So, did you know William Gibson apparently wrote a screenplay for Aliens III?
Without knowing a thing about it, I am sure it was greatly superior to the actual Aliens III movie, which I have done my best to forget in its entirety.
Here’s what this post at a site called vulture.com says:
One of the many problems with Alien 3 was its lack of escalation. The first film in the franchise, Ridley Scott’s Alien, was a claustrophobic monster movie about a small group of underqualified people trying to escape a murderous creature. The sequel, James Cameron’s action masterpiece Aliens, opened up the concept by adding a squad of soldiers, a massive space colony, and — as the title suggested — more than one bad beast. Then 1992’s Alien 3, the directorial debut of a young David Fincher, was … a claustrophobic monster movie about a small group of underqualified people trying to escape a murderous creature.
Yeah, I’d agree that lack of escalation was ONE of Alien III’s problems.
What a pity Gibson’s version didn’t get filmed! Especially given this bit:
“Having been deprived of Ripley, I became aware of how much I’d liked Bishop” — the benevolent android played by Lance Henriksen. But he couldn’t just have Bishop in the spotlight, so he reconciled with the fact that Michael Biehn’s gentle Space Marine Hicks would have to take a more prominent role. All the elements were in place. Gibson sat at his Apple IIc, fired up Microsoft Word (he didn’t have any script-writing software; the biggest challenge of the script was “doing all the tabulation by hand,” hitting keys a million times to center things), and got to work.
I loved Bishop! And I liked Hicks a whole lot too. Can you imagine how much better any movie would have been if it just brought those two characters more front-and-center?
Anyway, read the whole thing if you are interested. And join me in weeping for what might have been.
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