2) Hey, you could read the whole film as a metaphor for a woman's violent rejection of a fetus that threats to consume her life—everyone and everything she knows—but she has the power to cast it away.Knew that Intro to Film Studies 46 class would pay off someday.Anyhow, all the buzz got me Googling, and I discovered a couple interesting side notes to the Alien mythology. Most everyone knows the story of the first two films pretty well—nefarious corporation subjects "expendable" crew to violent alien creatures in hopes of getting ahold of a specimen; Ridley Scott explores the claustrophobic horror the alien begets in the first, James Cameron tracks an all-out interspecies war in the second. The third, David Fincher's directing debut, is pretty universally regarded as the point where the series goes south.His film, creepy in a more generic, horror filmy way, takes place on prison planet where Ripley's ship crash lands. Everyone else that audiences had rooted for in Aliens dies, including an 11 year-old girl, promptly ingratiating the film to no one. From there on out, it's a plodding thriller, with a new dog-birthed alien on the loose killing prisoners, who also try to rape Ridley and disbelieve her story.But it didn't have to be that way. It turns out that the film was notorious back in the early 90s for its dysfunction—a rotating cast of scriptwriters and directors were tapped and sent packing, and Sigourney Weaver was reluctant to get involved. One of the first script treatments was written by William Gibson, though none of his ideas were ever used. A somewhat astonishing 30 subsequent drafts were filed, with different directors coming and going from the project.
JOHN
The order was more of a counter culture, a reaction to the Technology that was beginning to take over everyone's lives. It was a simple enough idea – Read, don't watch disk. Walk, don't pump more carbons into the air. The earliest members renounced technology. Started to collect the remaining books. Nobody would have noticed if it hadn't been for the Virus.RIPLEY
Your Abbot talked about that. The New Plague.ANTHONY
A computer virus. A bad program. By this time the Corporate structure was transglobal, all the world's data storage systems were linked. It spread through two countries before it was stopped.JOHN
After a scare like that, thousands flocked to our retreat. People started clamoring for written information. For our books. They abandoned the modern ways —RIPLEY
I think I can see how this comes out. They gave up their possessions.ANTHONY
This was a threat —RIPLEY
To the Company.JOHN
They sold the technology. A movement to live simply was quickly twisted by Federal agents into a political movement against the Company-controlled World Government. Too much was at stake.RIPLEY
Too much profit.JOHN
We were sentenced as political dissidents. This orbiter is our gulag. All the men were packed up with all our books, and towed into space. Ten thousand men. The eldest died very quickly.RIPLEY
The Company had such a sense of irony. Sending you out on this wooden tub.