Earlier this week we got a new teaser for Alien: Earth, an upcoming FX series set in the expansive sci-fi universe. It shows a nasty Xenomorph escaping containment inside a ship crashing into Earth. Scary stuff. But also, this show will (seemingly) deliver on a promise a single Alien 3 teaser made over three decades ago.
The making of 1992’s Alien 3 is a well-documented and infamously horrible Hollywood disaster involving multiple scripts, delays, and studio interference. Director David Fincher (yes, that David Fincher) has basically disowned the movie and rarely talks about it. Fans mostly hate it for a host of reasons, not least of which being the fact that it kills off two beloved characters from Aliens off-screen and ends with Ripley’s death. But I’m not here to talk about that movie. Instead, I want to share with you the first teaser trailer for Alien 3 from 1991.
So that’s a pretty cool teaser and all, but uh, Alien 3 doesn’t take place on Earth. And yet that’s what this teaser is promising. Here’s the narration from the trailer:
In 1979, we discovered, in space, no one can hear you scream. In 1992, we will discover, on Earth, everyone can hear you scream.
Keep in mind that according to sources, this teaser was released around the same time Fincher started shooting Alien 3 and at that point—following many different rejected scripts, including one by noted cyberpunk author William Gibson—Fox and everyone involved knew the movie wasn’t set anywhere near Earth. And yet, they still teased that idea in the trailer above.
You might be thinking, “Well, I bet fans were really angry about that and there was a massive backlash!” But that didn’t really happen. I mean, I bet you $20 at least one person saw this teaser in a theater, got excited, and then when Alien 3 finally arrived, he was disappointed and angry. Back then, however, things were different, and this teaser wasn’t something you could just look up online, nor were there social media platforms in the modern sense where fans could congregate and make their outrage known to filmmakers. Besides, the idea of “franchises” and “teasers” was still relatively novel in Hollywood and audiences weren’t as concerned about that stuff.
Now, 30 years later, Alien: Earth is doing what that teaser promised back in the 90s and bringing the Xenomorph to our home planet.
Of course, that’s already happened twice before (at least) in movies as seen in Alien Vs. Predator and its sequel. However, those aren’t really canon in the Alien franchise and break the timeline in ways that drives some fans batty. This is the first proper time the alien creatures will be on Earth, and hopefully it will be worth the 30+ year wait.
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