Science Fiction movies often retell old stories and myths with greater impact for modern people. A being from another world or a technologically advanced human can embody an ancient god or demon and viewers are suddenly unwittingly enthralled by Ur tales that emerged from hundreds of years of human experience. Viewers get to feel the awe, dread, or intrigue of the ancients because science fiction makes it easier for them to suspend their disbelief. Writers use these themes because they resonate with viewers and translate to financial success and critical acclaim. They resonate with viewers because they are about seemingly mundane things which are crucial to human existence. A story about an ordinary woman consorting with a deity and giving birth to a special child reinvigorates the very real drama surrounding the common event of childbirth. Even Alexander the Great was a man born of a woman; a tyrant such as Herod caused many women in Jerusalem to weep over their massacred children even though he was once a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes himself. Many accounts in the Bible, especially the early chapters of Genesis, are stories that describe common human experience as well as singular historical events. Cain’s murder of Abel describes the way that strong men persecute and murder the meek, for example.
Biblical stories are often sources for films. Yet, it can be tricky to retell a biblical story in pop culture because religion is such a sensitive subject. Many people have found science fiction to be a platform for questioning or critiquing traditional religious beliefs and values. The stories of the “geek” canon can be a safe haven for dissenters and using them to point out the timeless excellence of the Biblical story could easily be met with derision. Evangelicals, on the other hand, tend to buy into overtly Christian films, and assume that secular filmmakers don’t really value “the gospel.” We reason that unless it comes from us, it won’t be right, especially when it comes to lynchpin doctrines such penal substitution in the atonement. A lot of films reference other aspects of Christ’s atonement, but evangelicals do not laud such treatments because they do not properly address the transfer of God’s “alien righteousness” to the account of the sinner.
Thus, there are many obstacles to demonstrating that the Christian story is present in a dark and gritty gothic science fiction movie such as David Fincher’s Alien 3. Another obstacle is that the film endured a troubled production process. Fans wanted a sequel to James Cameron’s 80’s Sci-fi action spectacle that carried on from the happy ending of the preceding film to a triumphant conclusion, but the creative talent wanted to return to the horror elements of the first film. Plagued with script rewrites, budget problems, and studio overreach, director David Fincher has disavowed it. The theatrical release from 1992 obscures his original vision, but the “assembly cut” released in 2003 restores important scenes and story elements which contain biblical and Christian imagery that are key to the following analysis.
It will help to begin with the movie’s conclusion because it is mostly intact in the theatrical release and is easy to relate to the cross of Christ. Aliens 3 ends with an act of cruciform self-sacrifice. Ellen Ripley falls backward, arms outstretched, into the fury of an industrial smelting furnace in order to destroy an alien monster that would soon be birthed from her body and threaten all life. She does this despite the fact that greedy corporate representatives have just offered her a chance at salvation in exchange for the alien. They even tempt her with the prospect of having a normal life and children. She rejects the offer and leaps into the furnace. A camera shot from above makes her look like a crucifix suspended above the flames. After her sacrifice, viewers are treated to a series of images symbolizing the immediate effect of her action. The refinery shuts down, the sun rises, and a series of doors close. The musical score for this scene is triumphant. By closing the door to her own life, Ripley has closed the great abyss and extinguished the fires of wrath and violence that selfishness would have unleashed. The sun rises and the tyrants go home empty-handed.
Ellen Ripley is one of the great female cinematic heroes. Stretched between the cause of self-preservation and the preservation of others, she is extremely proficient at both causes throughout the three Alien films. She is a savior and a survivor. Twice before, she has persevered while men with greater authority, physical strength, and martial training have failed. Nevertheless, Aliens 3 is also about the redemption of the masculine role in saving the cosmos. The men of Alien 3 are crucial to her sacrifice. New life can only emerge from a turbulent pairing of the sexes in the heart of the earth.
