1>Gone Girl, Girl, The Dragon Tattoo.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, I mean, brilliant, unbelievable movies. He's a talented guy,
<v Speaker 4>he's a smart guy. This is a toxic situation.
<v Speaker 1>Right, and so with this toxic situation, the logical conclusion
<v Speaker 1>as the director is, they're gonna give me some more
<v Speaker 1>time to fix this multitude of problems. Right, They're gonna
<v Speaker 1>they're gonna let me get this. You know, they're gonna
<v Speaker 1>push things out so that I can get this done.
<v Speaker 1>But here's the problem. The trailer had already been released, yes,
<v Speaker 1>long before, and ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to
<v Speaker 1>go watch the original trailer for Alien three, you are
<v Speaker 1>going to be in incredibly surprised at what they have.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen ninety two, we would discover on Earth, everyone
<v Speaker 2>can hear you scream?
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, so I just watched it clearly indicating that this
<v Speaker 4>battle is going to happen on Earth.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. The tagline for the trailer was on Earth, everyone
<v Speaker 1>can hear you scream.
<v Speaker 4>Listen. Okay, stop right there. That's the best idea that
<v Speaker 4>they've had the entire time they've been working on this. Yeah,
<v Speaker 4>get this thing going on Earth. This would be amazing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it still would be.
<v Speaker 4>They could make this today. I'd go see them. Let's go, right.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, if your part three is the Aliens come
<v Speaker 1>to Earth, and then you know that you're coming into
<v Speaker 1>part four and you give us a to be continued
<v Speaker 1>ending where it's like the only way that we can
<v Speaker 1>defeat them is we have to go to their homeworld,
<v Speaker 1>and so part four takes place on xenomorph world.
<v Speaker 4>Sounds great.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, those are two fantastic movies that don't seem like
<v Speaker 1>they'd be that hard to write.
<v Speaker 3>You know what the problem with this is the three
<v Speaker 3>of us aren't in the writer's room. That's right, nineteen two,
<v Speaker 3>that's right.
<v Speaker 1>Because they would wait, what a order, backing this thing
<v Speaker 1>throughout the whole process here. Gosh, So the trailer had
<v Speaker 1>already set the release date. So Fincher comes into this
<v Speaker 1>toxic waste dump, like you've said, and he has one
<v Speaker 1>year to get everything shot edited. He didn't even have
<v Speaker 1>a finished script. He says, will you give me ninety
<v Speaker 1>three days for principal photography? Studio says seventy. James Cameron
<v Speaker 1>had over twice as much time. Keep in mind, he
<v Speaker 1>had Terminator under his belt at this point, right, Fincher
<v Speaker 1>had the Vogue video.
<v Speaker 4>That's great video, by the way, it is good, but
<v Speaker 4>it's hardly Aliens, right.
<v Speaker 1>True.
<v Speaker 4>Fincher said to all directors, hey, listen, don't take a
<v Speaker 4>project like this unless you've got something big under your belt.
<v Speaker 4>Cameron had Terminator, and he could push back and say, no,
<v Speaker 4>I'm not doing this. Fincher head the Vogue video, It's
<v Speaker 4>not happening, right.
<v Speaker 1>So then this is where the problems really begin. It
<v Speaker 1>was not with the cast and crew. Everybody on the
<v Speaker 1>cast absolutely loved Fincher. They revered him. They were like,
<v Speaker 1>this dude has got it together. He knows what he's doing.
<v Speaker 1>He's doing brilliant new things. Sigourney Weaver was talking about
<v Speaker 1>the first time that they met and they have this
<v Speaker 1>long talk about the script, and so at the end,
<v Speaker 1>she's like about to leave and she's like, so, how
<v Speaker 1>do you see my character in all of this? And
<v Speaker 1>he says, I don't know, bald and she says, I
<v Speaker 1>fell in love with him at that moment.
<v Speaker 3>Everyone was falling in love with this guy though, because
<v Speaker 3>for all the problems that he was dealing with with
<v Speaker 3>the studio, he wasn't bringing it to the workplace. He
<v Speaker 3>wasn't bringing it to set. This is the guy that's
<v Speaker 3>like twenty six, twenty seven years old. You know. One
<v Speaker 3>thing I always think about is like Terry Rollins, who
<v Speaker 3>was the editor on this movie, him and the crew,
<v Speaker 3>they talked about how this guy he knows actors, he
<v Speaker 3>likes actors. He was walking around the set going, hey,
<v Speaker 3>I'm influenced by Hitchcock and john Ford and wait till
<v Speaker 3>you see this shot is going to be a Hitchcock shot,
<v Speaker 3>or this SHOT's gonna be a Fod shot. They're eating
<v Speaker 3>him up. They love him, and I think that says
<v Speaker 3>a lot about his character. He can come into such
<v Speaker 3>a mess and not let it bleed out and deal
<v Speaker 3>with the career. Because they're all like, oh, yeah, we
<v Speaker 3>had a great time on the film. We had no
<v Speaker 3>idea all these problems were existing.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, I got to tell you that, knowing what
<v Speaker 1>he came into at this point, knowing what he came
<v Speaker 1>into and seeing the movie that he put out that
<v Speaker 1>he had so little control over, I have all the
<v Speaker 1>admiration in the world for him, and I am impressed
<v Speaker 1>that it is actually as good as it is and
<v Speaker 1>that it got released in the first place. And he
<v Speaker 1>even talks about that. He's like, you would think that
<v Speaker 1>the studio would want to put out the best product
<v Speaker 1>that they can, but what is more important to them
<v Speaker 1>is just that it be released.
<v Speaker 4>I'm with you. I don't put any of this on Fincher.
<v Speaker 4>In fact, I think it's admirable the job that he did.
<v Speaker 4>In fact, I'd like to talk to you guys about
<v Speaker 4>a few things that I think they got right.
<v Speaker 1>This is perfect time to talk about it. Okay, I
<v Speaker 1>was just about to hit that spot in my notes.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, Well, my number one thing is what did they
<v Speaker 4>get right? Number one?
<v Speaker 1>Not much?
