One of the perks of James Cameron releasing an epic adventure like Avatar: Fire and Ash is that the verbose and opinionated filmmaker goes on a lengthy press tour and shares tons of interesting and sometimes inflammatory anecdotes, while also teasing upcoming projects like new Terminator movies. The Oscar winner has not disappointed this time around at all, and he let some surprisingly candid thoughts fly when asked about Alien 3 infamously and immediately killing off fan-favorite characters.
Cameron had a lengthy chat with one of his former go-to stars for the podcast Just Foolin’ About with Michael Biehn, and in the midst of a conversation about generative AI and how it affects actors’ likenesses being used on screen, Aliens’ Michael Biehn made a quick pivot in direction. He instead lobbed the interview version of a grenade at the director by asking how he felt about Carrie Henn’s Newt revealed as dead in Alien 3. Cameron chuckled before answering with:
Okay, that's a separate subject. I thought that was the stupidest fucking thing.
It was almost like Michael Biehn's question was the personification of Newt's death confirmation, so out of nowhere it came. To be sure, James Cameron hasn't ever pretended to adore the way the third Alien movie kicked off with the fanfare-free reveals that Newt, Biehn's Corporal Hicks, and Lance Henriksen's Bishop all perish when their escape pod crashes on Fiorina 161. But he usually doesn't drop F-bombs about it, either.
As much as it was a jolt for viewers to see that trio of Aliens characters suddenly out of the picture, cementing it as a sequel we kinda wish didn't exist, you can bet that it was even more jarring for Cameron, considering he was the main creative force in bringing the three to life. He continued his sarcasm-laced comments, saying:
You build a lot of goodwill around the characters of Hicks and Newt and Bishop, and then the first thing they do in the in the next film is kill them all off, right? Really smart, guys. And replace them with a bunch of fucking convicts that you hate and want to see die. Really clever.
If James Cameron ever passive-aggressively referred to me as clever and smart while so very obviously meaning the exact opposite, I might very well go throw myself in front of a speeding Xenomorph. That kind of burn doesn't go away with just a topical ointment.
Not that Cameron is even pointing the finger of blame at Alien 3's credited director, the highly esteemed David Fincher, given the numerous issues that have been publicly disclosed regarding that production. He addressed his fellow filmmaker, whose next film would be the all-time great '90s classic Se7en, by saying:
Now I'm a big fan of Fincher and his work and all that. That was his first feature film and he was getting vectored around by a lot of other voices and all that, so I give him a free pass on that one.
The story behind all of Alien 3's various behind-the-scenes changes and setbacks literally takes longer to go through than the runtime of the 1992 film itself, which is widely viewed as one of the most nihilistic horror sequels of the era. Fincher's lauded work in the world of music videos helped land him the 20th Century Fox gig after other directors had vacated, and he's been very vocal about how little oversight he had, and how much he had to fight for the few creative choices he was allowed to bring in.
So while "pissing James Cameron off about Newt" probably wasn't high on David Fincher's list of worries when it came to getting Alien 3 out into the public, at least we now know it never had to be on that list at all. Which leads me to my follow-up, "why James Cameron needs to get on board with Mindhunter Season 3: a five-part argument."
For those who want to relive the discomfort of those three hastily revealed deaths, Alien 3 is currently available to stream via Hulu subscription.
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