Firmly in the world of “Avatar” now and not looking back, filmmaker James Cameron seemed to be mostly done with the past, but if you do ask him about it, the Oscar-winning director tends to give you a characteristically blunt assessment. Take “Alien 3,” for example — a sequel that opened by wiping out the very emotional through-line his action epic “Aliens” ended on.
Obviously, Cameron’s film didn’t just end with Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) surviving — it ended with her tearing through hell to save Newt (Carrie Henn), the entire emotional point of the last act. Then “Alien 3” opened by casually declaring Newt (and Hicks, played by Michael Biehn) dead, wiping out that hard-won rescue before the story even got moving, as if all that effort had never mattered.
So when the topic came up on the “Just Foolin’ About” podcast with Michael Biehn, Cameron didn’t dance around it or soften the edges. “Okay, that’s a separate subject,” he said with a pause, taken aback at Biehn’s discursive interviewing style, before launching into his declarative answer: “I thought that was the stupidest f*cking thing.”
“You spent the last third of your movie saving her,” Biehn interjected, still in disbelief. “Yeah, exactly. So, you build a lot of goodwill around the characters of Hicks, Newt and Bishop. And then the first thing they do in the next film is kill them all off,” Cameron scoffed.
For Cameron, the sequel didn’t just erase survivors — it swapped out characters the audience had invested in for a new batch he described with open contempt. “Really smart guys,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “You know, and replace them with a bunch of fucking convicts that you hate and want to see die. Right? Real bad.”
Still, Cameron softened when it came to “Alien 3” director David Fincher, who was famously pushed around by 20th Century Fox on the movie and hated that much of the film was beyond his directorial control.
“Now I’m a big fan of Fincher and his work,” Cameron stressed. “And 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.” Yeah, “he was handed a bowl of shit,” Biehn concurred.
Cameron’s reaction wasn’t a lone-fan gripe either. Years earlier, Christopher McQuarrie, who undid a decision to kill off Michelle Monaghan’s character in the “Mission: Impossible” films off-screen, cited the Newt choice and “Alien 3” as the reason he prevented that move. “When [“Alien 3”] started, I was like, ‘I hate ‘Alien 3’ already, and I’m not even into the movie yet,” he said.
What’s also interesting is that Cameron hadn’t always sounded so permanently allergic to this corner of the universe. Back in 2019, during the “Alita: Battle Angel” press run, he was asked whether he could call up Neill Blomkamp and get “Alien 5” moving, and he answered, “I’m working on that, yeah.” The comment was casual and vague, but it still suggested a window where he at least entertained the idea of revisiting the timeline “Alien 3” detonated.
And if you wanted the rest of the conversation — more talk about “Alien,” more Cameron/Biehn reminiscing, more collaboration history — the whole episode is worth your time.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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