TAKE FOUR: THE VINCENT WARD SCRIPT & PRE-PRODUCTION........
Start-up with Vincent Ward
Once Hill attended a screening of
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey, he decided to invite its director,
Vincent Ward.
Ward, who was in London developing
Map of the Human Heart, only accepted the project on the third call as he at first was uninterested in doing a sequel.
Ward thought little of the Twohy script, and instead worked up another idea, involving Ripley's escape pod crash landing on a monastery-like satellite.
Having developed this pitch on his flight to Los Angeles, once Ward got with the studio executives he saw his idea approved by the studio.
Ward was hired to direct
Alien 3, and writer John Fasano was hired to expand his story into a screenplay.
Once Twohy discovered through a journalist friend that another script was being written concurrently with his, he went after Fox and eventually left the project.
Ward envisioned a planet whose interior was both wooden and archaic in design, where
Luddite-like monks would take refuge.
The story begins with a monk who sees a "star in the East" (Ripley's escape pod) and at first believes this to be a good omen.
Upon arrival of Ripley, and with increasing suggestions of the Alien presence, the monk inhabitants believe it to be some sort of religious trial for their misdemeanors, punishable by the creature that haunts them.
By having a woman in their monastery, they wonder if their trial is partially caused by sexual temptation, as Ripley is the only woman to be amongst the all-male community in ten years.
To avoid this belief and (hopefully) the much grimmer reality of what she has brought with her, the Monks of the "wooden satellite" lock Ripley into a dungeon-like sewer and ignore her advice on the true nature of the beast.
The monks believe that the Alien is in fact the Devil.
Primarily though, this story was about Ripley's own soul-searching complicated by the seeding of the Alien within her and further hampered by her largely solo attempts to defeat it.
Eventually Ripley decides to sacrifice herself to kill the Alien.
Fox asked for an alternate ending where the character survived, but eventually Sigourney Weaver said she would only do the movie if Ripley died.
Empire magazine described Ward's 'Wooden Planet' concept as 'undeniably attractive – it would have been visually arresting and at the very least, could have made for some astonishing action sequences.' In the same article, Norman Reynolds – Production Designer originally hired by Ward – remembers an early design idea for "a wooden library shaft. You looked at the books on this wooden platform that went up and down". 'Imagine the kind of vertical jeopardy sequence that could have been staged here – the Alien clambering up these impossibly high bookshelves as desperate monks work the platform'.
Sigourney Weaver described Ward's overall concept as "very original and arresting."
Former
Times journalist David Hughes included Ward's version of
Alien 3 amongst "The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made" in his book of this title.
However, the concept was divisive among the production crew.
The producers at Brandywine discussed the logical problems of creating and maintaining a wooden planet in space, while Fox executive
Jon Landau considered Ward's vision to be "more bent on the artsy-fartsy side than the big commercial one" that Ridley Scott and James Cameron employed.
Ward managed to dissuade the producers of their idea of turning the planet into an ore refinery and the monks into prisoners, but eventually Fox asked a meeting with the director imposing a list of changes to be made.
Refusing to do so, Ward was fired. The main plot of the finished film still follows Ward's basic structure.