Sigourney Weaver Says We Got Alien 3 Wrong — And She's Backing David Fincher

Sigourney Weaver has been living with Ripley longer than most of us have been alive, and she still rides hard for Alien 3 and its director, a young David Fincher. At New York Comic Con, she made it clear she has a soft spot for the bleak, messy third outing that was born out of chaotic studio politics and a famously rough production.

Weaver on why Alien 3 still matters to her

"I like it because it is so utterly different from the first two... I had total confidence in David."

Weaver praised 20th Century Fox for rolling the dice on fresh voices instead of trying to carbon-copy Alien or Aliens. In her view, that gamble is why the franchise stayed interesting - even when the execution got bumpy.

The script she did not want to shoot

What she did not love: the early Vincent Ward version, which put monks in space inside a kind of medieval garden. On top of that, Ripley would crash land and then spend about half the movie in a coma. Weaver was not into it, and honestly, who can blame her. She also wishes Fincher had been given more time to overhaul the script before cameras rolled. The start was delayed a bit, but not enough, and she felt a lot of problems went unsolved as they were already shooting.

• She values Alien 3 for being starkly different from the first two.
• She credits Fox for bringing in strong, singular directors to shake up the formula.
• She had total faith in Fincher, even with the chaos around him.
• She disliked the Vincent Ward draft - monks in space, medieval garden, Ripley in a coma for half the film.
• She thinks Fincher needed more time to fix the script; the production delay was not enough.
• She loved the cast and crew, and the film is personally meaningful to her - she does not stack the entries against each other.
• She has a track record of backing her directors, saying she also stood up for James Cameron on Aliens when the crew was hesitant about him.

The baggage that never left

Alien 3 is one of those movies where the behind-the-scenes drama swallowed the narrative. The troubled production and the way the studio rolled it out cast a longer shadow than anything the film did right. Which is a shame, because even if you do not love it, there is something there: it treats Ripley with real care and goes all-in on a grim, hopeless tone that makes it its own thing rather than a rerun of Alien or a wannabe Aliens.

Where I land

I am not putting it next to the first two on a pedestal. But I do not think Alien 3 is the disaster its reputation suggests. It is messy, angry, and weird - and it gives Ripley a brutal, memorable arc. That counts for something.

How do you feel about Alien 3 these days - still a misfire, or a flawed, gutsy swing? Drop your take below.