<v Speaker 4>Okay, not much, But in my opinion, here's what they
<v Speaker 4>did right. Sigourney Weaver. She is a great actress. We
<v Speaker 4>love Ripley. They brought her back. Number two David Fincher. Yes,
<v Speaker 4>they handcuffed him. I mean, they made life impossible for.
<v Speaker 1>Him to work.
<v Speaker 4>But he is a brilliant director and ultra talented. They
<v Speaker 4>got lucky, I think. And then some of the effects
<v Speaker 4>I thought were really good, particularly the close ups of
<v Speaker 4>the aliens I thought looked great. Some of the other
<v Speaker 4>stuff it looked like a marionette. I didn't like all
<v Speaker 4>the effects, but the close ups. In the tone of
<v Speaker 4>the movie I thought was dark and scary for the
<v Speaker 4>most part. That's all I got. I mean, Jeff, what
<v Speaker 4>did they do right in your eyes?
<v Speaker 3>Well, in addition to Sigourney Weaver and David Fincher, the
<v Speaker 3>main villain for me in this movie is the studio execs. However,
<v Speaker 3>I'll give them credit because they knew how to market
<v Speaker 3>a movie. And I'm not talking about the bait and
<v Speaker 3>switch they do with this teaser, this little thirty second
<v Speaker 3>teaser where on Earth everyone can hear you scream. I'm
<v Speaker 3>talking about what they did with Fincher's work. Let's think
<v Speaker 3>about this for a quick second. I think there's three
<v Speaker 3>iconic images when you talk about the Alien franchise, and
<v Speaker 3>you could just put them up on a screen and
<v Speaker 3>everyone goes, ooh, I know that. If it's alien, we're
<v Speaker 3>talking about the cracked egg. Right. If it's aliens, I
<v Speaker 3>always think of Ripley. She's got Newton one arm, she's
<v Speaker 3>got a pulse rifle in the other.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, this is the one that is probably one of
<v Speaker 3>the more terrifying iconic images because I'm talking about that
<v Speaker 3>tight shot, that close up of the alien right in
<v Speaker 3>Sigourney Weaver's face, and it's amazing because he says, Hey,
<v Speaker 3>we're gonna do this this. The execs say, no, we're not,
<v Speaker 3>don't do that. We don't want to ever see a
<v Speaker 3>face to face with them. He says, hell with these guys.
<v Speaker 3>He shoots it anyways, and then it gets back to
<v Speaker 3>him and then they go ooh, we love it.
<v Speaker 1>Right he snuck away and did it handheld himself.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. I mean, this guy's awesome. So you know, I
<v Speaker 3>give him full credit for it, but I give the
<v Speaker 3>marketing team credit for saying this is what's going to
<v Speaker 3>put butts in the seat. One thing I think they
<v Speaker 3>definitely got right is Tom Woodriff Junior, who plays the alien. Now,
<v Speaker 3>this is a situation where Jason, you mentioned like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>the close ups, the shots look good, the movement of
<v Speaker 3>the alien itself. This is a situation where for the
<v Speaker 3>first time it's got a little bit of a character.
<v Speaker 3>And we can thank Sigourney Weaver for that because according
<v Speaker 3>to Woodriff, who was just a visual effects guy, he
<v Speaker 3>takes the job of playing quote unquote the alien and
<v Speaker 3>she says, she pulls him aside. She says, hey, don't
<v Speaker 3>be a guy in a suit, be an actor.
<v Speaker 4>Act.
<v Speaker 3>So he gives this this creature a little bit of
<v Speaker 3>personality for the first time ever. We got to remember
<v Speaker 3>this is one of the last films shot with the
<v Speaker 3>old school optics, you know, before everything goes digital. The
<v Speaker 3>rod puppets that they use for the dog alien as
<v Speaker 3>it's known, and a lot of those are Woodroff just
<v Speaker 3>jumping around and jumping out of corners. They got it
<v Speaker 3>right when they let him give the creature a little
<v Speaker 3>bit of personality. And then the last thing they got right, well,
<v Speaker 3>one of the last things I think they got right,
<v Speaker 3>this nihilistic, desolate atmosphere. Ripley is just she's how much
<v Speaker 3>more trauma can one person take? And I think that
<v Speaker 3>the location kind of ups the Annie once again and
<v Speaker 3>puts her in a really nasty environment where she's now
<v Speaker 3>Ripley's going up against the alien, she's going up against inmates,
<v Speaker 3>and she's got to go up against the company. You know,
<v Speaker 3>waylan Utani is waiting there as like the final boss,
<v Speaker 3>you know, for her to defeat.
<v Speaker 1>Every good thing I have to say about this probably
<v Speaker 1>has to do with David Fincher, because this movie does
<v Speaker 1>not look like any of the other Aliens. Like you,
<v Speaker 1>it has not the same look. Granted, Aliens seemed like
<v Speaker 1>a far cry from what Alien was, but it is
<v Speaker 1>nothing compared to how different Alien three looks than all
<v Speaker 1>of the other movies. You got to credit him with
<v Speaker 1>that because it's not just the set design, which is fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>He does these camera angles that are bizarre. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he's he's got stuff from floor shots up and it's
<v Speaker 1>not stuff that you see in Scott's or Cameron's visions.
<v Speaker 1>It is his own ideas and it's cool. And he's
<v Speaker 1>the guy who gives us the xenomorph camp, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the kind of weird fish eye running through the hallways.
<v Speaker 1>It's great. It's like Jaws. It's like the sharp vision
<v Speaker 1>in Jaws. I loved it. I thought it was perfect.