The second film has an undeniable maternal theme. It is about the redemption of motherhood in the face of sheer destruction. The aliens, also called xenomorphs, reproduce by gestating within human bodies and burst forth from the chest cavity in a mockery of birth. The xenomorphs are terrible demonic offspring, twisted beings that kill their human hosts and go out to collect more hosts, packing their broken bodies into the walls of an expanding hive for impregnation by the crab-like “face-huggers” until all potential hosts are consumed. Ripley, who lost her own daughter to old age while she slept in stasis became a mother again through her adoption and protection of Newt, an orphan girl left alone to survive in the midst of the expanding xenomorph hive. The marines sent in to eradicate the xenomorphs perish, despite their advanced weapons and training. The marines are “real men” to the last. Even the female marines are very masculine in their behavior and appearance. Ripley succeeds because of her indomitable spirit and love for life. Ripley’s personal fear is that she will become a host and die giving birth to hell, but she acts out of a greater love for the preservation of life and civilization.
Ripley fights well against the force that wants to use her body as a womb for destruction, but she does ultimately need the help of some kind of men. Ripley and Newt survive in perfect health while Corporal Hicks and the android named Bishop are marred and incapacitated by their wounds earned in the fight. Bishop’s name is appropriate because he acts like a priest, communicating on behalf of Ripley with the orbital drop shuttle and piloting the survivors to heavenly safety. Bishop had a hard “ministry” in his relationship with Ripley. She rejects his attempts to befriend her because of her previous experience with an android in the first film. He does earn her respect in the end, however, and they all get to rest as they travel home.
Unfortunately, the demon pursues Ripley to the uttermost and leaves her childless, alone, and lost in exile at the beginning of the third film. A fire aboard the spaceship results in the sleeping tubes being automatically placed aboard an evacuation pod. The pod crashes down into the sea of another depressing planet. Hicks and Newt die in the crash. Bishop is so broken that he can only offer a few words about how things came to be so bleak. Viewers eventually learn that a face-hugger stowaway has deposited an embryo into Ripley while she was unconscious. She ends up barely alive on the seashores of Fury 161, a prison planet abundant in natural methane used to operate a smelter for the production of lead sheets used in toxic waste containment. The custodial staff of the planet consists entirely of men, almost all of whom are convicts with a rare genetic disorder called “YY syndrome.” Prone to excessive violence and lust, these men are naturally and socially reckoned to be the most “toxic” of males. They are living out their days in exile away from “the city” and all women and have embraced a vaguely Christian monastic life. Their shepherd is Dillon, a large, bespectacled black man who keeps the community in a state of tenuous fraternal harmony. In one scene where some of the men try to rape Ripley, he uses a rod to defend her and chasten her attackers. The only men on this world who are not so afflicted or so religious are the superintendent, his lackey, and a disgraced medical doctor convicted of grievous malpractice. A form of vicious lice makes it expedient for everyone on the planet to shave off all the hair on their bodies like Israelites under a Nazarite vow. The men of Fury 161 are stripped of all glory as they work and wait for death to set them free.
When Ripley’s ark crashes down into the waters of Fury 161, viewers first see its denizens as a band of monks in long flowing coats. Clemens, the medical officer, finds Ripley washed up on the shore and whisks her away to the infirmary where he nurses her back to the land of the living. She has survived a passage through deadly waters while the rest of her surrogate family has perished. The prisoners haul the escape pod from the sea onto the dry land with a team of oxen. The presence of domestic livestock is a key difference between the theatrical release and the assembly cut. It enhances the idea that the community is somehow monastic and bereft of technology. Later, it is one of these oxen that becomes a host for a xenomorph that moves like a quadruped. This is an interesting departure from the rest of the series, where the aliens are born from the bodies of human beings and are bipedal.
