Leonard Dillon was an inmate preacher at the Fiorina 161 Class C Work Correctional Unit in Alien 3, played by Charles S. Dutton. He was one of the double-Y chromosome prisoners who stayed after Weyland-Yutani closed the mine, and in 2179 he led the brothers against a lone Dragon. He told Ellen Ripley he was a murderer and rapist of women. He died in the lead mold so Morse could pour the molten metal.
Biography
Previous Life
In Alan Dean Foster's Alien 3 novelization, Dillon was a leader among the twenty-five prisoners for more than his size. On screen he was shaved and wore black plastic frames. In the novel he wore one dreadlock, which he cleaned of Fiorina's bugs, and a pair of antique wire-rimless glasses that had come down in his family. He preferred those glasses to contacts, and the Company was not going to pay for transplants.
Dillon was American, and most of the other inmates were British. About five years before Ripley arrived, Dillon and the other converts took up a private millenarian Christian faith and asked to stay when Weyland-Yutani tried to close the rest of the site. Clemens called it an apocalyptic fundamentalist mix. The Company let them remain as custodians, with two minders and a medical officer, because the prayers made the men quieter. Superintendent Andrews tolerated the faith for that peace. He did not think it made thieves, rapists, murderers, or the rest of the double-Y crew any less dangerous, and he knew their case histories. Dillon could shut the leadworks cauldron with one order when he wanted the men at a funeral.
In the mess, after she thanked him for the funeral, Dillon told Ripley she did not want to know him, because he was a murderer and a rapist of women. S. D. Perry's Weyland-Yutani Report puts his birth in 2138 and gives him prisoner serial YY82013. At the end of the novel, when she asked him to break her neck before a Company squad could take her, he had broken a neck before, a long time ago, and he knew the pressure it took.
A Woman On The Rock
An EEV crashed on the morning watch with one living passenger, two dead, and a wrecked android. Andrews called the hall together. Dillon opened with a short prayer, that they were poor sinners in the hands of an angry God, and the men raised their right fists. Morse leaned on the railing and recited the celibacy vow. A woman on the rock broke that vow, and Dillon called her a break in the quiet that got the brothers through the day. He stepped in front of Morse and put the complaint to Andrews as a request that the outsider stay out of their routine. Andrews promised a rescue team inside a week and told them to leave Ripley in the infirmary until that crew arrived. In the novel that ship was bound for Motinea.
The Cremation
Dillon shut the leadworks so the shift could attend the cremation of Newt and Hicks in the old smelter, a chamber cut from the rock above the ore body. In the Special Edition he spoke the commitment of the bodies himself, including the line that within each seed there is the promise of a flower. Foster split that service. Andrews read the opening from a thin book, and Dillon finished it, sending the departed into the void with a glad heart because they would not know the hardship left for the living. While the funeral ran, the ox Babe burst in the empty abattoir and the infant that became the Dragon went into a duct. The theatrical cut put that infant in a Rottweiler. The Special Edition and the novel used the ox.
The Mess Hall
Ripley came to the mess to thank him for the funeral. Dillon told her to stay in the infirmary, out of the room, and he told her she did not want to know him because he was a murderer and a rapist of women. When she stayed, he asked if she had any faith, and she had little. He told her the brothers had a store of it that the Company could not take, enough even for her, and that they were waiting for God to return and raise his servants to redemption. Women were absent because none had been sent, not because the faith barred them. He told her there was nowhere to run on Fiorina, and that no temptation had reached the rock before she arrived.
He also assigned the work. Boggs and Rains wanted off a forage with Golic, whom they treated as foul and strange. Dillon sent the three of them into the old shafts anyway, to hunt miner cubbies and to show loyalty to him. He would not hear Golic insulted at the table. After the candles went out in the dark and only Golic came back, Dillon would not accept Andrews's claim that Golic had killed his workmates and invented the creature.
The Trash Pit
Ripley was in the trash pit digging out what was left of Bishop when Junior, Gregor, and two others grabbed her. Dillon told them to stop, and Gregor told him to go first. Dillon put two of them down, took a metal bar, dropped Junior with it, and hit the others again. Ripley was not hurt. He told her to leave so he could deal with the brothers, and she punched Gregor in the mouth on the way out.
