Alien Sequel On Streaming Started Career Of Oscar-Nominated Director
What does an Alien 3 Blu-Ray and the movie Se7en have in common? If you answered “we’re scared to look inside the box for each one,” we’ll give you full points for being a cinephile, but the real answer is that both of them were helmed by Oscar-nominated director David Fincher. Alien 3 was Fincher’s first major film, and if you’d like to get a better look at where this popular director got his unexpected start, you should stream this alien adventure on Hulu today.
Alien 3 launched the career of acclaimed director David Fincher, and the sci-fi classic is now available to stream on Hulu.
What is Alien 3 actually about? If you need a refresher, or maybe you’ve never checked out this controversial entry in the franchise, you should know that it bears little resemblance to Alien (which was a haunted cabin movie in space) or Aliens (which was a breathless action movie pitting space marines against relentless xenomorphs). Instead, Alien 3 takes place entirely on a prison planet where Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley has crashed, and she must survive both a stalking alien as well as the inmates of the planet, some of whom are more belligerent and unpredictable than others.
You may know Alien 3 only by reputation, and that reputation hasn’t always been a good one. That’s because the movie made the controversial decision to have the other surviving humans from Aliens (the space marine Hicks as well as the young girl Newt) die when the ship they were traveling in crash lands on the harsh planet below. Sure, this heightens the tension and danger for Ripley (the people she trusts most are now dead), but this narrative decision killed two fan-favorite characters while essentially undoing the relatively happy ending of Aliens.
Fincher would go on to direct some of our favorite movies, including Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network.
The fandom has developed a greater appreciation for Alien 3 in recent years, especially for the Assembly Cut version that brings everything more in line with David Fincher’s vision. Whether you love or hate the theatrical cut, though, it’s worth noting that most of the film’s biggest weaknesses are not on the part of Fincher. The entire production of this movie was more nightmarish than the xenomorph itself, and first-time director David Fincher didn’t have enough clout to fight back against the studio’s increasingly crazy notes and requests.
One reason the studio had so many notes is that they were trying to earnestly make Alien 3 happen almost as soon as Aliens proved to be a critical and commercial hit. Long before Fincher came on board, the studio had entertained very different ideas of what the film could be: one idea was a Cold War metaphor that heavily involved Hicks and turned Ripley into a cameo role, for example, while another idea involved an entirely new crew of space marines fighting a different alien menace. There was even a particularly wild story idea involving a planet where almost everything was made out of wood.
How did David Fincher get involved with Alien 3, then? Originally, the movie was going to be directed by David Ward (who also helped develop its story), but the studio eventually asked Fincher to replace Ward. To some degree, this was likely a financially motivated choice: Fincher was only known then for directing music videos, and it was likely cheaper to hire a first-time film director rather than someone with a bit more Hollywood experience.
Alien 3 suffered from excessive studio interference, resulting in a theatrical cut, and the far superior Assembly Cut.
Fincher would go on to direct some of our favorite movies, including Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network. But at the time, he was openly disdainful of his time on Alien 3 and his negative experience with the studio, and that displeasure led him to tear 20th Century Fox a new one in a documentary about the making of the film (his negative comments were edited out of the 2003 Quadrilogy set but restored for the 2010 Anthology set). He also refused to create a proper director’s cut, but the later Assembly Cut (edited together using Fincher’s note) is considered by most fans a genuinely great film far superior to the original.
As for the theatrical cut of Alien 3, critics and fans were both unimpressed. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has 47 percent from critics and fans. And while the movie made $159.8 million against a budget of no more than $60 million, it’s generally considered a disappointment by fans and executives alike who hoped it might be another runaway hit like Aliens.
That brings us to the big question…why do we think you should check out Alien 3 on Hulu? For all its flaws, this movie is a piece of Hollywood history: you get to see where one of Hollywood’s most influential directors got his start, and you get to see arguably the first Alien film to transform most of what we know about the franchise mythos. Considering that a new Alien film is coming from Fede Alvarez and we’re getting an Alien television series from Noah Hawley, this is the perfect time to return to the franchise that always makes you scream (even though nobody can hear you).
