Soundtrack Review: Alien 3 (1992)

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ALIEN³

The Definitive Review of Elliot Goldenthal’s Score

by Mina Katherine Rhodes

Introduction:

The Alien Quadrilogy, as it has come to be known (Alien, Aliens, Alien³ and Alien Resurrection—discounting the AVP films, which no self-respecting fan of the series really takes seriously) is a true oddity in the realm of big budget cinematic sci-fi franchises; unlike, for example, the popular Star Trek and Star Wars films, all four entries in the Alien saga are helmed by auteur directors (Ridley Scott for Alien, James Cameron for Aliens, David Fincher for Alien³, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet for Alien Resurrection), vary widely in tone, and have a thematic nerve that puts the vast majority of other series in the genre to shame; preoccupied with repulsive sexual imagery (courtesy that great, underused H.R. Giger), unforced feminism, body horror and a pronounced anti-corporate streak, the series throws a lot of intriguing material up onscreen, and while the results don’t always work, they make for an intriguingly unique and influential quartet of films.

The respective scores for the four Alien films are themselves highly varied and influential: Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Alien is just as frightening, beautiful and immaculately conceived as the film it accompanies; Aliens, by James Horner, is one of the best action scores out there, and is endlessly pimped out for film trailers even 20+ years after its release. By contrast, John Frizzell’s Alien Resurrection parallels its film by being more sensual, frenetic and melodramatic, but it also pales considerably to the landmark scores that came before it, fails to break any new ground and isn’t nearly weird enough to ably compliment the film’s bizarre perverseness. It’s a fine score—and in its two-disc expanded form an excellent one—but it withers when placed next to the Quadrilogy’s bleak masterpiece, Elliot Goldenthal’s Alien³.

Like the film it was written for, Goldenthal’s score for Alien³ is a love-it-or-hate-it affair, championed by its supporters as one of the greatest scores ever written for film, and decried by its detractors as noisy, tuneless garbage. A quick look at many soundtrack review sites shows just how much critical disparity Alien³ carries—Filmtracks.com old review gave it one measly star of five (and has since been replaced with one that bumps the rating up to two stars. Progress!), while Music From the Movies gives it a full five. It’s difficult to see how any critic of taste and insight could give a score that includes moments of such power and beauty as “Lento,” the shimmering, classicist string passage that ends “The Entrapment,” or the stunning climax of “Adagio” one single star, but perhaps much of the lunatic hatred of the score is just a knee-jerk reaction from the widely (and venomously) despised film. Alien³ committed the terrible sin of being its own entity, when fans wanted more guns, more testosterone and more conventionally likable characters. What they instead got was a film steeped in choking, uncompromising hopelessness and despair with no guns, one alien and a horrific autopsy on the beloved Newt, just to rub it all in. The dismemberment of Newt wasn’t the only thing hacked apart; the film itself was cut by over 30 minutes—important subplots were axed, character development was left on the cutting room floor, reshoots were imposed, and what finally ended up in cinemas was an incoherent, mangled mess, albeit one with flashes of brilliance showing through its wounds.

In its restored 154 minute form, Alien³ is a masterpiece—a flawed one, but still the dark heart of the Alien Quadrilogy, in which the story arc of the initial trilogy comes to its haunting close (before Alien Resurrection starts a new, dead-end continuity). Alas, the film will never get proper respect due to the nasty impression left with the public by the original theatrical cut, and for rejecting the previous film and forging on with its own gloomy path. Goldenthal’s score for the film reflects this by being a departure from the previous two scores both stylistically and thematically—it is the only score in the series not to feature Goldsmith’s two-note motif from Alien, or any other sampling from previous scores, and incorporates elements of mid-twentieth century Polish avant garde, boy soprano, religious choir and even heavy metal, in addition to Goldenthal’s trademark French horn wails and ferociously shivering strings. Snaking in and out of the orchestrations are a myriad of electronic effects that add to and enhance the unsettling mood, and are one of the elements of the score that Goldenthal still takes pride in, due to their seamless integration and aurally ambiguous origin (one memorable electronic effect would resurface nine years later in Goldenthal’s also-brilliant score for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within). So good are the electronics that their usage does not date the score, and it still sounds timeless even seventeen years on.

Originally released on a 14 track album by the now-defunct label MCA, Alien³ is now irritatingly out of print; used, it is ridiculously overpriced, and new copies go up to $100 and beyond. Those busy bootleggers out there have since made an “extended” release, containing most—but not all—of the music from the film. In order to provide the definitive review of the score for Alien³ and its representations available, both releases (along with the Alien Trilogy compilation album) will be independently reviewed below.

ALIEN³

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Release date: June 9^th, 1992

U.S. release cover

U.K. release cover

Tracklisting:

The official commercial release of the score for Alien³ takes most of the score’s highlights and edits them together into fourteen album suites. Opening with “Agnus Dei,” the haunting track underscoring the film’s main titles, the album gets off to a great start start—”Agnus Dei” was composed to let the viewer know that they were “fucked” from the first note, per David Fincher’s request. It is one of the most memorable passages of Goldenthal’s score, and is faithfully represented on the CD. “Bait and Chase” follows, a bridged suite combining some of the cues heard during the film’s rather incoherent chase sequence that occurs before the finale. As this may lead one to gather, the tracks on this album are not sequenced in film order, which may be mildly annoying to purists, but the track sequence does provide for a consistently engaging listen with few periods of lag. “The Beast Within,” also from a scene in the film’s third act, is a gradual building of chords until the powerful final section, representing the alien fetus developing within Ripley and her escalating drive to die. “Lento” is another bridged cue, and another album highlight. The first section is the tender, melancholy theme for Ripley and Clemens’s relationship, here featuring a boy soprano again reprising “Agnus Dei” (not featured in the theatrical cut of the film), before segueing into the second section: the pounding, grandiose music that introduces the furnace of Fiorina 161, which then softens in tone to underscore the funeral for Hicks and Newt (perhaps the best scene in the film), and then finally rebounds into dissonant horror for the birth of the alien. Here, Goldenthal introduces his music for the beast, a potent mix of electronics and strings accompanied by a disturbing synth-brass motif that reappears later in the score.