The Quinitricetyline Trap
The Dragon killed Clemens in the infirmary and then took Andrews through the mess ceiling. The men looked to Dillon, and he would not take Andrews's place. He told Ripley she was an officer and asked her to lead them. With Aaron they planned to paint leftover quinitricetyline through the ducts, burn the creature out, and drive it into a toxic-waste vault. A dropped flare lit the paint early and the fire ran the corridors, so Dillon got the sprinklers on. In the Special Edition and in Foster's book, Junior baited the Dragon into the vault and Ripley shut the door on him. The theatrical cut left that capture out.
Refusing Ripley's Request
After the vault, Ripley told Dillon the Company was coming for the creature and would try to take it away as a weapon. He had lost men he had lived with for years trapping it, and he would not send the rest in to hit it with a stick. If the Company wanted the creature, he told her they could deal with it, and he would not fight when she said it would kill everyone on Earth. Morse then arrived from the waste door. Golic had talked him into cutting the straps, clubbed the watch, and opened the vault. The Dragon was loose again. Dillon pulled Aaron off Morse after the punch and told him that discipline among the brothers was Dillon's.
Ripley had a Queen embryo and asked Dillon to kill her. He refused while the Dragon was alive, because the creature would not touch her and that was the only advantage they had. She asked him again. He agreed to do it after the beast was dead, quick and painless, and he pulled an axe off the wall. In the novel he was on his cot with a game of solitaire when she found him, turning the dreadlock in his fingers.
The Foundry Speech
Dillon put the choice to the hall. They could wait in that room until the creature found them, or they could die trying to kill the thing that had killed the others. Aaron wanted to wait for the rescue ship and go home to a wife and a child. Dillon told him he was a Company man, not a believer, and that nobody was taking him home. Morse wanted to wait for guns. Dillon called him the man who had a deal with God to live forever, and offered to fight with Ripley and leave the rest where they were. Morse joined after Dillon kicked a stool and told the hall they could die on their feet or on their knees.
The Bait Run
The plan was to run the Dragon through the corridors into the mold, then fire a piston that would shove it into the molten lead. Each man was bait for one stretch, then a slammed gate. Dillon warned Ripley they had one chance, and that if she was wrong about the creature leaving her alone it would go out through her. The run came apart in the dark. In the novel Dillon dragged the wounded Kevin into the main corridor for the piston, and the Dragon slipped behind the machinery instead of going into the mold. In the film he held Ripley against a door while the chase collapsed around them, until only he and Morse were left to finish it with her.
Death In The Mold
In the Special Edition and the theatrical cut, Dillon and Ripley backed into the mold with the Dragon behind them. He told her God would take care of her, stayed on the floor, and fought the creature long enough for her to climb. Morse opened the pour from the gantry, and the molten lead covered Dillon and the Dragon together, killing Dillon in the chamber. The Dragon climbed out of the metal coated and burning, and Ripley turned the quench on it so the cold water would break the hot shell apart.
In Foster's novel, Dillon got Ripley up the side of the mold and climbed after her, and the pour knocked the creature back into the metal while the two of them were on the rim. When the Company squad appeared, she told him to break her neck, as he had promised. His hands went to her throat, and he could not do it. The burning creature pulled him under the lead, and Ripley was the one who hauled the quench chain.
Personality And Traits
Dillon held authority among the brothers through the prayers, the forage, and the leadworks, which he could close when he wanted the men at a funeral. When Morse objected to a woman on the rock, Dillon turned the complaint into a request that she stay out of their routine. After Andrews died, the men looked to him, and he told Ripley to lead because she was an officer. The faith did not excuse what he had done. In the mess he told her he was a murderer and a rapist of women, and in the novel he knew the pressure it took to break a neck because he had broken one before.
Dillon protected the brothers, and the same authority let him hit them when they broke the peace. He stopped the insults aimed at Golic, and he pulled Aaron off Morse when Aaron started the beating. When Junior and the others grabbed Ripley in the trash pit, Dillon put them down with a metal bar, the same offense he had named as his own. He wanted her out of their routine, refused her thanks after the cremation, and in the Special Edition he would not spend more of his men so the Company could take the Dragon. After Golic opened the vault, that refusal ended, and he talked Morse into the foundry and stayed on the mold floor while she climbed.
Dillon spoke about death as a settled fact. In the foundry he told the men they were going to die, and that they could go on their feet or on their knees, and he sent them down the corridors as bait. In the film he stayed in the mold and fought the Dragon long enough for Ripley to climb. In the novel he got her up the side and could not break her neck when she asked, and the burning creature pulled him under the lead.
