Leading from
a) Apocalpyse now to Alien 3
David Fincher wanted to make Alien 3 his
"Apocalypse Now"
when he pitched
it to the studios, he did not expand on what this was all about to the
magazine interviewers, and
b) Coonel Kirtz transforms into Kramer the chief of police
However
it was as if Kramer is supposed to remind people of the Brando
character Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now
- The references to Apocalypse Now are a tougher fit, since that film dealt with such a uniquely American catastrophe. They're there, though: Jerold Wells in the still above is meant to remind you of Brando, and there's a great helicopter shot later in the film that's should have "Ride of the Valkyries" playing over it (criterioncollection.blogspot.co.uk/)
- What is it? A third film in the Alien franchise, written by legendary "cyberpunk" science fiction author William Gibson (Neuromancer),
which featured the characters of Hicks and Bishop instead of Ripley and
included the added dimension of a contagion that turns humans into
aliens. The script was reportedly action-heavy, with plenty of hot
alien-on-Marine action, although Gibson himself compared it to
introspective Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris).
(http://horror.about.com) (further source required)
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| Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now |
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| Kramer the Chief of Police yelling through his megaphone in Element of Crime |
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| Kramer the Chief of Police talking to Fisher in Element of Crime |
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| Kramer the Chief of Police in Element of Crime |
c) Like a bad acid trip
Another Element of Crime/Apocalypse now connection, perhaps as Jan Simon (writer of Playing the waves: Lars Von Trier's Game Cinema) could perceive, the hypnotic trip through
Europe that Fisher takes in The Element of Crime had echoes of
Apocalypse Now which could be taken as a long, bad, acid trip into the mind of Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen) whose drugged features
are seen in close-up at the beginning of the film, but it would be hard to see a counterpart in Alien 3 for him,
- The hypnotic trip through Europe that Fisher takes in The Element of Crime has echoes of Apocalypse Now, which can also be interpreted as a long, bad, acid trip into the mind of Captain Willard (played by Martin Sheen) whose drugged features are seen in close-up at the beginning of the film. To sum up, practically every shot in the Europa trilogy recalls the films, the filmmakers and the film styles of (European) history. (Playing the waves: Lars Von Trier's Game Cinema, Jan Simons, 2003)
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| Scene from Apocalypse now with the strange purple smoke |
Scene from Element of Crime when a girl's body is discovered 
Scene from Element of Crime when a girl's body is discovered
d) How this might have effected Alien 3
Meanwhile The
Alien 3 film itself runs with a series of events that happen to set the
film in motion near enough without explanation such as the appearance
of an egg aboard the Sulaco and the audience have been left in a state
of confusion about these things, and the plot only dimly connects anything at all.
Then indeed we know that
Fincher wanted to make Alien 3 as a sort of Apocalypse Now while a reason given
reason for the people in Alien 3 being bald is because they needed
to shave their heads because of the lice around the prison complex.
"Element of Crime: Inspired by Apocalypse Now?" was given its own separate page on 4th October 2021
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