Jonathan Hartley reviewed William Gibson's Alien 3 by William Gibson
Some potential, but didn't gel for me
2 stars
Some interesting ideas, but as perhaps gently hinted at by Gibson's own genial, generous and self-aware introduction, despite his love for the Alien universe, writing a screenplay under contract was not familiar territory for him, he had constraints, and it's perhaps not his best work.
I found both the dialog and the visual composition to be needlessly confusing. I was trying too hard to understand things like people's relative positions in the room, and which characters are even present in the scene, and whether I was even reading the dialog in the right order. Maybe it's whip smart and I'm just not keeping up?
As an example, the first time we see Bishop, his top half has been put back on a cheap set of legs, his memory has been strip mined, he's been through a lot, and his eyes are just pitch black. I thought this was maybe a …
Some interesting ideas, but as perhaps gently hinted at by Gibson's own genial, generous and self-aware introduction, despite his love for the Alien universe, writing a screenplay under contract was not familiar territory for him, he had constraints, and it's perhaps not his best work.
I found both the dialog and the visual composition to be needlessly confusing. I was trying too hard to understand things like people's relative positions in the room, and which characters are even present in the scene, and whether I was even reading the dialog in the right order. Maybe it's whip smart and I'm just not keeping up?
As an example, the first time we see Bishop, his top half has been put back on a cheap set of legs, his memory has been strip mined, he's been through a lot, and his eyes are just pitch black. I thought this was maybe a neat representation of his burned out state - the synthetic who used to have a personality we'd grown to love, but was now just a burned out husk. But then suddenly, over the page, his eyes are fine. I think it was just an accident. They just forgot to draw his eyes for a few panels. Which is fine, stuff happens, I'm already being way too whiny about it. Or maybe his eyes really were gone, and then they got fixed? But, then there is another character whose whole head is just black for a panel, so I guess mistakes like this do happen? I'm just not sure, and while this is a tiny, inconsequential thing, I spent way too long trying to figure out a whole bunch of different things like this. Is it reading right? Or am I just not reading it right? Like I say, needlessly confusing.