Aliens - My Own Cut - Cinema Series

[SiL]

You have no idea, because you have a preconception. "Fan cuts pffft."

Prometheus Special Edition the "Agent 9" fan cut, has colour corrected shots, finished effects. In the prior post, the link has a full list of changes, I am just glad Pietro Scalia does not cut for Fede Alvarez.

4K77's a "fan cut" that essentially, it's a print of the original Star Wars painstakingly restored by fans. 4K80's still being worked on as it is in pretty rough shape, 4K83's in good shape.

I was actually asking what the 4K77 thing is in good faith, because I didn't know what you were talking about.  I didn't realise you were talking about Star Wars.

Oh that eternal and everlasting snark though... I have missed it so...

Forgive me for not thinking "pffft" and good faith go well together.

Good thing he didn't put them together? The pffft and asking about 4K77 are separate posts.

[Highland]

I think the thing with these cuts is it's possible to have both because you're only watching with one set of eyes and one experience.

The Theatrical cut is better, but I always watch the Special, because.....spoiler alert, I know what happens and I simply just want to see more of a kick ass movie, more characters , more Hicks, more Hudson, more Hadley's hope.

If you were to say to me, there's a version of predator that's about to be released with 15 more minutes of Dutch just talking smack ....take my money 

[BlueMarsalis79]

If he wants to be informed without snark, he should retire his own brand.

[TC]

...
The Theatrical cut is better, but I always watch the Special, because.....spoiler alert, I know what happens and I simply just want to see more of a kick ass movie, more characters , more Hicks, more Hudson, more Hadley's hope.

If you were to say to me, there's a version of predator that's about to be released with 15 more minutes of Dutch just talking smack ....take my money 

Yeah, i only watch the Aliens special edition too. Simply because there's more to see.

With Aliens issues like pacing, plotting, character development etc, are irrelevant because of the many times I've seen it by now (I lost count long ago). I know what's happening, what's about to happen, and what isn't about to happen. There's no real suspense or mystery anymore. (So why bother with repeat viewings? The music and sound, photography, lighting, the acting, i.e. all the sensory stuff; as well as the FX with the miniatures and creatures. These are the things I can enjoy over and over.)

Something I often say is how precious a first-time viewing is. You can only ever have that experience once. Forever thereafter, you're watching the movie with all your acquired knowledge altering the experience.

Now, about the special edition's opening Acheron sequence that many people seem so keen to cut: One thing it does is show us graphically what a facehugger does to you (i'm talking about the scene in which Russ Jorden is facehugged). Nowhere else in the movie do we get to see actual facehugging. I know we get Ripley's verbal description during the hangar briefing, and we see Burke dip his face to the speciman jar with the facehugger thrashing around inside, but it's much better for us to see it explicitly doing its thing; it's more vivid and visceral. And I think this pays off in the later scene when Ripley gets attacked -- we know exactly what it's trying to do. Prior knowledge makes the horror hit you in the gut much more.

Of course, this means nothing to anyone on this fan site. Everyone here knows exactly what's going on. And if you're a first-time Aliens viewer, it's probable that you saw the first Alien movie and got to witness Kane's facehugging. But in 1986, and quite possibly today as well, studios were loathe to make sequels in which audiences felt it necessary to see the previous film before watching the new one (for obvious reasons). And if you're the filmmaker, it's more gratifying to think that your sequel is still fully effective as a standalone. (That would be my guess, anyway.)

One other thing about the Acheron sequence: By introducing Newt to us this way her character is elevated into far more of a co-protagonist role alongside Ripley, rather than being a mere support character that Ripley picks up along the way. In the theatrical cut we only get Ripley's inciting incident, which is what compels her to join the mission back to LV-426 and exorcise her PTSD demons. But Newt has demons of her own, and the special edition allows us to witness the inciting incident that creates them: the attack on her father. This incident sweeps her into the story's narrative separately from Ripley. So now they are both searching for salvation and the stage is set for their stories to converge and begin the love story. (Usually when I talk about the love story in Aliens people think I'm referring to Ripley and Hicks. Far from it. The love story in Aliens is the love of mother and child -- Ripley and Newt. Hicks could even be written out of the movie and the plot would hardly change. The movie would be much weaker for it, but it would be a comparatively easy rewrite).

TC

[SM]

There's more than enough coverage of facehuggers in the rest of the film that it's easy to get away with not seeing it stuck to someone's face.

Hicks on the other hand needs to balance out Newt, in order for Ripley to battle the Queen.

That said, I too always watch the SE over the theatrical in spite of the unnecessary additions.

If he wants to be informed without snark, he should retire his own brand.

[BlueMarsalis79]

Aside from the Sentries, I do not miss anything from the Special Edition personally.