<v Speaker 1>It raises the steaks. You see the guys running away
<v Speaker 1>in fear, which is more terrifying most of the time
<v Speaker 1>than actually seeing the monster chase them. Even with the
<v Speaker 1>part that you hate, Jason, it is that every act
<v Speaker 1>of destruction is an act of creation. It's without without
<v Speaker 1>destroying Newt and Hicks, you don't have the storyline that
<v Speaker 1>gives us the entire movement. And then I also will say,
<v Speaker 1>you know, great job to these actors because they all
<v Speaker 1>have shaved heads, and they almost all have British or
<v Speaker 1>Irish or some UK accent, and they're all distinct even
<v Speaker 1>though they've got that. It's I mean, there are some
<v Speaker 1>that I'm like, okay, this is a wash. I don't
<v Speaker 1>know which guy this is. But there are a handful
<v Speaker 1>of guys that set themselves apart as we are characters
<v Speaker 1>beyond just the bald head and the different accent.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, once again, I would say that that's a terrible
<v Speaker 4>decision made by the execs or the people in charge.
<v Speaker 4>The actors did the best they could. But when everybody
<v Speaker 4>has that thick British accent, they're all white, they're all
<v Speaker 4>shaved heads, it is very difficult for me to tell
<v Speaker 4>anybody apart.
<v Speaker 1>Let me finish my story. Go ahead, because even though
<v Speaker 1>when you think nothing else can go wrong, here's what happens. Right. So,
<v Speaker 1>we've lost writer after writer, director after director. We've had
<v Speaker 1>no wiggle room at all from the studio who's thrown
<v Speaker 1>us into a toxic waste situation. But hey, good news.
<v Speaker 1>We have got Jordan Croninwealth, the guy who gave us
<v Speaker 1>the cinematography for Blade Runner. We are bringing him in
<v Speaker 1>and he's going to be the DP for this show.
<v Speaker 1>Fantastic excited, the crew said. The cast and the crew said,
<v Speaker 1>this is the guy that David Fincher would speak to
<v Speaker 1>with absolute reverence, like he was like a student at
<v Speaker 1>his feet. Just loved talking to this guy. The problem
<v Speaker 1>was is that the first assistant notices these little ticks
<v Speaker 1>that he's having, And because the first assistant's dad has
<v Speaker 1>passed away from Parkinson's, he realizes that Jordan cronin with
<v Speaker 1>is at the last stages of Parkinson's disease. And he says,
<v Speaker 1>you can't keep trying to fight this. I mean, think
<v Speaker 1>of all the things going wrong. You can't keep trying
<v Speaker 1>to fight this battle. You will kill yourself doing this.
<v Speaker 1>So Ultimately they lose cronin with and they bring in
<v Speaker 1>Alex Thompson, who's not bad. He had done Legend by
<v Speaker 1>Ridley Scott, so not a bad replacement. But they've lost
<v Speaker 1>again a major player that seemed to be something that
<v Speaker 1>was on the positive category for this movie. So Fincher
<v Speaker 1>starts arguing with Hill and Geiler about the script or
<v Speaker 1>the lack thereof John Lando, the executive, is involved in
<v Speaker 1>these arguments. You know, They're like, well, we'll go to Fox,
<v Speaker 1>and they go to Fox, and Lando's like, I agree
<v Speaker 1>with Fincher's He's right, you guys are messing us up
<v Speaker 1>and screwed it up. And so finally Hill and Geyler
<v Speaker 1>are like, screw you guys. We'll go back home, and
<v Speaker 1>so they go back to La. So he doesn't Fincher
<v Speaker 1>doesn't have to argue with the Brandywine guys anymore. But
<v Speaker 1>now he has to justify every single take and every
<v Speaker 1>single expense that he's that he has with Landau, the
<v Speaker 1>Fox executive that used to be the guy, the Brandywine
<v Speaker 1>guy's job. Now he's got to do it. So he
<v Speaker 1>would shoot all day long and then at midnight he'd
<v Speaker 1>get on the phone call Fox and start trying to
<v Speaker 1>persuade them to pay for what he wanted to shoot
<v Speaker 1>the next day. So now he and Landau are arguing
<v Speaker 1>so much that Fincher just finally says, ship me back
<v Speaker 1>home and take my name off of this piece of
<v Speaker 1>Landau shuts down the production. He brings everybody back. They
<v Speaker 1>put together a rough cup and they say he's going
<v Speaker 1>to like, we're going to figure out what we're missing
<v Speaker 1>and we're going to go from there. So there's three
<v Speaker 1>hours of footage in the rough cut. The studio says,
<v Speaker 1>cut all the gore, and you've got all these subplots
<v Speaker 1>going on. They're confusing. Our test audience was confused. They
<v Speaker 1>don't mention that their test audience was a bunch of
<v Speaker 1>eighteen year old kids. They just said, too confusing. Let's
<v Speaker 1>get rid of those. Now they have to reshoot things
<v Speaker 1>because there's these giant holes in the plot because they've
<v Speaker 1>taken out the subplots. And Fincher says, okay, you give
<v Speaker 1>me one day, one scene of shooting and I can
<v Speaker 1>fix it all. And the studio said no, no, and
<v Speaker 1>so they end up shooting some other scenes. Sigourney Weaver's
<v Speaker 1>hair has grown back at this point, she's wearing a
<v Speaker 1>bald cap through parts of the movie. Gosh. So finally
<v Speaker 1>Fincher is able. He's got all his footage, he's able
<v Speaker 1>to sit down, he's ready to start editing, and the
<v Speaker 1>studio says, oh, yeah, by the way, we need to
<v Speaker 1>have this under two hours runtime. And he's like, why,
<v Speaker 1>oh well, if we have it under two hours, they
<v Speaker 1>can show up more times in a day, and so
<v Speaker 1>that'll be more money from the theater. He puts his
<v Speaker 1>middle finger in the air and says, I'm gone, and
<v Speaker 1>he does not come back. During the promotion of the movie,
<v Speaker 1>he gave one interview where he complimented the cast and crew,
<v Speaker 1>complimented the special effects, and bit his tongue. He has
<v Speaker 1>never done any other press, no promotion, never even went
<v Speaker 1>to a screening of this movie. When they came to
<v Speaker 1>him to do the director's cut, he said, I'll do
<v Speaker 1>the director's cut if you let me burn the negative
<v Speaker 1>and reshoot the entire movie.
<v Speaker 4>Yes, let's go. Okay, you've unleashed the tiger in me. Okay,
<v Speaker 4>I'm jeff I'm sorry if I'm stepping on you here,
<v Speaker 4>but I take solace in the fact that I hate
<v Speaker 4>this movie. Okay, I burn with passion against this movie.
