Quote from: StayFrosty on Apr 09, 2013, 11:06:13 PM
One thing that bothers me about 'Aliens' is domes vs. ridges.... I still don't really know how to explain it. And it's weird that the ridged-heads have only been in two films vs. 4 dome films. 
Think JC explained it had something to do with the aliens being older and their craniums (the smooth part that covered the brain) simply fell off or disintegrated.... something like that!
Back on topic....
Yeah, this film has warn down on me too over time, it's a great sequel of course, but the theatrical cut was always enough for me. The military approach was definitely something new back in the day, and who could deny Cameron's film a place in history that didn't just do what was done before, and has since been copied time and time again. While there is some great additions to the DC, non of it really adds much to the film EXCEPT the early Colony sequence leading up to where the Jordan's find the alien ship, which should never have been removed in the first place.
As for the other films...
Alien is still the best for me and still holds up today probably because it's such an extraordinary event. Like any film you do have to be in the mood for it, but there's something about the slow pacing that always works with this film, even though you've seen it a thousand times and know whats coming. Sadly the DC of this film is a non-event for me, not only did Scott not really want to do it but it shows. Typical examples of this would be, the long awaited Cocoon Scene that was not only re-edited to speed things up, but it was also put in the wrong place, and the infamous Alien Transmission scene that now has a different sound that is not only different, but so different in fact that it sounds suspiciously human! Adding to that existing scenes which were unnecessarily cut to give us a film that was actually shorter than the original release.
Alien3 I have to admit I hated this film when it came out, but having read the book by Alan Dean Foster, I was really looking forward to this, little did I know then there was a lot more going for this film than the studio was letting on. I very rarely watch the theatrical release, but the SE is definitely something else here and well worth a nostalgic look at least. While it is obviously the studios attempt to give the fans what they want, since director David Fincher flatly refused to have any more to do with it, the Alien3 Special Edition provides us with an insight of what could have been a greater sequel. A kind of mash-up between what we had been wanting to see, a couple of redundant scenes the film didn't need and, for whatever reason, different cuts thrown in of existing scenes that made little to no difference.
Alien Resurrection as a film in its own right works fine but just doesn't cut it as an ALIEN film, some of it is great, but the black humor is so out of place. We have the interesting idea of a Ripley clone with part of the alien inside her but the whole thing is barely explored, safe for a new military with little knowledge of what they're doing, yet they manage to bring Ripley back with little to no explanation. While a lot of people feel the film was just too different from the others, I often felt there was a lot of scope for the new Ripley, possibly adding a completely new trilogy in another direction. But Jean-Pierre Jeunet's film just feels like a missed opportunity, hence I suppose even by his own admission, the extended cut really isn't worth watching, FOX wanted it to complete a box-set to match the other films and they got it, even the behind the scenes stuff isn't much to write about.