[ralfy]

Some pro writers give this suggestion: Show, don't tell. Add too many details, like an explanation of what facehuggers do, and it ruins pacing, etc.

Also, pacing and plot were actually critical in the movie because its subgenre is action. One notable thing about it is that the main action takes place much later, which in turn allows for more exposition and even drama.

[TC]

...
Also, pacing and plot were actually critical in the movie because its subgenre is action.
...

I think you misunderstood me. Of course pacing and plot are important.

What I was trying to say is that once you go beyond your first viewing the usual plot devices of setups and payoffs, mysteries and solutions, red-herrings, twists, surprises etc. no longer work. These are techniques that rely on engaging your curiosity or ancipation of something unknown, and once the unknown is known... well, the proper effect isn't there anymore.

But there is a kind of "improper" effect that I think occurs during a re-watch, which is that you subconsciously play a mental game and pretend to yourself that you haven't seen the movie before. But, at least with me, I think it's more correct to say that I'm observing the ins and outs of the plot rather than experiencing them.

Or another way of putting it is that in a re-watch my brain is running a simulation of watching the movie for the first time, and it does it by recollecting memories made from that first occasion. Kind of like when neuropsychologists say that when you remember something from your distant past, you aren't so much remembering the actual event but remembering your last recollection of the event.

It's just a fun theory of mine. 

TC

[ralfy]

...
Also, pacing and plot were actually critical in the movie because its subgenre is action.
...

I think you misunderstood me. Of course pacing and plot are important.

What I was trying to say is that once you go beyond your first viewing the usual plot devices of setups and payoffs, mysteries and solutions, red-herrings, twists, surprises etc. no longer work. These are techniques that rely on engaging your curiosity or ancipation of something unknown, and once the unknown is known... well, the proper effect isn't there anymore.

But there is a kind of "improper" effect that I think occurs during a re-watch, which is that you subconsciously play a mental game and pretend to yourself that you haven't seen the movie before. But, at least with me, I think it's more correct to say that I'm observing the ins and outs of the plot rather than experiencing them.

Or another way of putting it is that in a re-watch my brain is running a simulation of watching the movie for the first time, and it does it by recollecting memories made from that first occasion. Kind of like when neuropsychologists say that when you remember something from your distant past, you aren't so much remembering the actual event but remembering your last recollection of the event.

It's just a fun theory of mine. 

TC

What new techniques and what proper effects are you considering? You can't have mystery and suspense in the second movie because the first movie already did that. And if you want things like actual facehugging, then that was done, too, in the first movie, and showing that and everything else in the second would have turned the latter into an imaginary documentary. Finally, that and replacing anything about Hicks with more dialogue between Ripley and Newt would have ruined the pacing.

[SM]

Aliens had plenty of mystery and suspense.

[Wweyland]

One thing that irked me about Prometheus was that it has two "Infected Person at the ship ramp" scenes with two very different outcomes.

You would maybe expect that the first one offers some foreshadowing for the second one (or that the characters learn something), but there is nothing.

Just for the hell of it, I would combine these two into a fan-edited scene:
"Infected tattoo guy" stands up, gets torched by Vickers.

But what to do with all the people you need to be killed off? Just have a smaller crew from the start then.
Or just drive them into the sunset, which basically happens to about 2-3 of them if I'm not mistaken.

[SM]

"Hey have we taken off?"
"Never mind that - what's this 'collision imminent'?"


To be fair though, there's little they can do in regards to Fifield. Janek twigs something's up but by then Fifield's attacking everyone.

[Highland]

One thing that irked me about Prometheus was that it has two "Infected Person at the ship ramp" scenes with two very different outcomes.

You would maybe expect that the first one offers some foreshadowing for the second one (or that the characters learn something), but there is nothing.

Just for the hell of it, I would combine these two into a fan-edited scene:
"Infected tattoo guy" stands up, gets torched by Vickers.

But what to do with all the people you need to be killed off? Just have a smaller crew from the start then.
Or just drive them into the sunset, which basically happens to about 2-3 of them if I'm not mistaken.

I think visiting the Pyramid twice was an even bigger crime. I get the whole whacky black slime stuff, but the back and forth between the Pyramid completely killed the movie. You could have just had the original team stuck in there and the outside team try to help them and get picked off by different beasties inside.

[nanison]

The aliens running into machine gun fire isn't really that stupid. Soldiers blindly ran into the same fire rate in WW1 out of the trenches and apparently the Russians are still applying this tactic in the current war.

In the past sacrifices were also made to count the amount of guns and the fire rate of your opponent.

That said I think much of aliens distracts me from what we learned from the first film. They're just bugs now, not longer the scary perfect mysterious organism.

I cannot dislike aliens for it though, it is still an all time favorite but it will never ever top the first film.

[SiL]

It was always a bug. Aliens just specified which kind.