<v Speaker 4>But I love the fact that David Fincher is out
<v Speaker 4>there and he says, you know what, I hate it more.
<v Speaker 4>I hate it more. I've even seen a quote where
<v Speaker 4>he says that in nineteen ninety two the La riots,
<v Speaker 4>the fires were coming close to the I hope the
<v Speaker 4>fires come close enough with it catches the negative on fire. Jeff,
<v Speaker 4>I'm sorry, I can't. I can't go with you, man,
<v Speaker 4>I can't. I can't go with you on this. Let's
<v Speaker 4>let's talk about what so we know what happened. Let's
<v Speaker 4>talk about the bad stuff in this movie.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, let me.
<v Speaker 4>Just start off with Newt. Hicks and Bishop are killed
<v Speaker 4>in the first three minutes of this movie, literally in
<v Speaker 4>the opening credits. That totally screws the Cameron movie. The
<v Speaker 4>great victory at the end of the Cameron movie is
<v Speaker 4>Ripley saves Hicks, she saves Bishops, she saves Newt. They
<v Speaker 4>get off the planet and it explodes, and that's the
<v Speaker 4>great victory and it steals that from Aliens. So to me,
<v Speaker 4>it's impacts a movie that I love. Number two, I
<v Speaker 4>think everybody else sucks like I. All the other characters.
<v Speaker 4>I care nothing about, even guy who plays Dylan. I
<v Speaker 4>mean Dylan's okay, Dylan does some stuff and then they
<v Speaker 4>run around and they play hide and seek the whole
<v Speaker 4>time and nothing happens, literally nothing. They just guys are
<v Speaker 4>getting picked off.
<v Speaker 3>Here and there.
<v Speaker 4>And then finally, you know, one of the things that
<v Speaker 4>bugged me is the hair thing. And I know this
<v Speaker 4>is a fincher deal. Sigourney Weaver shaves her head because
<v Speaker 4>they make one mention about space Liise, they never revisit it.
<v Speaker 4>There's no impact. We don't ever see them. Nothing ever
<v Speaker 4>happens with this. It's totally weird, and we get to
<v Speaker 4>look at a weird looking Sigourney Weaver the rest of
<v Speaker 4>the movie.
<v Speaker 3>Man, I offer a rebuttal to you your three concerns.
<v Speaker 4>I'm ready, man, Okay, help me, O got this movie.
<v Speaker 3>I'll try. But but let me touch on the the
<v Speaker 3>three things you just mentioned. Okay, So there's nothing wrong
<v Speaker 3>with what you said about Aliens and what it does,
<v Speaker 3>but we have to remember Aliens. You know, it's a
<v Speaker 3>war movie in space. It's got the themes of the
<v Speaker 3>nuclear family and the heroic military saviors. It's a product
<v Speaker 3>of its time. It's a Reagan era thing where we
<v Speaker 3>were We love it. I mean I still love it,
<v Speaker 3>we all still love it, but we can't do that again.
<v Speaker 3>We can't just remake it. When Fincher comes along, the
<v Speaker 3>one idea that he shares with most of these writers
<v Speaker 3>and directors that were in the mix is we got
<v Speaker 3>to do something different. So while I hate the idea
<v Speaker 3>of Hicks meeting an unfortunate end, I understand why it
<v Speaker 3>had to happen. If we're not going to do the
<v Speaker 3>script with him leading the resistance against Whylan Utani, and
<v Speaker 3>we're not gonna do the script where he's on the
<v Speaker 3>anchor point, we had to do something new. And this
<v Speaker 3>is what we get. With regards to the characters. You know,
<v Speaker 3>I think these are some of the coolest characters we
<v Speaker 3>can get in this franchise. Because, yeah, everyone's running around
<v Speaker 3>with the shaved head and their inmates that are kind
<v Speaker 3>of this religious sect. I get that, But I love
<v Speaker 3>Charles Dancing. This as the one soft person that Ripley
<v Speaker 3>can finally bond with after all the trauma. She could
<v Speaker 3>just have one moment of comfort with somebody, and Charles Dance.
<v Speaker 3>We know he's an inmate, but when we find out
<v Speaker 3>the story behind why he's there, you're like, yeah, it's bad,
<v Speaker 3>but it's not like he's a psychopath. It's not like
<v Speaker 3>he's a serial murder and rapist like Dylan, who is
<v Speaker 3>played amazingly by Charles S. Dutton. This is a situation
<v Speaker 3>where you got Charles and Charles. I love both these
<v Speaker 3>guys in this film. The moment where he has that
<v Speaker 3>scene in the mess hall after the funeral and she's
<v Speaker 3>offering thanks, and you know that whole you don't want
<v Speaker 3>to know me, lady. What she says to him, it
<v Speaker 3>lets me know, lets the audience know, Hey, you know what, Ripley.
<v Speaker 3>She might be damaged, but she is still very strong,
<v Speaker 3>she's still very cold, she's still very fearless because she
<v Speaker 3>delivers that line where you're like, what, that's how you're
<v Speaker 3>coming back to I'm a murderer and rapist of women.
<v Speaker 3>She's awesome in that moment. And lastly, with the lice.
<v Speaker 3>This is a situation where I might apologize for Alien
<v Speaker 3>three theatrical cut, but I will applaud the assembly cut
<v Speaker 3>because it's one of those things where you got you
<v Speaker 3>gotta remember there's like thirty three minutes of footage not
<v Speaker 3>in the movie that you haven't seen. It answers all
<v Speaker 3>the plot holes and it explains things, you know. It
<v Speaker 3>doesn't just clean up the movie and give it some
<v Speaker 3>better digital effects. Those missing scenes are paramount to the
<v Speaker 3>movie story. You would care more about Clemens, who's played
<v Speaker 3>by Charles Dance. There's a conversation that he has when
<v Speaker 3>they're on the way to the morgue. It's a whole
<v Speaker 3>conversation about newt and it kind of lets you know, like, hey,
<v Speaker 3>this guy he means well, he's one of the good
<v Speaker 3>guys in this place, and you bond with him over
<v Speaker 3>that conversation. The opening is entirely different, you know, because
<v Speaker 3>again we see a little bit more of how the
<v Speaker 3>Sleucco gets into trouble. We see the crash, him finding
<v Speaker 3>Ripley on the beach is it just looks fantastic, And
<v Speaker 3>that's where you really get to see the life situation.
