It’s widely known by now that the production of David Fincher’s 1992 debut film “Alien³” was, to put it mildly, a clusterf***. The script passed through several drafts at the hands of many authors, and Fincher was constantly butting heads with the studio, which was constantly meddling. /Film’s Joshua Meyer covered the debacle in detail, but in an interview with The Guardian in 2009, Fincher openly stated his distaste with the finished film: “To this day, no one hates it more than me.” The experience taught him a valuable lesson and changed his entire attitude about filmmaking.

That said, there are many who like the movie. After the triumphant end of James Cameron’s “Aliens” in 1986, “Alien³” begins with the tragedy of two heroic survivors dying off-screen. Then the cryogenically frozen Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) lands her spaceship in a distant monastery where she and the prisoners will have to fight off another rogue creature they are ill-prepared to face. The tone of the film is bleak and hopeless, and fans of the “Alien” series mostly got bummed out. Some of us, however, love that bleakness, and the overriding tone of horror that Fincher managed to infuse the film with. 

In 2003, Fox released a DVD box set called (sigh) “Alien Quadrilogy,” which contained two cuts of “Alien³,” the film’s original theatrical cut and a cobbled-together “Assembly Cut.” David Fincher didn’t participate in the Assembly Cut, but it was based on his editing notes and incorporated some unused footage. The 144-minute edit was overseen by producer Charles de Lauzirika. 

The “Alien³” Assembly Cut also recently dropped onto HBO Max. Many, including this critic, would argue that it’s the superior version.

The original theatrical cut of “Alien³” was only 114 minutes. The Assembly Cut added about 30 minutes of previously deleted footage, but also incorporated a few alternate takes and alternate plot lines. For instance, in Fincher’s original take, the titular alien incubated inside an ox before bursting out and wreaking havoc. In the theatrical cut, it incubated inside a dog. One can only imagine that the studio wanted something a little cuter and more personal than an ox. 

But the ox makes a greater degree of sense. In “Alien³,” the creature appears to be much larger than in “Alien” or the drones in “Aliens.” In those films, however, the creatures all incubated inside of humans, presumably making them more human-like when they emerged. By incubating inside an ox, the creature would emerge quadrupedal and much larger. A smaller dog would presumably have produced a smaller creature. A line of “Aliens” toys, some non-canonical comic books, and the movie “Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem” would make more explicit the fact that xenomorphs take on physical characteristics of their incubating hosts.

There are also several additional scenes in the Assembly Cut that actually explain the locations and fates of certain characters far more clearly. There is a scene in the “Alien³” Assembly Cut wherein the characters actually trap the alien, only to have it be freed by a crazed prisoner later. In the theatrical cut, the characters were merely unsuccessful in trapping it. 

The DVD version of the Assembly Cut wasn’t color corrected or mixed well, making the added footage stand out. On the 2010 Blu-ray release of the box set, however, the Assembly Cut was cleaned up, making it look as good as it ever might. 

It should be noted that the original theatrical cut of “Alien³” was underwhelming both at the box office and to critics. As of this writing, the film only has a 44% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 126 reviews), with many critics finding it (as one might assume) a little scattershot and incomprehensible. Philip Strick, writing for Sight & Sound, stated the film was vague in its outline, saying, “‘Alien³’ is so confident of alien-awareness in its audience that it even omits Ripley’s revelations to her hosts about her past experiences.” Hal Hinson, writing for The Washington Post, wrote that the film fell back on all-too-familiar scenes of characters sprinting down hallways away from a monster, offering no new twists to a three-film series. 

In 2017, Den of Geek compared the theatrical cut to new reconsiderations of the Assembly Cut and held the latter in much better regard. Other online reviews have noted that the added length does enrich the movie, adding much-needed character details, a better-told story, and a stronger tone.

Fincher, meanwhile, seems to have made his ultimate statement on “Alien³” in his misunderstood 1999 film “Fight Club.” There is a scene in that film wherein the central team of anarchists breaks into a video store (this was back in the VHS era) and runs powerful electromagnets over the videocassettes. Magnets erase the contents of a VHS’s magnetic tape, you see. One can clearly see someone merrily erasing an entire endcap of “Alien³” videos. In his own way, Fincher got to symbolically erase “Alien³” from his own filmography.