William Gibson's Alien 3 Script - AvPGalaxy Podcast #48

Started by Corporal Hicks, Apr 19, 2017, 05:34:49 PM

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William Gibson's Alien 3 Script - AvPGalaxy Podcast #48 (Read 18,828 times)

Local Trouble

I haven't listened to this episode yet.  Does Hicks have a psychotic episode at some point?

gfds

Alien 3 1992=Xenomorphs on Earth
Alien 4 1997=Xenomorph Homeworld

that's all I ever wanted

Corporal Hicks

Quote from: Local Trouble on Apr 20, 2017, 10:46:21 PM
I haven't listened to this episode yet.  Does Hicks have a psychotic episode at some point?

You wanna be checking the news for that.  :P

BishopShouldGo

Quote from: gfds on Apr 21, 2017, 10:20:05 AM
Alien 3 1992=Xenomorphs on Earth
Alien 4 1997=Xenomorph Homeworld

that's all I ever wanted

Yup. So simple.

GreybackElder

Great podcast gentleman! Loved the script read and breakdown. This movie would have been absolutely bananas if it followed this script. I definitely see the parallels with this and Alien Covenant with the use of spores. I hope it doesn't follow the same premise of those infected turn into Aliens. Having an Alien burst out of you is so much more unsettling to me. Once again great job!
How do you get these scripts?

PRJ_since1990

Alien...cabbages... need I say more?

gfds

Assuming this was the movie we got, they could of easily fixed the alien virus nonsense by having the Darelect surviving the Atmospheric Plant explosion by either: being far enough away from the explosion or the Darelect is nigh-indestructible compared to a nuclear explosion. Then have the Darelect salvaged by the U.P.P. or Weyland-Yutani either the ship or the eggs, then have an infestation on Anchorpoint space station. Then have the station get "STERILIZED" at the end of the movie, BUT we find out 1 of the escaping vessels with survivors was infested and now the Earth has a xenomorph infestation now and they are building a massive hive, this would of been a shocking twist to find out all efforts where in vain to save the Earth but also building up hype for the next movie with Russia, America, and everyone else united against our true enemy!

KiramidHead

I finished reading the second draft just now, and I think it goes a bit too far to the opposite extreme from the first draft. That one has way too much random shit going, while this one could have been a tad more eventful. That and the Cold War references are still a tad dated. Here are some other random thoughts:

-Gibson expands on the typical alien life cycle a bit more, and interestingly enough, he makes the warriors from Aliens a transitional stage to the ultimate form, the one from the original film. That's pretty opposite of every other take I've seen. Also, the idea that any drone can become a queen under the right circumstances is an intriguing one.

-The UPP repairing Bishop with sub standard materials reminded me of a chapter in Red Storm Rising where a German dentist fingers a Soviet spy based on the crappy fillings in his teeth.

-Hicks, the marine famously in need of waking up, spends a chunk of this draft asleep. :laugh:

-I had a hard time picturing the Hybrid alien, and how it was supposed to differentiate from the standard model. I'm also not sure how the transformation happened to begin with. The embryo just kind of randomly farts on two people, and that's it.

-Also, the "yellow liquid" that the Hybrid bleeds just made me wonder if the Tall Man was somehow involved.

SpeedyMaxx

Yeah, like I said I think Hicks is more Hicks-like but a bit less proactive in the second draft. I feel like once the Hybrid bursts out the aliens are largely offscreen (and largely only active offscreen) until the anticlimatic ending in the hangar.

I prefer the second draft by a lot, but there was so much more they could do in the third act when the shit hit the fan. I don't mean firefights, but just suspense sequences where the alien is actually present. Instead it's largely the survivors moving around and the alien popping in and out or taking people out offscreen. And losing the zero-g sequence was a mistake - imagine doing that with just one or two aliens. Would be creepy as hell.

I have always assumed any drone could become a queen in the absence of one available.

Valaquen

Quote from: SpeedyMaxx on Apr 22, 2017, 09:01:52 AM
I have always assumed any drone could become a queen in the absence of one available.

That's how Cameron imagined it. Though he never used the term 'drone'. The Aliens in his movie were the same 'class' as the one in the original. They just looked different.

SpeedyMaxx

Quote from: Valaquen on Apr 22, 2017, 01:23:22 PM
That's how Cameron imagined it. Though he never used the term 'drone'. The Aliens in his movie were the same 'class' as the one in the original. They just looked different.

I always assumed so myself, yes.

CainsSon

My take on this script is that they were looking at what wasn't addressed in the first film, and they figured using the 'bigger and better' concept figured they should address the reasons why the Derelict appeared alive or organic, and then came to this idea about the DNA that could infect everything.

I don't hate that idea and I think they will eventually explain that the Black Goo is sort of doing this, as it seems it has made those Spores grown on Paradise in Covenant.

Overall I think the idea of a Cold War metaphor isn't a bad one, but I also think there were hints of McCarthyism in their with the Bishop character.

I think with ALIENS the subtext is made text, and then they were thrown to find a way to continue the ideas. When looked at this way ALIEN 3 does seem to have made some smart choices with regards to continuing the themes of Motherhood.
It just needed to be rewritten a few more times before they started rolling on it.

When I read these scripts I cant help but feel they could have combined elements of all of them into one very interesting movie.

SpeedyMaxx

What always intrigues me about the franchise, also, is how much the bones have been picked over the years from unused concepts and scripts to later iterations of the series - Spaihts' draft of what became Prometheus reuses the idea of the skull/face behind the alien's cowl, the final version of A3 uses elements of both Twohy and Ward's scripts. Prometheus reuses many design elements left over from Alien planning and Giger's work, and now we see more unused elements from the pre-production of Alien in AC, as well as arguably some stuff from these Gibson drafts (spores, etc).

Local Trouble

Quote from: SpeedyMaxx on Apr 26, 2017, 07:33:33 PMSpaihts' draft of what became Prometheus reuses the idea of the skull/face behind the alien's cowl

>:(

SpeedyMaxx


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