<v Speaker 3>This whole planet is infested with these large lice. And
<v Speaker 3>the fun fact they actually use you know, and you
<v Speaker 3>can see the lice and there it's gross. The fun
<v Speaker 3>fact here is that they actually use baby crickets for
<v Speaker 3>all those scenes. So every time they come in and
<v Speaker 3>they slough off their jackets and they're covered in lice.
<v Speaker 3>Or every time the dog or in the assembly cut,
<v Speaker 3>the oxen they're moving around, they're covered. You know, Ripley's
<v Speaker 3>covered in these little creepy crawly things. So you get
<v Speaker 3>a lot more of that and you understand that in
<v Speaker 3>the assembly cut. So it's again it's one of those
<v Speaker 3>things that everyone shaves their heads. Is it just the
<v Speaker 3>cool thing to do? Is it the look on Fury
<v Speaker 3>one six one? Or is there an epidemic? And it's
<v Speaker 3>it's because there's a serious problem with lice.
<v Speaker 4>Interesting, So you get to see that in the assembly cut.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, the movie, the assembly cut is superior to the
<v Speaker 3>theatrical cut. While I'm not gonna tell you, I promise
<v Speaker 3>you'll love Alien three when you watch the Assembly cut,
<v Speaker 3>but I think you walk away from it going Okay,
<v Speaker 3>that wasn't bad, but still no Hicks, no money. You know,
<v Speaker 3>I'm still not happy. So because you're not gonna get
<v Speaker 3>Hicks in the assembly cut.
<v Speaker 4>But there's no version where Hicks and Newton Bishop live.
<v Speaker 3>Huh No, the mega terrific happy ending for those guys
<v Speaker 3>does not exist. And I'm sorry for that, but I
<v Speaker 3>think if you if you had the chance to see
<v Speaker 3>the assembly cut, some of your frustrations would be abated.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, well, that's good, I'll check it out. I do
<v Speaker 4>think just to rebut your rebut if at the beginning
<v Speaker 4>of Return of the Jedi, if we started off in
<v Speaker 4>the first three minutes of Return the Jedi we found
<v Speaker 4>out that han Lea and Chui were killed off screen,
<v Speaker 4>there would be rioting in the streets.
<v Speaker 3>Would you riot if Lando had been killed?
<v Speaker 5>No?
<v Speaker 3>Okay. The reason I make that point is because you're
<v Speaker 3>talking about gloved characters that we have been with since
<v Speaker 3>It's the beginning. Everyone you mentioned was in Star Wars
<v Speaker 3>and then they were all an empire and we wanted
<v Speaker 3>them to come back in Jedi. We've been with Ripley
<v Speaker 3>since the beginning, and these are a couple characters that
<v Speaker 3>she picked up in the second movie. While we love them,
<v Speaker 3>we haven't bonded with them the way we've bonded with Ripley.
<v Speaker 3>I love Bishop, I love Hicks, and I love Newt,
<v Speaker 3>but I didn't have the same connection to them the
<v Speaker 3>way I did with Ripley because I've been with Ripley
<v Speaker 3>since the Nostromo.
<v Speaker 1>Here's my two cents on that opening three minutes. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I don't have a problem with the death of major
<v Speaker 1>characters in the movie. I think it raises the stakes
<v Speaker 1>of the movie. You know, spoiler alert for the new
<v Speaker 1>Star Wars movies, even though they're years old at this point.
<v Speaker 1>Like I started crying before Hans Solo died because I
<v Speaker 1>knew it was about to happen, and I still loved
<v Speaker 1>it because it was special and meaningful. They could have
<v Speaker 1>killed off Newt and Hicks in the first twenty five
<v Speaker 1>minutes instead of the first three minutes, and it would
<v Speaker 1>have been a much more compelling story. But what they
<v Speaker 1>did instead is they do it in the opening credits.
<v Speaker 1>I think, probably largely not to have to pay people
<v Speaker 1>to come back and be actors. The other problem that
<v Speaker 1>I have with the first three minutes is you immediately
<v Speaker 1>see the alien. This is ultimately based on a horror movie.
<v Speaker 1>You can't show the monster in the first thirty seconds
<v Speaker 1>of the movie. There's got to be mystery. There's got
<v Speaker 1>to be a question mark. If the ship had crashed
<v Speaker 1>and their pods were wrecked and we didn't really know
<v Speaker 1>what had happened, and there were signs that were curious,
<v Speaker 1>but we don't really know whether this is a result
<v Speaker 1>of the wreck or is this alien acid, blood or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>And then you've got the other question mark of have
<v Speaker 1>they been infected, have what's gone on with them? And
<v Speaker 1>do we ultimately lose them along the way, which they
<v Speaker 1>did well with Ripley, but they could have easily done
<v Speaker 1>with the entire crew there, and then potentially we lose
<v Speaker 1>Newt and Hicks in that first act. But it's not
<v Speaker 1>an outrage because you're given closure. You're not suddenly faced
<v Speaker 1>with the immediate death of people who you had grown
<v Speaker 1>attached to and were rooted four at the end of
<v Speaker 1>part two, I.
<v Speaker 4>Totally agree with that. If there had been a mystery
<v Speaker 4>and you know, crash landing and here are the bodies
<v Speaker 4>and they're in a coma or whatever, and you know
<v Speaker 4>they've got a hookup Bishop to find out what happened,
<v Speaker 4>that would have been better. I wrote this down. So
<v Speaker 4>at one oh nine into the movie you have the
<v Speaker 4>opening of an alien egg, which number one, how did
<v Speaker 4>in the freak did that alien egg get on the ship?