The mood of ambient menace continues with the opening section of “Candles in the Wind” before the track erupts into violence, with Goldenthal’s trademark horns wailing up a storm as the newly adult alien rips into inmates Boggs and Rains. The final portion of the track—with its nightmarish fanfare accompanying the film’s striking visual of prisoner Golic’s face showered with blood—is a stunning moment and shows how Goldenthal really developed and perfected his unique orchestral style with this score. “Wreckage and Rape” also features Goldenthal’s unique stylings by throwing in a passage of thrashing electric guitars, screaming vocals and pounding percussion for the scene in which the inmates of Fiorina 161 attack and attempt to gangbang Ripley—an unconventional move on an already left-field score.

Another bridged cue, “The First Attack,” reprises the synth-brass motif as the alien corners Ripley in the infirmary (the film’s signature iconic image), while the second half is comprised of the passage for boiling horns and woodwinds from the scene focusing on the alien’s, well, first attack. A respite from the savagery of the previous track, “Lullaby Elegy” is a delicate but nevertheless unnerving piece for echoing piano and strings, musically symbolizing the fragility and horror of Newt’s corpse, as well as Ripley’s quiet heartbreak. The more contemplative tone does not last long, as “Death Dance” (another bridged cue featuring more music from the climactic chase sequence, as well as the scene of Ripley out-climbing the lead-soaked alien) returns to the aggressive avant garde assault of the album’s earlier passages. Especially with this track, one notices how brilliantly and organically Goldenthal’s electronic effects figure into the mix, as well as how seamless the editing on the bridged cues is. “Visit to the Wreckage” reprises the theme heard earlier on “The Beast Within” before closing with thundering percussion, adding an extra bit of difference from the earlier cue to keep things fresh. “Explosion and Aftermath” is classic Goldenthal, all blaring horns and anxious strings, followed by a moment of tragic, haunting release for solo strings before setting the stage for “The Dragon,” which combines some of the more ominous ambient cues into a track that shows Goldenthal making eerie use of flutes to great effect.

The final suite of seamlessly bridged cues is “The Entrapment,” which begins with the music from the first assembly scene (“This is rumour control, here are the facts…”), transitions to yet more music from the chase sequence, and finally ends with perhaps the most brilliant cue in a score filled with them: the glorious passage for symphonic strings which accompanies the alien’s literally explosive death in the film by rapid temperature change (!). However, the final track, “Adagio,” is the album’s peak—a profoundly moving coda which Goldenthal completely rewrote overnight at the studio’s behest, yet remains to this day his finest moment, along with the entire score as a whole.

The commercial release by MCA Records has been out of print for some years now, likely due to MCA being absorbed into Geffen Records. Nevertheless, the fact that the score for Alien³—which led to countless imitators dragging in boy sopranos and torturing their brass sections—is out of print is absurd when one takes stock of how many older, far-less impressive titles still retain their availability. Intrada recently released the definitive edition of Jerry Goldsmith’s also long out of print Alien, and one hopes that the label will extend the same courtesy to Alien³, but either way you’ll end up spending an obscene amount on it as a limited edition run. Whatever one ends up paying, though, owning Alien³ on CD is worthwhile investment for any fan of the score.

ALIEN³

Expanded Motion Picture Score

Release date: n/a

Various covers

Tracklisting:

Due to the commercial release leaving off about twenty minutes worth of material, including the memorable and unsettling choral passages signifying the arrival of the sinister Weyland-Yutani corporation, an extended bootleg of the score (likely made by the fan community) is available online, but those expecting an improved and more fleshed out representation of the score will be in for a disppointment. The previously unreleased cues are sourced from the film’s audio track, with dialogue only partially removed, which makes a large portion of this bootleg sound like something from Mark Snow’s release of his music for The X-Files, The Truth and the Light. In addition to this annoyance, the cues from the commercial release are poorly and jarringly edited into the mix. All of these failings pale to the worst crime commited here, however—Goldenthal’s original recording of “Adagio” is replaced by the inferior rerecording from the anachronistic 1996 Alien Trilogy compilation. The other two Alien³ tracks from that release being “Lento and “Candles in the Wind” (the latter included here as a bonus track) fare just as badly, and are interesting solely because they are different recordings of the originals, albeit with blander orchestration.

Verdict

Alien³ is still Elliot Goldenthal’s masterpiece, and the release to go with is the original commercial album by Varese Sarabande, which can be found on eBay and Amazon used, but good luck finding it elsewhere. The Expanded Bootleg is interesting, but a frustrating and unsatisfying listen, while more impassioned fans of the score will also want to seek out The Alien Trilogy compilation, if only to hear just how perfect Goldenthal’s original recordings are.

Scores

Score Overall:

MCA Commercial Release:

Expanded Bootleg:

The Alien Trilogy compilation:

Listen to Alien 3 by Elliot Goldenthal below:

Other articles of interest:

• Soundtrack Review: Heat (1995)
• Soundtrack Review: Spirited Away (2001)
• Soundtrack Review: 2012 (2009)
• Soundtrack Review: Porco Rosso (1992)
• Soundtrack Review: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

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