Owned version: The Fox Blu-ray released in 2010 as part of the Alien Anthology set.
Acquired: January 4th, 2016 from Amazon.
Seen before?: Twice before these two most recent viewings - once probably in December of 1992 on VHS, at which point I thought very highly of it, and once on May 16th, 2017, at which point I questioned that previously high opinion and wrote it off as me being a know-nothing 12-year-old. This also happened with The Abyss, and I guess there's a potential pattern emerging... or maybe not.
Alien³ is an open wound of a film and also an openly wounded film. It's a nihilistic howl of a film that follows up its adrenaline-fueled crowd-rouser of a predecessor by stripping away the triumph of Aliens, then stripping and cutting further until Ripley has nothing left to lose except herself and arranges it so she welcomes such an oblivion. It's also a film where the studio responded to this nihilism by taking it into the editing room and feeding its soul into a shredder. In an attempt to carve it into a certain running time and certain summer-movie shape, Fox ironically destroyed its actual shape.
Watching the "assembly cut" available on the Blu-ray drives home what a fascinating film this was set up to be and also illuminates why the theatrical cut, though better than my 2017 viewing would have it, is still something of a misfire. The version released to theaters in 1992 cruises along at a decent clip, devoting the majority of its time to Ripley's paranoia about a potential facehugger infestation aboard her wrecked escape vessel and the burgeoning relationship between Ripley and medical officer Clemens (played with great pursed-lip gravity by Charles Dance)... right up to the point roughly halfway through where Clemens has his brain unceremoniously ventilated by the latest Xenomorph-on-the-loose, after which it collapses into a series of scenes where anonymous bald men in sackcloth are picked off one after another. (To its credit, the film itself seems to realize this - witness the late scene where assistant warden Aaron tries to give an order to an inmate only to realize he doesn't know his name.)
The problem, made very clear by the longer cut, is that the Ripley/Clemens relationship gets emphasized at the expense of every other character - much of what was removed gives dimension to many of the prisoners, both in terms of individual personality and as pieces of a whole in the society on Fiorina 161. Whereas in the theatrical we're merely told about the religion practiced by the monastic inmates, the assembly gives a deeper look at the day-to-day faith that gets most of these guys through, especially Charles S. Dutton's fervent Dillon and Paul McGann's holy-fool Golic. Golic's presence doesn't even make sense in the theatrical - he witnesses a couple other inmates get kacked, goes assumedly bonkers and then gets tied to a bed in the infirmary, left and forgotten after Clemens's death, which hardly justifies McGann's fourth billing.
Turns out McGann had a whole subplot, one the film damn near hinged on - his witnessing of the slaughter, complete with baptism-by-blood, turns him from a believer in the apocalyptic religion of Fiorina 161 to one who believes the apocalypse has arrived and it's his job to see it through. Hacking that inelegantly out of the film not only loses the point of the character and not only loses at least one of the film's most extraordinary images (Golic's eyes framed in light as he releases the Xenomorph and, in a way, achieves a transcendent release), it castrates the whole reason behind giving these guys a belief system at all. Ripley's journey towards martyrdom and savior of humanity carries a lot more heft when her final stop on the way there is damn near literally her fighting the Devil escaped out of Hell and onto this planet of fire and steel and forgotten men who believe the End had been nigh for some time because they don't fit into society's plan any other way. Her final act of sacrifice makes sense on its own, but it's even more potent when made the climactic act of a film with a fanatical concentration on acts of sacrifice... at least two of which didn't survive into the theatrical cut.
But while the studio cut is significantly weakened, Alien³ is a difficult film to fully dismiss, because even its compromised form houses a significant amount of exciting work. Fincher has every reason to disown this film, but it's undeniable that his impressive visual sense gets a full workout - the dominant decaying metal-and-rust scheme, the ghost of industrial progress leeched of life and color on a dying corporate waste planet, follows logically from the collapsing systems depicted in both Alien and Aliens, so much so that the occasional splash of color (e.g. amid the chilled slate-gray of the mortuary lockers, the sorrowful scarlet of the flowers attached to Newt's locker) sears the eye. But the presence of the foundry, filled with hot oranges and overripe flesh tones, gives an early contrast that slowly bleeds out into the tunnels and ducts of Fiorina, lit only by torches as they are, until the moribund colony appears to have been overwhelmed by cleansing fire by the final chase. This is accentuated by the constant layer of sweat and grime that appear to be a constant feature of life on Fiorina; the heat becomes panic, and the panic becomes overwhelming, inescapable. (The famed shot of the Xenomorph confronting Ripley in extreme closeup works in no small part because Ripley is almost as moist and drippy as her adversary.) Fincher also favors low-angle shots that emphasize the notion that the Xenomorph could drop into any scene at any time, keeping the tension high even through the voluminous dialogue scenes. It's deliciously satisfying when one of those low-angle shots pays off, i.e. the death of Warden Andrews.
And then there's Weaver. The best justification for the studio gutting the religious angle is that they wanted the film to concentrate almost exclusively on Ripley and her relationship to the creature that she sighs at one point has been in her life so long she's doesn't remember what it's like not to fear it. Weaver's performance here is on the level of her Oscar-nominated turn in Aliens, if not a bit better. The autopsy scene, for instance, is a grueling watch; a lot of that work is done by Weaver's flinches and choked-back sobs, which cut harder and deeper than any bonesaw. I can't think of any other actress, for instance, who could deliver the line, "It's a metaphor, wanna come?" with the exact amount of wry, weary wit that keeps it from sounding too writerly. Nor could many, if any, make Ripley's quick jump into bed with Clemens work as an expression of sexual desire, a parallel desire for something like normalcy, a reaction to extreme stress and an outcropping of grieving all in one loaded look like Weaver does. The relationship with Clemens is as crucial as the previous film's relationship with Newt, as it allows Weaver a chance to access the full rainbow of emotions available to her rather than merely the panic and distress that the situation would demand; that this relationship is viciously severed at the midpoint should rend the film in two and nearly does. If it holds together at all, it's because Weaver's forceful turn, agonized in its despair and overwhelming in its ultimate catharsis, wills it to hold. By the end, even the one ally she was allowed, however briefly, to hold on to from Aliens has been torn away from her, turned into "a friendly face" meant to motivate her into cooperation with Weyland-Yutani. Her own body has been turned against her, a vessel for the death of humanity. Everything about her has finally been colonized, stolen, perverted, ruined. But her mind and will remain hers. To the end, that remains hers.
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