<v Speaker 4>At one twenty six, Newts glass breaks. Okay, at four
<v Speaker 4>minutes and twenty five seconds, Newt drowns and Hicks dies
<v Speaker 4>when the ship crashes into the ocean. John Reid actually
<v Speaker 4>made a joke with me. I told him I was like,
<v Speaker 4>I was out at that point. I was done. I
<v Speaker 4>was out of the movie. He said, So in your case,
<v Speaker 4>Alien the Little Three stood for three minutes before I
<v Speaker 4>was done with the movies. Yep, Alien Three.
<v Speaker 1>I love John.
<v Speaker 4>I told you I have a softball metaphor for you
<v Speaker 4>on this Okay, So my softball metaphor for this movie
<v Speaker 4>is you were coming off one of the best movies
<v Speaker 4>of the nineteen eighties. The bases are loaded. Oh by
<v Speaker 4>the way, the count's three to zero. All we need
<v Speaker 4>is one run to win the game. You don't have
<v Speaker 4>to hit a home run, and you swing at a
<v Speaker 4>bad pitch and you ground out to the picture. This
<v Speaker 4>is what this is. It is a horrible, blown opportunity.
<v Speaker 4>I told you, it's not just that the movie's bad.
<v Speaker 4>It's that it destroys a line and a character and
<v Speaker 4>a movie that I loved. And to me, they committed
<v Speaker 4>the unforgivable sin the first three minutes the end, huh.
<v Speaker 3>Let me ask you a question.
<v Speaker 4>Tell us how you really, but let me ask you
<v Speaker 4>a question.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, Okay, let's let's go to the alternate universe where
<v Speaker 3>we can watch the movies that we want to watch. Yes,
<v Speaker 3>because what the danger there is that there's certain movies
<v Speaker 3>that don't exist because of decisions made here. Right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, So let's.
<v Speaker 3>Say Fincher is a yes man, and let's the studio
<v Speaker 3>bully him around and make the movie that they think
<v Speaker 3>should be made. Okay, Or I'll do you one better.
<v Speaker 3>Let's say he's a yes man and we get one
<v Speaker 3>of the multiple scripts where Hicks is saving the day.
<v Speaker 3>So now you've got basically you've got an alien's reducs
<v Speaker 3>with Fincher at the helm. Okay, and it probably is awesome.
<v Speaker 3>It probably we're today years later, we're probably talking about
<v Speaker 3>how it was pretty awesome. But I mean it's kind
<v Speaker 3>of like aliens say, the same way that The Force
<v Speaker 3>Awakens is basically Star Wars all over again.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 3>I feel like that's what Fincher would have done. Now,
<v Speaker 3>if that would have happened, I think we miss out
<v Speaker 3>on the Fincher that we love today. If Fincher goes
<v Speaker 3>down that road, then we don't get seven, we don't
<v Speaker 3>get the social network, we don't get all of these great, dark, nihilistic,
<v Speaker 3>gritty David Fincher films that we love him for. If
<v Speaker 3>he gives us the Colvin cut of Alien three, I don't.
<v Speaker 3>I don't think it happens.
<v Speaker 2>Man.
<v Speaker 4>You're asking me to choose between myself and David Fincher's career.
<v Speaker 4>That's tough, man, because I love his nineties work.
<v Speaker 3>Think of the greater good here Jason.
<v Speaker 4>Calvin Cutt goes by the wayside.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's obvious in listening to the cast talk
<v Speaker 1>about him that he was already This movie wasn't going
<v Speaker 1>to destroy him, but it obviously hit him pretty hard.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, this came out in ninety two. He had
<v Speaker 1>a TV episode to go direct after this, and that
<v Speaker 1>was all he had. But fortunately somebody threw a script
<v Speaker 1>on his desk called seven Yeah, and so thank the
<v Speaker 1>Lord that that one got greenlit before before he decided
<v Speaker 1>to go do something else. But I think the lessons
<v Speaker 1>that he got from this movie probably made him not
<v Speaker 1>just a great director, but made him We're talking about
<v Speaker 1>classic for history. This guy is going this guy's is
<v Speaker 1>it should be in any top ten list of all
<v Speaker 1>of the directors of all time.
<v Speaker 4>I think there's a case to be made. That really
<v Speaker 4>Scott made one of the best movies of the seventies,
<v Speaker 4>James Cameron made one of the best movies of the eighties,
<v Speaker 4>and that David Venture made the best movie.
<v Speaker 1>Of the nineties, the best, the best. You're calling seven
<v Speaker 1>the best movie I've seen?
<v Speaker 4>It is in the conversation Wow.
<v Speaker 3>I had the opportunity to speak with Dayton Johnson on
<v Speaker 3>the docum based seventy seven podcast about seven. I can't
<v Speaker 3>rightfully say it might be the best movie of the
<v Speaker 3>nineteen nineties, but it is absolutely in the conversation. I
<v Speaker 3>remember what I was wearing when I left the theater
<v Speaker 3>with my co host Brad Kozo, and we just walked
<v Speaker 3>out of the theater and there was about ten minutes
<v Speaker 3>of silence because we couldn't believe the ending to seven
<v Speaker 3>that we just saw.
<v Speaker 1>I felt the same way about Light Club.
<v Speaker 4>All Right, guys, we got anything more to say about
<v Speaker 4>Alien three.
<v Speaker 1>Well, at least we know what the heck happened.
<v Speaker 3>I'll go on banging the drum for Alien three, primarily
<v Speaker 3>the assembly cut, because it really capped off a great
<v Speaker 3>what I feel would be a good trilogy for this franchise,
<v Speaker 3>because the first time out, we got a haunted house
<v Speaker 3>movie in space, and the second time out we got
<v Speaker 3>a war movie in space. And this third time out,
<v Speaker 3>they said, let's pick a new sub genre. And they said, okay,
<v Speaker 3>how about prison drama in space? And it works. You know,
<v Speaker 3>from the cold gray white of the first movie to
<v Speaker 3>the cool, hazy blues of the second movie, we devolve,
<v Speaker 3>I should say, into this Cipia tone, these yellows and browns,
<v Speaker 3>and it's grimy and Finnure gives us a situation where
<v Speaker 3>it's claustrophobic and we want to get out just as
<v Speaker 3>bad as Ripley does. And for that, I think it's
<v Speaker 3>a good movie.
