
William Gibson’s Never-Filmed Aliens Sequel - andyjohnson0
http://www.vulture.com/2017/05/william-gibsons-never-filmed-alien-iii-script-a-history.html
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pseingatl
I can remember reading this; it was posted in its entirety on Usenet.

Here's a link to the screenplay:
[http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/Alien3.txt](http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/Alien3.txt)

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tarikjn
> But there’s an alternate universe where the series’ propulsive momentum only
> increased — a reality in which the third Alien film featured advanced
> xenomorphs [...]; where cold-warring rival space stations of communists and
> capitalists race to outdo one another with their genetic experiments on the
> aliens’ tissue; where a flock of the phallic horrors flies through the void
> of space, only to be beaten back by a gun-toting robot.

There were already a few similarities between the Alien and Starcraft worlds,
but this definitely pushes it closer.

~~~
xenihn
SC1 draws lots of inspiration from other works of fiction in it's domain.
Aside from the Zerg being Blizzard's take on xenomorphs, the SC1 Goliath
design is pretty much the Robocop enforcement droid, and the Protoss are their
take on Predators.

I'm always surprised by fans who defend game designers and state that it's
just a coincidence, or even that there's anything inherently wrong with taking
something from another IP and repurposing it for your game and/or paying
homage to it, since what you're using probably wasn't a completely original
thought either, and was in turn inspired by something else.

I know a few game devs/designers and have gotten to experience the design
process at a major game company first-hand, and they're completely honest
about using other stuff as an inspiration or template for their concepts, but
they're not allowed to admit it publicly for a variety of reasons (lawsuits I
guess...). Stuff from other IPs is directly referenced when brainstorming and
designing.

I think people who don't know anything about game design or universe building
don't realize just how much media the people involved in these fields consume.
It's silly to think that they won't be basing their stuff off things that
they're fans of.

~~~
jfoutz
"Milspec ED 209 on", yeah, there's a bunch of little easter eggs in starcraft.

Protoss always seemed more like "Eldar" from warhammer 40k. I vaguely recall
the old rogue trader saying Eldar warp in to the battlefield, just like the
Protoss.

They probably drew from everything they'd ever read and seen, not at all
surprising there are a bunch of references.

~~~
billyjobob
Starcraft was originally a Warhammer 40k game. They lost the license but
published it anyway after changing the names.

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snake_plissken
I like Alien 3. I don't know exactly what it is that I like, but it's there.
Maybe it's the religious penal colony theme? The Quake-esue feel to the
setting? The different direction in style and setting it took from the other
two?

Alien 3 is a lot like Temple Doom (which I also like). It's just that, in each
franchise, the other two movies are so much better, I think everyone just
writes off the remaining film.

~~~
throwanem
Interesting you mention Quake in this connection - I feel like at least
someone on the Dead Space 2 writing or design team must've seen Gibson's spec
script at some point. Some of the Anchorpoint sequences in the script match
pretty closely with some of the game's sequences in the "Sprawl" station - and
I mean, the station is called _the Sprawl_ , so it's not exactly a far reach
to suggest the game devs had some Gibsonian influence going on.

Not a criticism, I should note - I feel like that's some of the strongest
material in Dead Space 2, which is admittedly very uneven, but when it's good,
it's good indeed. If we couldn't have Gibson's version of _Alien 3_ \- and I
agree with the article author that we'd have been better off with that one
than with the one we did get - then it's nice at least to see some of it end
up surfacing in another venue.

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toyg
It's funny how Gibson's screenplay was marked "not innovative" but now The
Master himself, Sir Ridley Scott, is basically churning out the same movie
over and over again (Prometheus and Covenant). In the end, Hollywood
franchises will go on no matter what.

~~~
cvwright
And Gibson is still churning out books with the same ideas -- even sometimes
essentially the same characters with different names.

Crazy rich guy driving everything from behind the scenes? Check.

Voodoo beliefs transplanted into modern/futuristic society? Check.

Cayce Pollard vs Hollis Henry? They are essentially the same character.

I still enjoy his work, but it's impossible not to notice the repetition,
going from the Pattern Recognition trilogy all the way back to Count Zero.

~~~
throwanem
Yup. Read the Sprawl trilogy, the Bridge trilogy, and _Burning Chrome_ , and
you're done.

~~~
sleepybrett
While the bigend trilogy isn't his strongest work there are some interesting
concepts toyed in there that are certainly achievable in todays world. Garage
Kubrick, Secret Brand and Serious Political Trickster.

The peripheral, however, is not to be missed.

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jvzr
Without spoiling anything (I hope) for those that haven't yet seen Alien
Covenant, there are lot of similitudes between that script and the new movies,
it's almost uncanny.

~~~
mmjaa
I had a copy of the script once, when I lived in Hollywood. It was an awesome
coffee-table curio, which more than a few of my friends begged to borrow (I
denied). Before the franchise expanded to its current form, it really was
something I thought I'd see turned into a production at some point, being a
Gibson fanboix.

