In the Flesh: Alien 3

“In every seed,” says religious convert Dillon (Charles S. Dutton) as the mangled bodies of Newt and Hicks, Ripley’s (Sigourney Weaver) surrogate daughter and love interest respectively in the series’ previous entry, are consigned to the flames of a gigantic smelter, “there is the promise of a flower.” At the same moment, somewhere in the bowels of Fiorina 161’s correctional facility-cum-foundry, an alien bursts from the belly of a thrashing, anguished dog. Director David Fincher’s Alien 3 is built around this simple prayer. The prison is the metaphorical seed from which the alien, reimagined by its original designer H. R. Giger as an almost Zdzisław Beksiński-esque nightmare of spindly limbs and exposed muscle, blooms. A place which exists solely to dehumanize its occupants produces in turn a thing which is the apex of inhumanity, a creature for whom birth and killing are inseparable, a creature which visits the terror of rape on inmates who are themselves rapists struggling to find redemption through religion.

To cultivate beauty, however flawed and fragile, within the system of imprisonment is anathema to that system’s essential sadism. It’s not that Alien 3 is a polemic against the carceral state, but by treating even debased and violent prisoners as more or less human (give or take a fantastical chromosomal disorder) it functions as a somber sort of memento mori. Ripley herself is another prisoner, trapped not just by the alien queen gestating in her belly but by the greed of the Weyland-Yutani corporation, which has used her as bait, as a fig leaf for its own incompetence, and finally intends to cut her open like a laboratory specimen. The company’s machinations have foreclosed on her future not once but time and time again, and in her desperation there is no escape from the most hideous kind of exploitation imaginable but to follow those dead futures into a sea of burning slag, even going so far as to hold the newborn queen in a sick parody of swaddling to prevent it escaping at the last moment. To defy prison’s cruelty you have to be willing to sacrifice again and again until nothing is left of you, until no part of you can carry forward.

There are a few confusing elements in the film’s climactic action sequence, which fails to create a cohesive impression of stakes or space, but overall Fincher excels at manufacturing both shock and tension. The alien blends seamlessly into Fiorina’s rusty, washed-out color palette, and its spidery physique lends itself well to gradually unfolding into frame or from out of focus. Fincher deftly utilizes the fleshy horror of its tongue as both invasive probe and cattle gun, punching through skulls and splattering blood and brains over his sets with invigorating velocity and suddenness. He also finds real pathos in Ripley’s despair over her loss of Newt, Hicks, and Bishop (Lance Henriksen), the last of whom reappears for a brief and deeply touching scene in which Ripley reactivates his badly damaged remains in order to access data from their escape craft’s in-flight records. “I could be rehabilitated,” he says sadly, once again echoing the cruel cost each of the film’s characters has been forced to bear by their circumstances, “but I’ll never be top-of-the-line again. I’d rather be nothing at all.” It’s not a perfect movie, its visual effects don’t always work, its plotting is somewhat rushed, but oddly enough it’s Fincher’s most human.