Aliens: What Could Have Been

I finally took the time to read the Aliens III script by William Gibson that’s been floating around the Net, and it’s an interesting example of how movies and ideas mutate. Part of the reason it’s been popular reading is because it could have been a much better movie.

Now, before I get into this, I didn’t think Alien3 sucked as much as some people did, but it didn’t treat the characters or the franchise with respect and as such I understand why fans hate it so much. To me it was more huge letdown than bad movie.

And here’s your spoiler warning: if you want to read Gibson’s script, click the link and read it before continuing, because I’m going to talk plot details.

The scripts each have two things in common: they eliminate important characters and the Aliens show they adapt or take over the DNA of their available hosts. In each case, however, they’re handled differently.

In Gibson’s script, Hicks becomes the primary player with Bishop a close second. Rather than landing on a penal colony, the ship is picked up by a biomed team and Hicks, Ripley, and Newt are all rescued. Ripley remains comatose, however, and Newt is put on a ship headed for Earth. Hicks is stationed on the new ship and Bishop, after a stint on another ship (we’ll get to this in a moment), reunites with Hicks to fight the Aliens.

The key difference here is nobody is dead. Comatose Ripley is put on a lifeboat and sent into space, so she could conceivably end up anywhere. Newt is on her way back to Earth on the Sulaco, and the crew of the biomed station is worried the ship may be infected, giving us the hints that a) Newt is in danger and b) Earth is in danger. And Hicks and Bishop both make it through to the end, suggesting at the very least they’ll go after Newt.

I suspect some of this worked against this script. Specifically, the shift from Ripley to Hicks didn’t sit well with movie execs, as Sigourney Weaver is probably a much larger draw than Michael Biehn, even in his heyday. And if memory serves, there was some question of whether Weaver would continue with the series (whether her choice or the studio’s), so there may not have been interest in leaving doors open for more sequels.

But again, Gibson’s script left all that open, which would have left a lot of fans (myself included) hungry for more.

On to the Aliens themselves. As I said, the same idea of the Aliens borrowing/stealing DNA from hosts to adapt is still in the script. In Alien3, the Alien comes out of a dog and is small and fast. In Gibson’s Alien III, the Aliens simply mutate further and now can spread via a spore; they become as much viral as anything else. I probably could have done without this part, but again, it borrows from the same concept of corrupted DNA. It also amps up the horror side of the movies, with characters getting bitten and shortly thereafter spitting out 3-4 chestbursters rather than just 1. This reintroduces a new level of scares and thrills beyond a lone Alien hunting and killing in the darkness.

Where Gibson’s script really steps up is in broadening its universe. It carries on with the corporation wanting to use the Aliens as a weapon, only it introduces a new human enemy, a rival, socialist government. These guys board the Sulaco first, encounter a facehugger, and take Bishop back to their base to clone an Alien from materials found on Bishop. They also download everything he knows. We see some politics between the two sides, and it’s a thinly-veiled Cold War in space. They eventually return Bishop, and later they are overrun with their Aliens around the same time Hicks’ new home is.

I think the ending, however, is what sealed the fate of Gibson’s script: it becomes a lot like Aliens. Hicks sends Bishop down to rig the fusion reactor to blow while Hicks hustles the survivors to the lifeboats. We have some neat moments and nasty kills, then it’s into the lifeboat and away they go just before the space station blows. The only difference is we don’t have the Newt rescue or surprise attack on the lifeboat.

Despite that, I think it’s a much better story and would have been much better for the franchise. It’s too bad they didn’t take the best elements from Gibson’s scripts and rework the ending rather than going a whole new direction and killing off Newt and Hicks during the opening credits and literally scrapping Bishop.

Ah well. At least the comics were cool.