Dimension Films

Wes Craven's 2000 "Scream 3" from the original trilogy may be among the lesser entries in the horror franchise that now counts no less than seven (!) movies, but the third installment did give audiences some memorable meta moments (just like this '90s Arnold Schwarzenegger action-comedy did), for sure. I mean, the plot of "Scream 3" has so many meta layers and winks to the audience that it often feels overcooked — a somewhat all bones, no meat situation — and indulgent in its own history and mythology.

Nevertheless, there are some good and fun touches like the late Carrie Fisher's cameo as Bianca Burnette, a failed actress and archivist at the fictional Sunrise Studios. Fisher's character has little function in the story other than being a sort of narrative pit stop for Courtney Cox's iconic reporter Gale Weathers and Parker Posey's (star of Netflix's three-season remake of a classic sci-fi series) eccentric actress Jennifer Jolie to find out more about Maureen Prescott, Sidney's (Neve Campbell) deceased mother. When they pay a visit to Burnette, she's a hostile and cynical employee who uncannily resembles the actress who played Princess Leia in "Star Wars" (wink, wink, and wink).

As she resignedly lights up a cigarette when Weathers and Jolie point out the obvious to her, she says, "I was up for Princess Leia. I was this close. So who gets it? The one who sleeps with George Lucas." It's a fun bit that works well due to Fisher being game about her beloved role and performance in the space opera.

Dimension Films

As the intended trilogy-closer at the start of the aughts, "Scream 3" quickly turned into the black sheep of the horror franchise. It made bank as expected, amassing over $161 million worldwide at the box office against its $40 million budget, but both critics and audiences have labelled it a disappointment compared to the previous two films. For its time, it was overwhelmingly meta and too derivative to offer a satisfying conclusion to a trilogy that perhaps deserved better.

For what it's worth, I believe it was still levels above (in quality and creativity) the new iterations that revived the franchise in the past four years, including 2026's "Scream 7," which was a total atrocity. Surprisingly, however, "Scream 3" received somewhat of a reappraisal more than one and a half decades on, when the #MeToo movement with the numerous allegations against Harvey Weinstein, became global. Its themes of sexual misconduct and sexual exploitation by powerful Hollywood execs who dabbled in "transactional sex" suddenly felt very much ahead of its time.

Sure, these depictions were hardly in-depth or pivotal subject matters well-explored within the film, but they served as seeds that were part of the Hollywood film industry even back then. In fact, Carrie Fisher's (who also had an "intense" affair with her co-star, Harrison Ford) self-reflective, cynical, and humorous lines as Bianca Burnette were a prime example of that to a certain degree.