Aliens

[la_te_ra_lus_2003]

i was jsut watching Aliens, the 'special' edition with 17 mins of xtra footage. someone told me that the original theatrical version was better, as the spec. edition made the film slow + boring in places. any chance of a DVD release of this version?

[john316]

The Special Edition wipes the arse of the theatrical cut of Aliens - why pay for an inferior version of it?

[la_te_ra_lus_2003]

The spec. edition i find a bit slow in places....but still gets 9.99 out of 10.the thought of seeing the theatrical cut i jst found i bit interesting

[john316]

I take your point about some of the extra bits being a little slow but you gain a lot more narrative which just improves the whole flow of the movie. I think the only chance you have is to catch it on ITV or on that low tech video technology that I don't like to mention too much!

[dangermouse]

A trip to any market video stall should provide you with the opportunity to cheaply pick up the original version of Aliens on that historic and dated format that is *cough* VHS *cough*:p

[Jimmyboy]

I agree.
The Special Edition buggers up the pacing of the film & its easy to see why it was cut in the 1st place, although the Ripley on park bench scene is obviously relevant.

[mr_woo]

i would take the directors cut over the theatrical version anyday, to me the extra 17mins are quite relevant to the film and add greatly to the storyline.

When i first saw the directors cut years ago on VHS (*hides* :) ) i was much more satisfied with the film as it answered a few questions i had about it. Wouldn't dream of going back to the theatrical version now.

[Grumpy]

Originally posted by la_te_ra_lus_2003
someone told me that the original theatrical version was better, as the spec. edition made the film slow + boring in places

SOMEONE is not someone I would be listening to.
The Special edition is the only version worth watching

[SqueakyG]

Uhhhhhhhhh...

I agree that the extra scenes in the special edition are very worthy scenes. But I also think they were not included in the theatrical cut for a reason, and that reason is because it makes the film too long. I don't think an action movie ever needs to be more than 90 to 120 minutes in length. The theatrical cut was already about 2 and a quarter hours... already pushing the numb-buttocks factor. So adding another 20 minutes just makes it way too long.

I feel exactly the same way about the T2 special edition. Funny how they are both James Cameron movies, both called "special editions", both good movies but not worthy of being 2-hour-45-minute epics, and both released as special editions in order to take more money from the public.

[Confucius]

For hopefully the last time :)

The 17 minutes were cut at the behest of FOX to enable the movie to have an extra showing on each screen every day, thus maximising the number of bums on seats (ie: box office takings).

[gooseUK]

I've always been in two minds about the extra 17 mins. Whilst I love some sequences (Ripley finding out about her daughter, the robot sentries), I have serious reservations about the opening scenes on LV426 which show the colonists at work, and the discovery of the facehugger (that's it's Newt's parents is too pat for me). I don't know why, but I always prefered the theatrical version where none of this is seen and spelled out, but is explained away with that ominous bit of dialogue from Burke, "we've lost contact...". It just seemed creepier, more ominous, and left a lot more to the imagination. Oh, and I hate that "my name is Ellen" moment. It's such a stilted piece of dialogue.

What would be great is if there was a branching version of this DVD, where you could mix and match between the two cuts.

[Confucius]

Originally posted by gooseUK
What would be great is if there was a branching version of this DVD, where you could mix and match between the two cuts.

The nail has finally been hit on the head.

Perhaps an Aliens ***** edition (with seamless branching) with may follow after the Alien ***** which comes out next year.

Agree absolutely with you, goose about the initial colonist footage.

On the flipside I'd be most unhappy to lose the corridor sited automatic cannon footage.

[John Jennings]

Originally posted by Confucius


On the flipside I'd be most unhappy to lose the corridor sited automatic cannon footage.

Really? I hated that bit.

To me it kind of reduced the Alien's strength down to sheer force of numbers. In Alien there's this single super-sneaky intelligent Alien creeping around the ship, bumping them off one by one, then in Aliens:TSE you've just got these moronic Aliens charging blindly into the guns. Made them seem like dumb animals to me. Not what Ridley Scott/Giger had envisaged them as at all.

