Alien 3 (1992): Cast, Plot, Ending Explained and Where to Watch

Alien 3 follows Ellen Ripley after her escape pod crashes on Fiorina 161, a foundry world that now holds a small group of violent male prisoners. The story opens aboard the Sulaco, the ship from Aliens (1986), which is heading home with Ripley, Newt, Hicks and the damaged android Bishop all in hypersleep. A facehugger has got aboard, and a fire on the ship makes the computer eject the escape pod.

The pod lands hard on the prison planet, and the inmates pull Ripley out of the wreck. The prison doctor, Clemens, treats her. Ripley learns that Newt and Hicks did not survive, and she insists their bodies be burned because she fears something came down with her. That fear drives everything that follows, and it sets up a film in which the Xenomorph has almost no one to fight it.

Alien 3 tells the story of Ellen Ripley, the lone survivor of an escape pod crash, who finds that a Xenomorph has followed her to a prison with no weapons. The prisoners follow a strict religious code, and they are wary of having a woman among them. Clemens treats Ripley, and she presses for Newt's body to be autopsied and then cremated.

A facehugger had attached itself to an animal in the prison, and an alien soon bursts out of it. The alien grows quickly and starts killing inmates, and the prison has no real weapons to fight it. Ripley revives Bishop, who confirms that a facehugger was aboard the pod. The alien then kills the doctor Clemens and the warden Andrews.

A scan shows that Ripley is carrying an Alien Queen embryo, and she realizes the Weyland-Yutani company wants the creature as a weapon. The inmates lure the alien toward the foundry and try to trap it in molten lead. Dillon sacrifices himself to help, and the alien is finally destroyed when Ripley sets off the sprinklers and the sudden cooling kills it.

A team from the company arrives, led by a man who looks exactly like Bishop and claims to be his maker. Ripley refuses to let them take the embryo and throws herself into the furnace, killing the Queen inside her. Morse is the only prisoner left alive.

Alien 3 premiered on May 19, 1992, in Century City, California, and opened in US theaters three days later on May 22, 1992. The venue of the premiere has not been published. In the UK the film opened on August 21, 1992, and in Australia on June 4, 1992, and all three dates are reported rather than confirmed. It carries an R rating in the US, an 18 in the UK and an M in Australia.

Was Alien 3 a hit or a flop? By the numbers it sits somewhere in between. It took $55.5 million domestically and $104.3 million internationally, for about $160 million worldwide on a $50 million budget, according to Box Office Mojo. That is more than three times its budget in gross, although a gross is not a profit.

The comparison with its predecessor frames the discussion. Aliens cost far less to make than Alien 3 and earned more at the US box office, which is why the third film is so often called a disappointment. Alien 3 did lean on audiences abroad, where it took nearly twice what it made at home. For the full table across the series, see the Alien box office page.

Ripley jumps into the furnace because it is the only way to stop the company from getting the Queen embryo she carries. She refuses the offer of help from the team led by the man who looks like Bishop, and the leap ends both her and the threat. The company gets nothing, and Morse is the only prisoner who survives.

How is Ripley pregnant in Alien 3? The film sets up a facehugger aboard the Sulaco, and the later scan shows an Alien Queen embryo inside her. In my opinion, the film is blunt about it, because the scan is the point of no return. Once Ripley knows, she can no longer treat the creature as an outside enemy, and the choice becomes between her life and the series' central monster.

That is also why the ending works as a closing of the story rather than a cliffhanger. It could be argued that Aliens ended on the hope of a surviving family, and Alien 3 removes that hope in its first act by killing Newt and Hicks, so the finale has nothing left to protect but the world. Her sacrifice is personal, and it denies Weyland-Yutani its weapon.

The company's interest in the creatures stays unresolved. Alien Resurrection (1997) brings Ripley back as a clone grown from blood samples two hundred years after her death, with alien DNA in her, so the sacrifice is final only for the Ripley who lives through the first three films. If you are reading the series in order, my advice is to treat the jump as an ending and the clone as a separate story, and the Alien movies in order guide shows where each piece falls.

Alien 3 was filmed in England, where the main shoot began at Pinewood Studios on January 14, 1991.

Exterior scenes were shot at Blyth Power Station in Northumberland and at Blast Beach near Dawdon. For the other planets and ships in the saga, see the Alien timeline.

These are the production facts behind Alien 3, from the change of director to the score.

• Fincher was hired to replace Vincent Ward, and Alien 3 was Fincher's first feature film as director.
• Ward's wooden planet idea, a monastery like satellite, was approved at first, but Ward was dismissed after he refused a list of changes Fox required.
• Filming began on January 14, 1991, at Pinewood Studios before a finished script existed, and about $7 million had already been spent.
• Exterior scenes were shot at Blyth Power Station and Blast Beach near Dawdon in England.
• Jordan Cronenweth was the cinematographer for about two weeks before illness forced him out, and Alex Thomson replaced him.
• Elliot Goldenthal spent about a year on the score, which was recorded during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
• The screenplay credit went to Giler, Ferguson and Hill, with a story credit to Vincent Ward. Earlier drafts came from William Gibson, Eric Red, David Twohy and John Fasano.