That said, I look forward to seeing the new Alien Covenant and noting the
inspiration that is no doubt to be found.

~~~
m-i-l
I remember reading this script on a Usenet Newsgroup a long time ago. I think
it was rec.arts.sf.movies. A quick search returns
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.arts.sf.movies/XqL...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.arts.sf.movies/XqLap-8BGGk/PMqAEjv89d8J)
with some comments. It seems like a place called the "Pix Poster Cellar" was
selling "a photostat of a photostat of a typewritten screen-play" but the
store burned down in 1993.

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vilhelm_s
Another interesting never-realized Alien film is Vincent Ward's version of
Alien 3. Among other thing, it was set on a space-monastery made entirely from
wood (looking like the interior of a medieval church, and powered by
windmill), and the main monster was a an Alien-Sheep (made by incubating in
one of the farm animals). The set-piece would have been the Alien attacking
our heros in an indoors wheat-field.

[https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/wooden-world-
vi...](https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/wooden-world-vincent-
wards-alien-iii/)

~~~
throwanem
I remember reading that script, some years ago. I feel like it would've ended
up like Jodorowsky's _Dune_ if they'd tried in a serious way to make it -
failing that, like Lynch's, with the same heroic but ultimately foredoomed
struggle to carry a burden of story and symbolism that's just too heavy for a
feature film to bear.

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effie
Alien 3 traditionally gets a lot of flak, but it is actually quite a
remarkable movie. It left strong impression on me and is so rich in story and
emotions I watched it many times over.

The premise and setting are very depressing, yet the prison, its visuals and
inhabitants quickly get intriguing. This is a great narration of how people
that have nothing but each other and their faith realize that their only real
chance of survival is to work together and fight the beast. It is also a story
of one strong woman who wakes up in a world where every hope of hers gets
destroyed one by one. Just when you think things cannot get more dire, there
is another bad luck, another loss, another jolt of despair.

Extremely strong emotions, thrilling chase and a great finale where Ripley's
final decision is the perfect and only possible conclusion of a life that
destroyed her hopes and gave her nothing except for a chance to fight for
others, and win.

The film's music is beautiful and visuals are very good. I think people say
bad things about the film mostly because they expected Aliens: the sequel
where Cameron's vision would continue. Don't get me wrong, Aliens is a great
film, and the novelization by Foster a great book to read. But if you take
Alien 3 as an independent vision of the theme, you will enjoy it.

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fivestar
Still waiting on a Neuromancer film or better yet, a mini-series.

~~~
Analemma_
I feel like the window of opportunity for a Neuromancer film has closed... so
many of the tropes that it invented have now become clichés that at this point
the film would just feel stale. That's what happened with the Ghost in the
Shell movie and Neuromancer would have it even worse.

~~~
fao_
Nah, the original Ghost in the Shell movie still feels fresh. What happened to
the Ghost in the Shell movie, was a mixture of whitewashing, script
butchering, and plain-old bad direction, etc. Not to mention that it was
"reinventing" something that already existed, in a sub-standard way.

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callmeed
My 12 yo daughter loves sci-fi movies and we just started watching the Alien
franchise in preparation for _Alien: Covenant_ this weekend.

My plan was to show her _Alien_ , _Aliens_ , then _Prometheus_. I hadn't even
planned to watch _Alien 3_ or _Alien: Resurrection_ (or any of the spinoffs
like AVP). But after reading this, maybe we should at least watch _Alien 3_.

Any suggestions?

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fnord123
I recently reached alien 3 thinking it doesn't get a fair shake.

It's possible that it's overly maligned. But it's not good.

~~~
RobertKerans
Yeah, it's a complete mess, but it's an interesting mess at least.
Resurrection is kinda the same level of mess I guess; a few amazing scenes,
really interesting underlying ideas that seem to have been gimeped by
rewrites/lost in the edit.

~~~
fnord123
Resurrection is unwatchable in my opinion. I didn't even bother with the AvP
films.

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rbanffy
That's nonsense.

The Apple //c never had a version of Microsoft Word for it.

~~~
pawadu
It has been said he used AppleWorks on Apple II when his typewriter broke but
went back to a (new) typewriter pretty quickly.

Also, why are we discussing this?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality)

~~~
freeflight
Wouldn't surprise me at all considering he didn't understand computers at all
back then. In an audio interview [0], he explains how he contacted Apple
support because his Apple II's disc drive was so loud.

In his imagination computers had not been supposed to be so loud and crude,
but rather crystalline and silent, so he was confused by actual the computers
being rather loud and using such "victorian technology".

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_5oU2Xx6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW_5oU2Xx6s)

~~~
ethbro
_> In his imagination computers had not been supposed to be so loud and crude,
but rather crystalline and silent, so he was confused by actual the computers
being rather loud and using such "victorian technology"_

I mean, aren't we still at this point? Some historical artifacts (e.g.
Sutherland's Sketchpad demo, AmigaOS) still blow modern systems away in terms
of UX.

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aaron695
I always liked the monk idea, but had never read Gibos script.

Some many better ideas -

[http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/alien-3/33600/alien-3-the-
st...](http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/alien-3/33600/alien-3-the-story-ideas-
that-never-made-it-to-the-screen)

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davidw
I hated Aliens 3 - it's like the guy who got it basically wanted to say "f __*
you " to Aliens, which was a good, fun, if not particularly deep movie.

~~~
vernie
Alien 3 was actually a famously troubled production and a prime example of
"development hell".

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sleepybrett
Alien 3 is clearly a lesser alien work, but it's still very interesting to
watch as an early david fincher work.

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pixel_fcker
Just read the script from the link in the article. It's... not good. Pretty
obvious why it never got made.

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scandox
> An alien (left) and William Gibson.

Rather rude caption.

~~~
moron4hire
Gibson seems like a person who'd appreciate the joke.