Agree about the extra colonist bits being duff too. When the marines arrive and go 'What happened here?' we already know exactly what happened here as the we've been shown it in a 'colour by numbers' kind of way. Destroys the 'mystery' aspects.

Like the extra Ripley's Daughter/Newt bits though. Really explained Ripley's motivations and character a lot more. Nice.

[mjb1975]

fair point John re: the aliens and the cannons, but after seeing them in the DC, I think that time in the 'normal' movie is a little lacking - as if they're all not really doing much. The sentry's give the impression of them all being self-contained in a 'secure' area

plus, they sound great!!!

[FaustBos]

Originally posted by Confucius
For hopefully the last time :)

The 17 minutes were cut at the behest of FOX to enable the movie to have an extra showing on each screen every day, thus maximising the number of bums on seats (ie: box office takings).

Said in another way, it was too long.

[FaustBos]

I have a soft spot for Directors Cuts. I do like them, but I also like my choice. Some way to view one or the other on the same disk would be nice.

I like to see what the director had in mind, but I dont always feel it makes for the better movie. Some have mentioned the scenes on LV426 in Aliens. You don't need to see what happened there. We can use our own imagination. We know what happened. But Cameron felt it was better to have it in. Personally I think it was a great cut.

I argue about this film all the time with my friends because I dont remember the theatrical release of the movie. I saw it, but it just never stuck with me. So I couldnt really pick out the scenes, but when there were pointed out, they often made sense.

Sometimes movies get hacked to pieces and othertimes the cuts before release make sense.

Again, I like the choice, but prefer to have the theatrical release if at all possible, and have the directors cut as a choice.

[Confucius]

Originally posted by FaustBos


Said in another way, it was too long.

Ah yes,

but not, at the time, because it was felt to be too long to hold the viewers interest or any number of reasons concerning artistic merit. Merely to say it was too long is a gross oversimplification to the point of being meaningless. The important part was, and is, the reasoning behind it.

:)

[Clipper-]

As I am the one who informed the starter of this thread about the theatrical version I feel I should maybe say something :)

Most of this stuff has been mentioned already but I'll mention it again...

Yes I feel the Theatrical edition is stronger.... why?

Well

1) The LV426 opening is superfluous. The stark report to Ripley that they lost contact is 1000 times more effective than the Mom+Pop go see a spaceship nonsense.

2) The Corridor gun scenes is just Cameron masturbating over guns again. The Aliens become cannon fodder and the Aliens should never become cannon fodder as they lose a little bit of their menace if they are seen as a foe who just throw troops against the foe until they are beaten. That scene makes the film almost into a videogame.

3) The park bench scene. Nice scene but due to the length of the film you can see why it went... It's not really needed.

4) The film is just too long in the DC version, there's not enough story to sustain it for that period (same goes for Titanic, Abyss SE and to certain extent T2).

5) The pacing just seems uneven and choppy. The film lags badly at the pivotal point where they are holed up and the sentry guns keep them safe. This section drags badly in the DC version.


Normally I am the first to defend a dicertor's cut of a film. The director's cut is the director's preferred vision and I like to see what the director intended rather than the studio's vision in 90% of films.However in some cases the studio is right and they are invariably right with Cameron's output.

Cameron is an average director at best but his work is self-indulgent in the extreme. He just doesn't know how to cut a film to a reasonable length. He feels that we need every i dotted and every t crossed. Going through his mainstream work we see...

Aliens - Studio demands cuts of 17 mins.... Cameron complies but then reinstates them later and as far as I'm concerned the additions weaken the film.
T2 - Just about manageable on theatrical release but still a little bloated and pace is uneven in places
Abyss - Shortened version is still a little long and the DC is an overlong joke
Titanic - Any editor worth his salt could cut at least 30-45 mins out of that film without losing a damn thing plotwise of character development wise.

[robbiejm]

Hmmmm, the people criticising the corridor scene with the auto guns..........