<v Speaker 1>I'll tell you this. When I got done with it,
<v Speaker 1>I literally I saw it in the theater. I have
<v Speaker 1>not seen it since then until I watched it yesterday.
<v Speaker 1>At the end, when she's throwing herself into the fire,
<v Speaker 1>I thought, how the heck do we get Alien Resurrection?
<v Speaker 1>So I actually keep in mind, this is one of
<v Speaker 1>the very few movies that I walked out of. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I put Alien Resurrection on to see what they did,
<v Speaker 1>and some no name guy named Joss Whedon wrote this
<v Speaker 1>ridiculous script and I watched for the I probably watched
<v Speaker 1>it for five minutes and I see them growing a ripley.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, well, of course it was a clone. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>she predicted that when when asked about what's going to
<v Speaker 1>happen if they kill you at the end of this, Oh,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure I didn't really die, or somebody's going to
<v Speaker 1>clone me. And she does end up getting cloned, and
<v Speaker 1>somehow the clone of her also has the alien baby
<v Speaker 1>still in it. I could have walked out at that point.
<v Speaker 1>I'd like, what what it produces, the parasite that was
<v Speaker 1>implanted in from her? What?
<v Speaker 3>I want to be careful because I know I'm dangerously
<v Speaker 3>close to to explaining or defending alien resurrection and I
<v Speaker 3>am not here to do that. I said, I owned
<v Speaker 3>the movie, and I own it that for the same
<v Speaker 3>reason I own Superman The Quest for Peace. It's part
<v Speaker 3>of the box set. Okay, doesn't mean I'm gonna watch it.
<v Speaker 3>I had to take with the rest of them had Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it was they're handing them out. I had to take it.
<v Speaker 3>But the whole idea, and I don't like the idea,
<v Speaker 3>but we have to remember when Clemens is, you know,
<v Speaker 3>attending to her, you know, he does take blood you
<v Speaker 3>know he does. You know he does what a surgeon's
<v Speaker 3>going to do. So the blood sample has Ripley's DNA
<v Speaker 3>and the xenomorph DNA, and that's how you get this
<v Speaker 3>ridiculous I'm not I know you shake. I see you
<v Speaker 3>shaking your head, and I'm not telling you. Hey, it's
<v Speaker 3>a good idea. I'm just I'm just trying to clarify. Well,
<v Speaker 3>you know, it had the DNA of both, and that's
<v Speaker 3>how you get this. So, you know, so superhero Ripley, we've.
<v Speaker 1>All forgotten that the xenomorphous blood is acid. Did we
<v Speaker 1>forget that part? Oh? Yeah, this is the same as
<v Speaker 1>human blood with chromosomes, just like every other thing, except
<v Speaker 1>that it burns through everything.
<v Speaker 3>What hey, I'm not here to teach xenomorphinatomy. I can't
<v Speaker 3>speak to that. I got one more thing. COVID COLVID
<v Speaker 3>did not make me aware of the b biology on
<v Speaker 3>this episode.
<v Speaker 4>I got one more thing for you guys. Okay, So,
<v Speaker 4>after watching Aliens a billion times, I find it hard
<v Speaker 4>to believe that the mother alien could poot you out
<v Speaker 4>a couple of eggs that somehow got inside the escape
<v Speaker 4>ship that ends up killing Newton Hicks and all this problems. Right,
<v Speaker 4>I'm not buying it from the get go. I'm like, no,
<v Speaker 4>that's bull crap. The eggs. She didn't have time to
<v Speaker 4>lay eggs inside the ship. Okay, So here's a theory
<v Speaker 4>that I saw on the internet. Bishop actually placed the
<v Speaker 4>eggs there, that he was a double agent for the
<v Speaker 4>company the whole time and managed to save those eggs,
<v Speaker 4>and that Bishop is actually a bad guy.
<v Speaker 3>I col hate that. No, Na, not after what he did,
<v Speaker 3>not after the sacrifice he made for Ripley and new
<v Speaker 3>I'm not buying that that dog won't hunt.
<v Speaker 4>I don't like it either, But somehow those eggs got
<v Speaker 4>inside that ship.
<v Speaker 1>Well, guys, you've heard our take on Alien three. I
<v Speaker 1>am middle of the road. Jeff is a defender. Jason
<v Speaker 1>is an eviscerating hater. Imagine the scene between the Queen
<v Speaker 1>and Bishop at the end of a That is how
<v Speaker 1>Jason feels about Alien three. But we have our dear
<v Speaker 1>friend Joan Reid from the thirty something Movie podcast who
<v Speaker 1>has an opinion on this as well. To hear his thoughts.
<v Speaker 5>Hey, everybody, this is John Reid from the thirty something
<v Speaker 5>Movie Podcast. Thank you so much. Jason and Dee for
<v Speaker 5>invite me to come on and send you all a
<v Speaker 5>surely showcase for Alien three as part of your what
<v Speaker 5>the heck Happened comparison with Last Action Hero. I'm going
<v Speaker 5>to start off real quick by saying thanks a lot,
<v Speaker 5>guys for giving me what maybe two to three minutes
<v Speaker 5>to talk about one of my favorite movies, when you
<v Speaker 5>know I could talk for two to three hours. My
<v Speaker 5>history with the Alien franchise is I watched Alien with
<v Speaker 5>my dad when I was a kid, I watched Aliens
<v Speaker 5>with friends, and then when Alien three was coming out,
<v Speaker 5>I was actually living in England, so it was being
<v Speaker 5>filmed over there. There were comics, there were books, there
<v Speaker 5>were behind the scenes features, there were live events, all
<v Speaker 5>kinds of stuff. I was hooked on the Alien franchise immediately.
<v Speaker 5>What do I love about Alien three? I love the performances.
