Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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Chapter Seven
Hollywood and Beyond
By the time Ward left New Zealand, his basic aesthetic and his habits as a director had
been clearly established. His later films departed from New Zealand source material,
and also emerged from very different production contexts. Ward needed larger budgets,
but the price for that was some loss of control as an auteur and a pressure on him to
make films that were more commercial, with a stronger storyline and if possible an
upbeat ending. Not surprisingly, each film project became a struggle. This chapter will
examine the director’s work in the late 1980s and 1990s, from his involvement in the
script of Alien 3 (1992), to his feature films Map of the Human Heart (1993) and What
Dreams May Come (1998), and will briefly discuss the television commercial for
Steinlager that he made in 1995. The intention of this discussion is to consider
continuities and discontinuities between these films and his earlier work, thereby raising
some questions about the advantages and disadvantages of various production contexts
for a creative individual such as Ward.
Alien 3
After The Navigator a number of Hollywood studios had approached Ward to work on
large projects that had affinities with The Navigator. One of these was Twentieth
Century-Fox who in 1990 invited Ward to direct a sequel to Alien 2. According to
David Giler, a writer and producer on Alien 3, there had been several earlier versions of
the script, but the producers wanted something different. They had seen The Navigator
and approached Ward on the basis that he would be able to offer an original
approach. 841 Having read the script, which he did not like, Ward initially turned down
the offer. He was then asked if he would agree to work on a new screenplay for the
film, starting with “a blank page”. 842 The story was then developed into a screenplay
841
Interview with David Giler, Alien 3 Special Edition DVD, Twentieth Century Fox Home
Entertainment, 2004.
842
Vincent Ward, e-mail to Stan Jones, 27 May 2002.