Dillon In The Alien 3 Comic
Dark Horse's three-issue Alien 3 comic, written by Steven Grant and pencilled by Christopher Taylor in June and July 1992, does not use the film's mold death or the climb out of the mold in Foster's novel. Before he died, Ripley asked him to kill her, and he refused. On the page he had his hands at her throat and told her he could not do it, and she told him to do it anyway. The Dragon came up out of the lead and dragged him back into the fire. A last panel left a red figure on the mold floor under the pour.
Dillon In The Alien 3 Game Boy
Bits Studios made the Game Boy Alien 3 for LJN, and the North American cart reached shops in January 1993. Ripley walked an overhead map of the prison, and Dillon was the inmate she reported to while she found weapons. When she asked how anyone could leave Fury 161, he pointed her at the crashed EEV. The pod could be fixed, but none of the men had the skills to launch it. After the other aliens were dead, his plan was to draw the Queen into the furnace and push her in with a tram. Ripley then repaired the damaged Bishop android at the crash site, and Bishop helped her fly the repaired EEV off Fury 161 toward Gateway Station.
Behind The Scenes
Charles S. Dutton played Dillon for David Fincher at Pinewood Studios during the 1991 shoot. Dutton had served a manslaughter sentence for a street killing, then a later term on a weapons charge, and he studied at the Yale School of Drama after prison. By Alien 3 he was starring as Roc Emerson on the Fox series Roc. An Empire set visit that spring found that Dutton and Charles Dance preferred not to give interviews on the floor. Dutton later called the shoot tough because it was Fincher's first film and the studio and the director did not get along, and he called Pinewood in 1990 and 1991 a dump.
The part comes out of Vincent Ward's unmade Alien 3, where a similar brother is named Kyle. Early Walter Hill and David Giler drafts call him Malcolm and kill him in more than one way, including a sacrifice that saves Morse in the assembly hall and a later version that matches the novel: he climbs out, cannot strangle Ripley, and the Alien drags him into the lead. The January 1991 revisions name him Dillon. The filmed Special Edition left him in the mold. The finished credits list the part only as Dillon. S. D. Perry's Weyland-Yutani Report later gave the part the first name Leonard, the 2138 birth, and prisoner serial YY82013.
Merchandise
Diamond Select released a 2-inch Fury 161 Dillon in Aliens Minimates Series 4 on 16 May 2018, in a two-pack with Fury 161 Ripley. The wave had been planned for Toys "R" Us and was sold through Previews after that chain closed. The Dillon figure has the olive prison coat and black gloves, and it carries a fire axe with a red head. The two-pack also includes a chestburster and an egg. Eaglemoss followed with issue 45 of The Alien & Predator Figurine Collection, item ALNUK045, a 1:16 hand-painted metallic-resin figure that reached US shops in October 2018. That sculpt wears glasses and a worn green jacket, with brown trousers, boots, and gloves, and a red axe resting on his shoulder.
Famous Quotes
- "Give us strength, O Lord, to endure. We recognize that we are poor sinners in the hands of an angry God. Let the circle be unbroken, until the day. Amen."
- "For within each seed, there is the promise of a flower, and within each death, no matter how small, there's always a new life. A new beginning."
- "You don't wanna know me, lady. I'm a murderer and rapist of women."
- "Take off. I gotta re-educate some of the brothers."
- "We're all gonna die. The only question is when. This is as good a place as any to take your first steps to heaven. The only question is how you check out. Do you wanna go on your feet, or on your fuckin' knees, begging? I ain't much for begging. Nobody ever gave me nothin'. So I say, fuck that thing. Let's fight it."
- "God will take care of you now, sister."
Conclusion
Leonard Dillon was the Fiorina 161 preacher who told Ripley he was a murderer and rapist of women, stopped an assault on her, and led the foundry fight against the Dragon. In the Special Edition he died in the lead mold in 2179 when Morse poured the metal over him and the creature together. In Foster's novel he climbed out with Ripley, could not break her neck, and the burning creature pulled him under the lead. In the Dark Horse comic she asked him to kill her, he refused, and the Dragon dragged him into the pour.
Appearances
- Alien 3 (1992)
- Alien 3 novelization (Alan Dean Foster, 1992)
- Alien 3 comic (Dark Horse, 1992)
- Alien 3 (Game Boy, Bits Studios / LJN, 1993)
- Alien: The Weyland-Yutani Report by S. D. Perry (2014)
Tag Categories: Alien Universe Characters | Alien Lore