Ripley’s arrival produces quite a reaction among the male population of Fury 161. She has fallen like a nuclear bomb in their midst and they view her as a threat to their little world, before they become aware of the chaotic potential of her “womb.” The attitude toward her arrival is reminiscent of Adam’s complaints to God about the woman after the fall because it was God who had introduced her to paradise. Nevertheless, they have not seen a woman in years and find her irresistible. After the host oxen keels over for no apparent reason, two of the men are shown hauling it inside so that they can clean it and save its meat for a stew. While they are cleaning the animal and hanging it up, they talk about how they’d like to “put it to her,” referring to how they would like to proposition Ripley for sex. What they do not know is that the animal is about to be reborn in the form of a xenomorph. This talk of sexual congress with Ripley while preparing an ox for its new birth is reminiscent of Israel’s priests preparing domestic livestock for sacrifice. In sacrifice, an animal was killed and transformed into smoke through burning so that it could enter the heavens on behalf of worshipers. Entering the sanctuary as a part of a liturgy for sacrifice was symbolically related to a man approaching a woman for sex. Lawful sex is to lawful ritual as unlawful sex is to profanation of a sacred space.
The xenomorph is birthed from the body of the dead ox while Ripley and the men of the facility are holding a funeral for Hicks and Newt. Despite the fact that the bodies are cast into the furnace for cremation, Dillon gives a speech about every person who dies being a seed that will be born again in the resurrection. During the same speech, viewers see the alien erupt from the body of the ox and lope away on all fours. The full picture is a dark juxtaposition of Christian burial and Hebrew sacrificial worship. After the funeral, Ripley shaves her head and showers before going to the mess hall to join the prisoners of Fury 161 for a communal meal where she is tentatively accepted by Dillon as a matter of principle. Her haircut and shower act as rituals for her entrance into the community of Fury 161.
Clemmens, the medical officer, is a disgraced healer because he once prescribed a lethal dosage of painkiller to burn victims wounded in a boiler explosion. He was sentenced to seven years of prison and served his time here. He remained because he had grown attached to the community and felt that no one else would hire him. Several times throughout the film, he offers medical aid to Ripley by offering to inject her with medical “cocktails” of his own design. After he helps Ripley to investigate the nature of the disaster that brought her to him, and to discover whether or not the xenomorphs were the cause, she propositions him and they couple. She is unable to reveal everything about the xenomorphs because she wants to keep the company from using them, and he is unwilling to spoil their relationship by telling her why he was once a prisoner. When he does tell her, she remains open to him, and this is symbolized by the fact that she still gives him her arm when he asks her if she still trusts him with a needle. He has told her of his disgrace and she has accepted him without hesitation or reserve. She has already experienced his gentle care and believes in him. The penetrative act of injecting her is symbolic of their sexual relationship.
Just as Clemmens exposes his disgrace to her and she accepts him, the quadrupedal xenomorph descends from an air duct and kills him. The beast draws near to Ripley, face to face, and then flees. The viewer learns later that this is because it senses that she is carrying an alien.
Ripley has been struggling with this race of xenomorphs that seems hell-bent on making her, in particular, a mother of monsters. This is also true of Israel and the Jews, a nation of people that the devil will not leave in peace by virtue of their election to serve as mediators between Yahweh and the nations. The nation of Israel, the City of Jerusalem, and the Temple will either be an upright, heavenly citadel and mother of the living, or it will be an abyssal womb that gives birth to a brood of vipers. Other women had been impregnated with xenomorphs, but Ripley becomes the last hope for the species when she is impregnated with a queen, an egg-layer. She knows that she will require help in laying down her own life to save others.
Most of the rest of the film is concerned with how Ripley and the men of Fury 161 are going to fight the beast that has erupted from the dead ox. They succeed in capturing it, but an addled member becomes convinced that he must see the demon face to face and do its will and opens the door to its prison. This subplot highlights the insanity of those tempted to present themselves to the beast and open the door to hell. Before its release, Ripley discovers that the company is on its way to capture it and determines to destroy it first.