It's not as if all the aliens run blindly in to the guns, they realise their mistake and work out another way in. Plus, towards the end, those 2 by the queen are very wary of Ripley. So, the 'reduced to dumb animals' comment is bit over the top.

[John Jennings]

Originally posted by robbiejm
Hmmmm, the people criticising the corridor scene with the auto guns..........

It's not as if all the aliens run blindly in to the guns, they realise their mistake and work out another way in. Plus, towards the end, those 2 by the queen are very wary of Ripley. So, the 'reduced to dumb animals' comment is bit over the top.

Well, they only stop after dozens and dozens of them are dead, so they're not exactly Mensa candidates. That scene's just there for a "loads and loads of guns and bullets and explosions" moment (IMHO :) ).

And as for the bit with the Queen, they're clearly getting ready to pounce until the Queen gestures/growls at them to 'back off'.

To me it just suggests that the only ones with intelligence is the Queen, the rest are just dumb drones. This is just a consequence of the addition of the analogy about colony insects (bees, ants etc), of which there was none of in the first film.

[robbiejm]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by John Jennings
Well, they only stop after dozens and dozens of them are dead, so they're not exactly Mensa candidates. That scene's just there for a "loads and loads of guns and bullets and explosions" moment (IMHO :) ).

Yes, but not all of them are 'stupid', which suggests that they're not all identical drones, some are obviously brighter than others. :D

And as for the bit with the Queen, they're clearly getting ready to pounce until the Queen gestures/growls at them to 'back off'.

To me it just suggests that the only ones with intelligence is the Queen, the rest are just dumb drones. This is just a consequence of the addition of the analogy about colony insects (bees, ants etc), of which there was none of in the first film.

If they were just 'dumb drones', they wouldn't have found the other way into the complex though. Also, how can you say there is none of the colony analogy in the 1st film :confused:, one 'nest' populated by eggs laid by one queen, how much more ant/bee like can you get!

[John Jennings]

Originally posted by robbiejm

Also, how can you say there is none of the colony analogy in the 1st film :confused:, one 'nest' populated by eggs laid by one queen, how much more ant/bee like can you get! [/B]

Ha ha ha! You've fallen into my cunning trap! :D In Alien the eggs were formed by the Alien sliming a victim and it gradually dissolving/metamorphosing into an egg. There's a deleted scene with this in (on the DVD) where you see Dallas part-transformed into the egg. The Queen was a Cameron invention

And as for it being a nest, Ridley Scott says that he envisaged the navigator's ship as having been carrying all of those eggs as a cargo of bioweapons (ie Aliens didn't put em there). One hugger escaped and got the Navigator (dead giant skeletal dude by the telescope thing above the chamber).

Basically, they're different films written by different people. It's not going to be possible to find full continuity between the films.

Alien = Nasty psycho-sexual pervo intelligent perfect being
Aliens = Scary beasty with nashing teeth and sharp claws

Come on, let's really get into this nitty-gritty fan-boy stuff :D

John

[john316]

Originally posted by robbiejm
[QUOTE]Originally posted by John Jennings
Well, they only stop after dozens and dozens of them are dead, so they're not exactly Mensa candidates. That scene's just there for a "loads and loads of guns and bullets and explosions" moment (IMHO :) ).

Yes, but not all of them are 'stupid', which suggests that they're not all identical drones, some are obviously brighter than others. :D


The whole movie is based loosely on Vietnam and war movies as a whole. Soldiers will get slaughtered going into unknown territory but they learn their mistake - the Aliens do the same. Remember that Cameron had to cater for a new audience who would not have seen the 1st movie and may have believed upto that point that the Aliens were just animals.

[Morpheus2000]

I prefer the theatrical version as the pacing is much better, why didn't have branching on the disc?

With the extras scenes on Aliens they don't had much to the film, that's why the pacing is better. The same is also with Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The only film I prefer of Cameron's with extra scenes is The Abyss which is way better as the story is fleshed out a lot better!