<v Speaker 5>Charles S. Dutton as Dylan is amazing. Sigourney Weaver as Ripley,
<v Speaker 5>She's been developed over the course of the last two movies,
<v Speaker 5>and I really think this movie gives her an opportunity
<v Speaker 5>to take that even further. Charles Dance as Clemens is
<v Speaker 5>also a great character in this movie. I love the visuals.
<v Speaker 5>This movie really goes back to what I think the
<v Speaker 5>heart of the Alien franchise is, and it is that
<v Speaker 5>things are bleak, things are dark, they are sickly and diseased.
<v Speaker 5>There This movie is kind of yellow and brown tones
<v Speaker 5>and very dark, whereas things were a little bit lighter
<v Speaker 5>and sci fi blue in Aliens. I love the spiritual
<v Speaker 5>religious aspects of this movie and kind of the motherhood
<v Speaker 5>aspects that come into the whole franchise. But some of
<v Speaker 5>the early comic books I read around about the time
<v Speaker 5>when I first started getting hooked on Aliens, that there
<v Speaker 5>was a kind of almost a cult that had grown
<v Speaker 5>up on Earth around the idea of the Aliens and
<v Speaker 5>maybe how they were an image of God. And I thought, well,
<v Speaker 5>that's that's not what I believe, but that's really interesting.
<v Speaker 5>So I really kind of got interested in some of
<v Speaker 5>those stories and kind of what it brought to the
<v Speaker 5>Alien franchise, And of course this one, the religious guys
<v Speaker 5>on the prison Planet take that a step further. Absolutely,
<v Speaker 5>this is the biggest thing for me. It continues the
<v Speaker 5>message that was set up in Alien. You are a
<v Speaker 5>cog in the machine. If you want to look at
<v Speaker 5>this as a metaphor for capitalism. You're just a cog
<v Speaker 5>in the machine and the company does not care about you.
<v Speaker 5>The state of life in space is, to quote Hobbes Leviathan, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
<v Speaker 5>and short. And then here's my favorite one, even when
<v Speaker 5>you win, you lose. Ripley won in alien but ultimately
<v Speaker 5>she lost because she came back and her daughter had
<v Speaker 5>died of old age and she was gone. Everything had
<v Speaker 5>been lost. She regains a daughter in Aliens. But then
<v Speaker 5>in this one, even though I know it's gut wrenching,
<v Speaker 5>I absolutely agree with the death of Newt and Hicks
<v Speaker 5>at the beginning of this she loses everything again. I
<v Speaker 5>think that fits perfectly with the message of the Alien movies.
<v Speaker 5>The Alien Queen even seemingly wins but ultimately loses. And
<v Speaker 5>if you want to find a better scene for this,
<v Speaker 5>you gotta watch. You should watch the assembly cut of
<v Speaker 5>the movie. But then at the end switch it over
<v Speaker 5>to the theatrical cut. That's a much better When when
<v Speaker 5>we get to the end of the movie and you
<v Speaker 5>want to see that part of it, switch to the
<v Speaker 5>theatrical for when Ripley dives off the platform, it's a
<v Speaker 5>much better ending to the movie in my opinion, Guys,
<v Speaker 5>thank you so much. Love what you're doing, love your show.
<v Speaker 5>This has been John Reid, last surviving fan of Alien three,
<v Speaker 5>signing off.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, Jeff, you and John can go hold hands.
<v Speaker 3>Hey John, Yeah, I just want to thank John for
<v Speaker 3>zooming in like Bishop did on that platform at the
<v Speaker 3>end of Aliens, because I appreciate the support. Thank you, brother.
<v Speaker 1>I got to say, when I listen to the thirty
<v Speaker 1>something movie podcast, I start thinking things as they're talking,
<v Speaker 1>and literally as I think those things, then John says
<v Speaker 1>the things that I think. It blows my mind how
<v Speaker 1>much we are on the same page. My mind is
<v Speaker 1>equally blown at this point at how much we are
<v Speaker 1>not on the same page as far as this movie.
<v Speaker 4>G Jeff, will you come back next week with us
<v Speaker 4>so we can talk about Last Action Hero and what
<v Speaker 4>the heck happened with that movie?
<v Speaker 3>You know I will be glad to do that. We
<v Speaker 3>covered Last Action Hero a couple months back on its
<v Speaker 3>anniversary date. We had Andy Frye with us on that episode,
<v Speaker 3>and you know, I feel like that was good training
<v Speaker 3>between what him and Brad had to say about Last
<v Speaker 3>Action Hero and the shots they were taken. I feel
<v Speaker 3>like that was like the the undercard fight for for
<v Speaker 3>what I probably am walking into next week when I
<v Speaker 3>show up again.
<v Speaker 1>Here I at this moment, I've still not seen The
<v Speaker 1>Last Action Hero.
<v Speaker 2>Not once.
<v Speaker 1>Didn't see the theater, didn't rent it. Never ever have
<v Speaker 1>I seen it except like, you know, it's been what
<v Speaker 1>thirty how many years?
<v Speaker 2>Now?
<v Speaker 1>Thirty? It's ninety three, so it's been thirty years since
<v Speaker 1>the movie came out. So there have been times where
<v Speaker 1>I'm channel surfing back when I still did that, and
<v Speaker 1>I was like, oh, this looks like a good movie.
<v Speaker 1>Oh wait a minute, this I've heard this is terrible
<v Speaker 1>and I didn't watch the rest of it. So I've
<v Speaker 1>caught little bits here and there, but I have never
<v Speaker 1>seen the movie from beginning to end. So I can't
<v Speaker 1>tell you whether I'm going to be an advocator or
<v Speaker 1>a denouncer.
<v Speaker 4>Okay, this is the last movie I walked out of,
<v Speaker 4>jeff If you'll come back with us, we will dive
<v Speaker 4>in next week to Last Action Hero.
<v Speaker 3>Happy to do it.
<v Speaker 1>Bye, guys, see you guys next week later.
<v Speaker 4>Jeffrey Madamy, Absolutely not, man.
<v Speaker 3>I love these kinds of episodes.
<v Speaker 4>Are you kidding me, good, good, okay,