Why oh why oh why didn't William Gibson's screenplay for Alien 3 get chosen? Is it perfect? No, but hey, what is? It's at least four times as awesome as any science fiction film I've seen in the last several years, and, wonder of wonders, it's actually *scary*, which is not something often I say about films. I can't see where it would require a supersized budget, at least no more so than Aliens; it's set on a space station, so the sets could be claustrophobic, and there aren't a crap-ton of aliens in it at any given time until the end, and even when there's a lot of them it's nothing Stan Winston (Gods rest his soul) couldn't have managed. I won't wreck it for you guys, but it's as suspenseful and bloody and violent and heroic as one would hope an Alien film to be, and even leaves the ending open for a series of Marines vs. aliens films, which also would have been great.

Interestingly, I get the feeling that the Alien toys released in the early 90's were sort of based on this script, or possibly vice-versa. They were weird, but cool- I still have the bull alien around somewhere.