Alien 3 fans shout out- all 4 of you!

The Assembly comes across as 'This is absolutely everything we shot, slapped together'.  Which is exactly what assembly cuts are.  There's no attention to the flow and pacing, until you actually get down to cutting - hence the redundancy throughout.

The theatrical cut version cut a little too much, but it's a much tighter piece.

I agree that there should be some balance between the two,but there are things in the assembly cut i vastly prefer to the theatrical.Here's an example:While it's simply an alternate scene,i prefer Ripley dying with out the chestburster.To me it shows that her life was still in her hands.For the theatrical i prefer the dog to "babe" but due to the size of the ox,the bambi burster makes more sense,but that's just me.

Bursting on the way into the furnace was the best result.  Giler and Hill wanted her to burst on the gantry, break the bursters neck, the throw herself in.  Fincher called this janitor duty, and didn't want her to burst at all.  I think it was Richard Edlund who said the burster on the way down was the best payoff for the audience and I agree.  It maintains the concept of Ripley making a conscious choice to kill herself, but still allowing us to see her burst after dodging it for three films.

I wasn't aware of the neck breaking,i'm not sure how that would have worked.

It's in the comic adaptation and based on that I don't think it would've worked very well at all.

Yeah.I would almost say an exception could be made for the queen,but what difference would that make?Chestbursters kill,I don't think anyone can survive it.They most certainly could not break it's neck.

I don't think it would've worked because a) how does she live long enough to not only kill it, but then throw herself into the furnace b) how does she have the strength c) it's hard to imagine how she could've held onto the slippery squirming burster long enough to kill it and d) yeah, how could she break it's neck?

Agreed.The whole breaking the neck thing is a little too AVP for my taste any way even though Alien 3 came before that movie.It's such a silly scene,the chestburster flys out and the predator grabs it and snaps it neck.

Love the story love the cast and I too liked the version with more character development- furnace chestburster scene wasn't necessary and I agree how could she still be conscious to hold it and break its neck?  Don't know if it's do-able but-Someone needs to take this thing and re-do the CGI to be quality- like where it's seamless like parts in avatar I could not tell where the stage ended and the computer animation began.  That tunnel/door scene could be much better without too many odd angles and good CGI. "That things really pissed off!"

The full body shots of the Alien aren't CGI.

...Ah i see- it was a model/puppet superimposed or if you want to be technical "photochemically composited" from IMDB.  that was the flaw - just didnt hit home (for me)- it looked like it was glowing.  Whenever it was real the fear was real.  Otherwise i liked it a lot. 

The puppet actually looked pretty good and the performance of it was good.  The compositing was sub-par though.

The weird thing was, Return of the Jedi was nearly 10 years earlier and that was really pushing the boundaries of what effects could achieve with models, puppets, bluescreens, rearscreen projection, etc.  The VFX on Alien 3 were often a lot worse than the 10 year old ROTJ - a film which Fincher worked on.

Thanks DK

I like it because of the over-all hopeless feeling of it. They are out there in space far from earth and no one seems to care about them so they try to keep some sort of order there that they have made of their own.

Alien 3 deals with existence and religion in an interesting way that I like. The doctor (Clemens) is like a counter weight to that which makes sense because then you have two sides of it – those that believe and those that don’t.

Don’t take this too literarily but I remember that someone at a web page complained that the prisoners had too similar dialects, that didn’t bother me because they managed to build different characters. One character that I found interesting was what seemed to be some sort of religious leader (although he was a sort of informal leader), Dillon. The way that he and Ripley interacted with each-other was interesting.

Golic is an interesting character, yes he is insane but he is an important part of the story. They should have kept him locked up, that is what I have got to say about it.

It has more of the feeling of the original Alien movie in the way that it is less action and more like a thriller. At the same time, there are things about it that makes it different to Alien. One example that I like is that there is no Lambert character sure she wasn’t bad and had her purpose but to repeat it that close to Alien (1979 and 1992) would have been a mis-step in my opinion.

There were problems with the movie making so it is interesting that they got it made after all that happened.

Newt and Hicks were killed but I never had any problem with that. It wasn’t that they were bad characters, they didn’t feel that interesting and the Alien franchise has never been about “we’re a happy family” kind of feeling. Maybe they could have done it in a better way but I don’t have a problem with it.

Alien three has two versions, I prefer the one that wasn’t shown in the movie theaters (the special edition I think they call it). It seems to me that they characters are better written and so on. There are scenes in it that adds to it.

I don’t understand how someone can prefer Prometheus to Alien 3 but I am fine with that. I don’t say this to bash Lone’s opinion or anyone else that thinks so but that is simply how I see it.

S.M:

“Giler and Hill wanted her to burst on the gantry, break the bursters neck, the throw herself in.”

That seems like it would have been a terrible decision. Burster-victims are supposed to die from it.

I'm so hooked on ALIEN 3 I bought all the costumes from the film. No replicas. The real robes and stuff.

Get your original movie prop now, just in time for ALIEN DAY:

http://www.ebay.fr/itm/ALIEN-3-VINTAGE-FIORINA-161-PRISONER-COSTUME-SCREEN-USED-RARE-ORIGINAL-/201886359219?hash=item2f015d5eb3%3Ag%3AEYYAAOSw03lY58yn&_trkparms=pageci%253Af5ac2293-209e-11e7-b12b-74dbd180cb91%257Cparentrq%253A6998d5dc15b0a6a4a6a82660fffd02d8%257Ciid%253A37

Right on Sergeant Apone. Don't let anyone give you any lip about it. Good job.

After the original, Alien 3 is my favourite. I dont understand why everyone hates on it so much. Its not perfect but it at least stayed true to the godless dark vision of the original unlike Aliens, Resurrection and the AVPs.

I hated it when I first saw it as a kid, but I recently rewatched it and found it to be better than I remembered. I actually prefer it over ALIENS, which I think is highly overrated. A3 is my third-favorite of the franchise, after ALIEN and Prometheus.

I love Alien 3 - Aliens was right on trend for its time, huge production full of kick ass rhetoric, hero saves the day but blows the whole world to shit doing so type of thing - remember this is when the action movie blockbuster was at its peak. Alien 3 is grittier, it feels more real in a way, characters are terrific and it was a great cast. Got to say I also agree with the older members here, it has grown on me over the years in the same way that my love of Aliens had lessened.

Hated AR when it came out, still do & although I have watched it again a few times I only go as far as that white abomination being born and I turn it off!! Ridiculous film, ridiculous story, ludicrous casting and it doesn't know what it's trying to be! 

Please add me to the official list of Alien 3 fans.

I read the novelization before watching the Assembly Cut and plan to soon pollute the discussion with Fiorina 161 analysis. I missed so much in 1992 at the theater.

The last sentence of the book is great regarding the radio transmission that will go on forever in space.

"This is Ripley, last surviving member of the Nostromo, signing off."

I love Alien 3 as well! I prefer the theatrical cut with all of it's problems. The great thing about all of the first 3 films is they are a welcomed departure from the previous one. The first is sci-fi horror at it's finest, then Aliens is a great action film all around, great characters, great set pieces and Alien 3 is kind of that great being chased by a monster feel, they have no weapons to fight a xeno, all 3 great movies!