Question: Why is the animal host switched out between the theatre release and the DVD release? Does this switch have any major differences between the two versions? I've only ever seen the theatre version.
Tailkinker
13th Dec 2012
Alien 3 (1992)
4th Mar 2011
Alien 3 (1992)
Question: Towards the end of the film after Ripley refuses to give herself up and tells "No" to Bishop and closes the gate, Bishop and the men in white go back down the stairs. As we cut to the long shot, we see one of the men in white running up to the metal fence and grabbing hold of it as though he is trying to climb over it carrying what appears to be a shoulder mounted camcorder. He is not part of the production crew because he is wearing the same costume as the other actors, but this is not dwelled upon so it seems like a pointless prop. Was this to add a similar feel to the previous films of recording footage on the planets?
Chosen answer: While no details are given in the film, he's presumably present to document their interactions with Ripley for future reference - this is, after all, a very important moment for the company, where they believe that they may finally get their hands on the specimen that they've been waiting for for years.
19th Nov 2005
Alien 3 (1992)
Question: How did the ox (or dog) get the alien inside of it? Did it get facehugged or something? If so, how did the facehugger survive the escape pod and come to land?
Answer: The facehugger came down in the escape pod and survived the crash - as has been previously established, they're tough little critters. In the theatrical release, we see the dog standing in the escape pod while it's being moved, with the facehugger moving towards it. With the Ox, the 'hugger presumably left the pod and impregnated the first creature that it came across.
9th May 2004
Alien 3 (1992)
Question: How did the alien egg get on board the Sulaco? I thought it was by the Queen but she did not have that organ that she was connected to when we first see her and so she couldn't reproduce eggs.
Answer: Agreed the Queen could have stowed the eggs away on her body as Alien bodies, especially one her size, could easily have a couple of eggs hidden upon her, and we would not know. They are masters of disguise these creatures and can merge in with their own environments or others...what's to say an egg can't look like part of the Queen's body? In addition, could Facehuggers not attach themselves to the Queen's body and merge with it somehow? Flatten themselves against her skin maybe?
Answer: As we don't know the precise details of the Alien reproductive cycle, we don't know for a fact that the Queen would be unable to produce eggs without the sac seen in the film. The only other possibility is that somebody got the egg up there somehow. The only possible candidate would seem to be Bishop, who would have had to somehow have got the egg from somewhere, and flown it up to the Sulaco while Ripley was off rescuing Newt. There doesn't seem to have been time for this, so the only remaining option seems to be that they did indeed arrive with the Queen in some fashion, either laid while up there or, possibly more plausibly, rescued intact from the destruction caused by Ripley and carried somewhere on the Queen's body.
18th Mar 2004
Alien 3 (1992)
Question: I've been told that the original script for Alien 3 was quite different then it turned out to be, but due to costs/times it was revamped. Is this true?
Chosen answer: There are umpteen different scripts for Alien 3 available on the net, some of which are very different to what was eventually made - some of the early ones are set in a monastery, rather than the prison colony that was eventually used.
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Answer: There are two quite different versions of the film, due to problems behind the scenes while shooting. The director, David Fincher, was repeatedly subjected to studio interference, culminating with them effectively locking him out of the edit suite and creating the final cut of the movie themselves - this became the theatrical version, with the dog being used as the alien host. Some years later, a new version of the film was created using footage that Fincher shot that was rejected by the executives; known as the "Assembly Cut", the result was much closer to Fincher's original intent and contains a number of significant differences from the original - it's this version of the film that uses an ox as the alien host. Most box-sets of the film series will contain both the original theatrical cut and the assembly cut.
Tailkinker ★