David Fincher talks Alien 3 (briefly) in this month's issue of Empire Magazine

[Wweyland]

Would the Bishop scene work better if it moved to an earlier point in the movie?

[SiL]

Would the Bishop scene work better if it moved to an earlier point in the movie?

It could work better if you intercut it with Boggs and Rains encountering the adult, rather than right after. Have "It was with us all the way" and the reveal of the Alien covered in blood be a sort of simultaneous climax

[Wweyland]

Would the Bishop scene work better if it moved to an earlier point in the movie?

It could work better if you intercut it with Boggs and Rains encountering the adult, rather than right after. Have "It was with us all the way" and the reveal of the Alien covered in blood be a sort of simultaneous climax

And then time for rape!
But in all seriousness, is Ripley a bit slow to realize what's happening, or just not telling others what she's realizing? Could this be sped up as well?

[Neila]

That's right.
Normally everything should have been clear to her the moment she saw the acid stain on Newt's hyper sleep cabin.
But that was just an attempt to build tension.
I also never understood why no one examined the dead dog anymore, which obviously didn't die in some dark hiding place but in Murphy's cell.
The ox scene would also have needed more action or the discovery of the queen facehugger. Many scenes could have built up a lot more tension, but the film didn't have time for it due to the problematic production.
In the assembly cut, the secondary storyline with Golik is implemented in an exciting way and enhances the film immensely for me.

[SM]

Murphy didn't go back to his cell and was dead the next morning so couldn't raise the alarm.

Continuity error or spent the night in someone else's cell after lockup.

[Local Trouble]

Continuity error or spent the night in someone else's cell after lockup.

What about his vow of celibacy?

[Acid_Reign161]

I never got the impression Spike was in lockup.. the area we see him in prior to the burster hatching looks nothing like the lockup area as seen in the scene where Ripley asks Dillon to kill her. Since Andrew's said he wanted everyone back in lockup by 2100 hours after the cremation at the furnace, nobody would have seen the dog again. Murphy would have started the early morning shift cleaning the fans, gets diced, and Clemens is woken once the body is discovered. This time frame also makes sense given the xeno is only just freshly molting in the duct when disturbed by Murphy.

[SM]

Spike was in Murphy's cell.  He clearly didn't return after the cremation and supper and went straight to work in the vent shaft in the morning or he would've found Spike dead.

The Alien growth time frames are off with previous films as the Alien is only around the same size as a large dog, some 11 hours later.

[Neila]

yes, many variants would have been possible. I just thought that you could get a little more tension out of scenes like this. Of course the viewer knows immediately what's going on, but it would have been interesting how Ripley would react if they had found the dog and how she would have explained the situation to them.
I would also have found it great if the religious aspect had come into play even more,
like in an earlier script.
They could have seen the alien as the arrival of the devil and Ripley as a temptress of evil, while Clemens is the only one who believes and helps her.
When the alien "kissed" Ripley, Golic could have told the others that Ripley was working together with the devil. Some cool scenes could have been created from that. but that's all gone.
The film is what it is and I still like it.
I was just glad that it wasn't an even bigger action record. There were a few ideas from other screenwriters with several Alien Queens against several power loaders and that's just stupid shit.
I also like the film because many people expected an even bigger action film and it went in the other direction.

[SM]

There's no script with multiple Queens fighting loaders. Maybe some people had ideas like that but none were written.

[Local Trouble]

How long would Ripley have lasted in that loader against a regular warrior?

[SM]

A minute.  Tops.

[Neila]

There's no script with multiple Queens fighting loaders. Maybe some people had ideas like that but none were written.

As stupid as it sounds, it was definitely in the conversation.
I'm not sure if it's in the making of Alien 3 or if I read it in a report about it, but it was on the table.
Maybe just as an idea, but it came from someone who was involved in the project in some way, even if only as a consultant or screenwriter.
This hollow idea alone is absolutely crazy and would have seemed incredibly ridiculous.

[SiL]

I think Flynn mentions it in Dissecting Aliens because I remember it.

[Neila]

Some ideas are so dangerously bad that they could completely destroy a film or even a franchise.
Unfortunately, many people see it that way with Prometheus and Covenant.
My personal opinion is that Ridley had above all protected the space jockey from unforgivably stupid ideas, like the ones the Strausses had for another AVP.