[FaustBos]

Originally posted by Confucius


Ah yes,

but not, at the time, because it was felt to be too long to hold the viewers interest or any number of reasons concerning artistic merit.
:)

True, but your post suggested, hopefully for the last time, that it was the studios fault "behest" as if there was something irrationally wrong with that decision. Based on what you've said above, the decision had a reason behind and it therefore, for the time in question, was too long. I guess thats a point i felt was obvious. Thats why the studios insisted on the cuts. Perhaps we are in agreement.

Originally posted by Confucius


Merely to say it was too long is a gross oversimplification to the point of being meaningless. The important part was, and is, the reasoning behind it.

:)

Sometimes wisdom speaks for itself. It was too long.

Jim

[robbiejm]

Originally posted by John Jennings
Ha ha ha! You've fallen into my cunning trap! :D In Alien the eggs were formed by the Alien sliming a victim and it gradually dissolving/metamorphosing into an egg. There's a deleted scene with this in (on the DVD) where you see Dallas part-transformed into the egg. The Queen was a Cameron invention

I just watched that deleted scene again, the alien has started to build a nest though, out of it's own tissue/slime/saliva. In the same way that bees build honeycomb, or whatever it is they do, not forgetting all the similiar stuff the aliens added to that ship on LV426.

And as for it being a nest, Ridley Scott says that he envisaged the navigator's ship as having been carrying all of those eggs as a cargo of bioweapons (ie Aliens didn't put em there). One hugger escaped and got the Navigator (dead giant skeletal dude by the telescope thing above the chamber).

I've heard the commentary ;), so where are the rest of the crew from that ship?, whats your view on that?.

About the 'nest', obviously it wasn't a nest to start with, but the alien or aliens (the one(s) that nailed the crew of the weird crashed ship) adapted it to their preferred environment.

[John Jennings]

Originally posted by robbiejm


I just watched that deleted scene again, the alien has started to build a nest though, out of it's own tissue/slime/saliva. In the same way that bees build honeycomb, or whatever it is they do, not forgetting all the similiar stuff the aliens added to that ship on LV426.




Well, loads of beasties make slimy nests (a lot of many types of birds nests are made mainly bird saliva) , but only bees, termites and certain genera of wasps show colonial/hive behaviour. It's just sliming 'em up into eggs. I mean look at what's left of Brett in that scene; if you're telling me he's not half-turned into an egg then what is happening to him?

As for the derelict on the planet, I'm guesssing (yup, guessing) the entire ship was like that already. The entire ship interior (and a lot of the exterior) is like that. It's just the weird way that Giger designed it. He tried to give it a really weird organic feeling. I mean, look at the ship's weird exterior shape, it's hardly the Enterprise. Whoever built the nest sets in Aliens just copied the derelict interior.




I've heard the commentary ;), so where are the rest of the crew from that ship?, whats your view on that?.




Not quite sure what you're getting at here. I guess if there were more pilots that they're dead, killed by the same escaped facehuggers/Aliens. Are you suggesting that the Aliens flew the ship?

It's not just Ridley Scott's commentary that supports the fact that the ship was carrying cargoes of Alien eggs. If you look at the production notes, or some of the books about the making of, or artwork of Alien then you'll see close-ups of the designs and hieroglyphics on the wall of the derelict ship. Lots of these show pictures of Aliens, facehuggers and eggs. I doubt if the Aliens carved them.

Keep 'em coming, I'm enjoying this :)

John

[hughneilson]

Hmmmm ... :

>>
True, but your post suggested, hopefully for the last time, that it was the studios fault "behest" as if there was something irrationally wrong with that decision. Based on what you've said above, the decision had a reason behind and it therefore, for the time in question, was too long. I guess thats a point i felt was obvious. Thats why the studios insisted on the cuts. Perhaps we are in agreement.
>>

The reason was money, not art. Who do you want to make your movies, accountants or film directors?

x x H

[FaustBos]

Originally posted by hughneilson
Hmmmm ... :

The reason was money, not art. Who do you want to make your movies, accountants or film directors?

x x H

Film critics, but only good ones.