Dillon’s men intend to remain holed up in a safe space and wait for firepower, but when Ripley convinces Dillon that she is carrying an alien and that the company will not spare any of them to seize the xenomorphs for themselves, he gives a rousing speech about how they need to kill the beast or die trying. The speech is inspiring because they have nothing and are of no value to anyone but themselves, and yet he exhorts them to fight. He convinces them to stand up straight and fight to the bitter end and they hatch a plan to drive the alien into the mold of the leadworks. They will use themselves as bait and then pour hot lead onto the alien, encasing it in molten metal. Each of them must lead the alien through a section of tunnel and they must work to close a series of doors that will keep the monster from escaping. Most of them will perish in the fight.
Ripley has already made a deal with Dillon that if they defeat the beast, he will kill her, but when it pursues them into the mold, he sends her up a ladder to safety and turns to take the alien head-on. She pleads with him, not sure how she will be able to end her own life, but he says to her, “God will take care of you, sister.” He removes his spectacles as the beast closes with him and he taunts the alien as it rips him to shreds. Morse, one of the surviving inmates, pours the lead into the mold, and it seems as if they have mastered the monster. Moments later, it leaps from the molten metal in a final, desperate attack. Morse urges Ripley to notice a sprinkler above and she jumps to grab the chain that will activate it. The water showers down on her and the alien. This is the second time that Ripley is showered with waters from above. A blessing for her, it is the beast’s undoing. The lead hardens and contracts around the alien, causing it to explode dramatically.
Covering the quadrupedal beast with metal briefly associates it with graven images. It is an avatar of the evil that lives because of human greed and faithlessness. The real evil is the company’s lust for unholy dominion. Weyland-Yutani is trying to seize the power of the xenomorphs and will try to seize the fruit of Ripley’s “womb” and use it to rule. It is like the cast-metal idols of Israel which served as false images of God. Israel’s Kings were supposed to protect and enhance Israel’s worship, but they allowed idolatry to thrive, especially in connection with their marriages to many women. They followed in the footsteps of the tyrant kings of Noah’s day who gathered wives and concubines for the raising up of sons in their own image. When Solomon loved many women, they led him to tolerate idolatry, which opened the doors to many houses of false worship and two temples to match the two nations of the divided kingdom. A true king of Israel would love only the wife of his youth and would close, rather than open the doors of many shrines and high places. Those shrines and high places would give birth to a people not fit to be living sacrifices.
Moments after the beast explodes, a mysterious company man arrives with a medical team and commandos. He looks and sounds like Bishop, but he tells Ripley that he is Bishop’s designer and “very human.” He tells her that they want to take the queen embryo out of her and destroy it. She knows better than to trust him. His offering of a quick and painless surgery with a mere two hours of anesthesia is a foil for the good death that she knows she must embrace. She asks Morse to help her and he uses a control panel to position the platform she is standing on over the furnace. God has taken care of her by using the men of Fury 161 to help her get to this point.
The men of Fury 161 were practically eunuchs in exile, but they courageously closed the doors to channel the evil beast to destroy it, giving birth to peace. Even though they were societal outcasts with nothing to offer, the battle for the salvation of the cosmos came to their little world. Thus, while Ripley’s good death is definitely cruciform, it is not as though she is the sole actor. Not one of these men is a suitable Christ figure or a replacement for Adam. Yet, together they join as one man with Ripley to bring an end to the threat of demonic alien offspring. Despite their sins and failures as men, they come together as one repentant man to assist Ripley in destroying the beast and her baptism by fire. The marines of the previous film were expected to succeed in their mission to conquer the xenomorphs. The nation of Israel was expected to conquer the holy land and bring an end to the demonic worship practices of the Canaanites. However, the real victory over sin was accomplished by Christ in a protracted exile under Roman rule. His bride, the church, followed Him in death by baptism and martyrdom and worship to close the abyss that Jerusalem had become. In Alien 3, Adam and Eve come together in the heart of the earth to give their lives for the sake of the whole cosmos.
Jacob Gucker is a Librarian at the Baptist Missionary Association Theological Seminary in Jacksonville, TX. Twitter: @jwgucker.