The 1992 movie that almost destroyed David Fincher: “This is the worst thing that ever happened to me”
David Fincher might have three Academy Award nominations to his name, but this level of success seemed so far away from him when he made his directorial debut in 1992.
It’s hard to imagine the man behind titles like The Social Network, Seven, Fight Club and Gone Girl making a pretty lacklustre movie, but we all start somewhere. His entry into Hollywood wasn’t plain sailing, but what’s impressive is that he soon managed to find his feet, proving that he did have the talent all along.
Unfortunately for Fincher, Alien 3 just wasn’t the right project for him to start his career with. In fact, it almost destroyed him before he’d even established himself in the industry, making him question if being a filmmaker was the right decision after all. Making your feature debut with the third instalment in a pre-established franchise is never going to be the right decision for a new director, and Fincher and Alien 3 is the ultimate proof of that.
The problem was that with no feature filmmaking experience, the studio executives behind the movie, which was of course set to be part of an incredibly popular series, didn’t have enough faith in Fincher. He had previously made music videos, but all of a sudden, he was thrust into a position of power that he’d never had on such a scale before.
The movie had been in development for a while, with a lot of different versions of the script floating about until the final one was decided upon, so it seemed like things were rocky from the get-go… Once Fincher hopped on board, he soon found that none of his ideas were really listened to, and he has since claimed that the film hardly matches the vision he had when he signed up for it.
“Oh, it was just awful,” Fincher once explained. “This is the worst thing that ever happened to me… Look, it would be stupid for me to say that I didn’t know what I was getting into. It took me five years to decide what I wanted to do, and I always held out for something on this scale because I like this kind of canvas, I like the scope of this kind of thing.”
It was hard to come to terms with the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to make the movie he had imagined. “The lesson to be learned is that you really can’t take on an enterprise of this size and scope if you don’t really have a movie like The Terminator or Jaws behind you,” Fincher added.
“When Steven Spielberg comes in and says, ‘I made Jaws, the biggest grossing film of all time, and I want $18million to do Close Encounters,’ which is probably the equivalent to what we spent, it’s very nice to be able to say ‘This is the guy who directed the biggest grossing film of all time. Sit down and shut up, and feel lucky that you’ve got him.’”
So, Fincher might’ve had a rough time bringing Alien 3 to life, but at least his next film, 1995’s Seven, proved to be a hit. It was a turning point for the filmmaker, who has since become one of his generation’s most respectable talents.
