When I saw Alien 3 at the cinema, I was disappointed. That would teach me to read the book beforehand, the book being from the screenplay that Fincher worked to, not the modified version that was the cinema release.

Is that the one with the wooden planet?

Mark

For whatever reason, sci-fi seems to have played a major part in this collection of terrible early drafts of characters: perhaps it’s because it’s particularly hard to translate the way characters appear in the imagination into something tangible and real to capture on screen.

That must surely be the only way anyone could explain the fact that one of the most enduringly terrifying creatures from all of sci-fi horror – the chestburster – was almost criminally undermined by the decision to dress a dog in biomechanical armour and have it pretend to be a new four-legged version for Alien 3.

The result was hilarious, robbing the formerly scuttling creature of its infamous and hugely successful insectoid movement patterns in favour of a lolloping, slightly waggy run, that was as far from scary as if they’d dressed a dog up as an alien…

Ultimately, the test footage lead to the design being dropped, because the dog’s movements were just too comical. It’s difficult to argue with that, even if the CGI version of the chestburster that was eventually included was painfully bad.

The wooden planet was an early idea, yes. The screenplay (and novel) included an ox being felled by a face hugger, rather than a dog (as in the theatrical release), as well as extra scenes. The DVD version of the film had these extra scenes added in, but the audio was pretty rough (especially in the dialogue) it seems to have been cleaved up on the BluRay release.

The film that Fincher show was made in this country. Extra bits were shot out of his auspices in the USA by Fox. I think they wanted to up the pace, make sure the ending didn't mirror Terminator II, etc.. Fincher won't be interviewed about this film even today.

At the end of Predator after the Predator has detonated his self-destruct nuke, there's a black dude in the "chopper" overhead who says "What the!" as he looks down at the mushroom cloud.

That's the guy who plays The Predator

There's some good stuff here on the making of Escape from New York.

Mark

Greenscreen fluffers
Now there's a job title!

Mark

PS - Daily Mail link, apologies to those that require it.

Everything you never knew about the making of The Last Starfighter
Carolyn's probably never heard of this film either. (8+D

Mark