Review: Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay

Ridley Scott’s Alien used to terrify me as a kid.Â Not even so much the Xenomorphs; despite the fact that they were predisposed by inherent nature to fight for survival of the species, what really truly made my skin crawl were the more aggressive infiltrators of human genetics. For some reason, these sorts of threats to humanity were the ones that made me curl up with my blankets tucked a little tighter to my chin. I’m so thankful (though I’m sure my dreams tonight won’t quite reflect this) that William Gibson favored this route a little more than just the somewhat claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in space with other species.

Where do I even begin with this volume? You know me (maybe, question mark?) At least, I think if you’ve read any of my other reviews, you do and therefore the foreward that graces the opening pages of this trade is so very much appreciated. It’s not quite a love letter to the topic, more so, it’s got a lot of really interesting information about how the title itself came to be. Some of which is informative, especially if you don’t know anything about the Writer’s Guild and work for hire projects.

While a large portion of this title isn’t quite about characters like Hicks, Ripley, or Newt, they do appear in it. I feel like the main characters of Gibson’s writing truly are the Xenos themselves. Sure, there are a few other characters who I’d consider supporting ones, but at its core, you’re learning more about the evolution of the species which is only side stepped by the interaction between the story’s villain to play upon that a bit. There’s even a few bits that feel very akin to something we’ve seen in Prometheus, which was wholeheartedly appreciated. If anything, I feel like this trade really pulls all of those movies into a closer circle to see where in the life/death cycle of a Xenomorph we might actually be and how that parallels the same cycle of humanity.

Both Johnnie Christmas and Tamra Bonvillain’s work on the interiors and covers are absolutely stunning. Faces are so expressive and human (and yes, I mean even the nonhuman ones), familiar characters easily identifiable; splashes of gore colored vividly and bright without ever really being too terribly much to look at. In short, all the action, all the violence, all the wonderful trite bits of conversation are expertly translated into a cinematic feeling sort of art that I found wonderful to look at. (Truthfully, if you don’t really sit down and take the time to look through all the covers included in this trade, as well as the last few pages that are of character designs mixed with notes about the illustrations themselves, then you are doing yourself a disservice.)

The entirety of this read was so fluid; easy to fall into as it’s not quite a short trade at 168 pages. More importantly, this 4 out of 5 star volume was able to take all the things I loved from the Alien lure itself and seamlessly mesh it together to create what I’d like to consider an aside sort of story that I was able to appreciate as much as any film in the series itself.

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(W) William Gibson, Johnnie Christmas (A) Tamra Bonvillain (A/CA) Johnnie Christmas