Director's Cut vs Theatrical Release

Rating: 10/10 (13 April 2011)

This is my favourite Alien film - The acting is superb with Charles S. Dutton (Aka "Roc") and Charles Danse - Plus a motley crew of British Actors including Danny Webb as Morse, Paul McGann as "Golic", Brian Glover as "Andrews", Ralph Brown as "85" and of course a younger Pete Postlethwaite as "David" - These guys make up the first British Max Prison in Space. David Fincher made us believe that this was a huge supermax prison on some backwater planet. And then we have the return of Bishop, we get to meet the original Bishop the way he was left from Aliens.
The Sulaco of course on the outside was the same Sulaco, inside, it was different, but convincing as a ship interior. The "Model 337 EEV" looked like a piece from a car engine, but as they also made a life-sized version of it, I eventually allowed myself to be convinced that the metal sliver that fell off of the Sulaco was an evacuation unit.
My complaint with the Theatrical Release was that it was too short, but there were some great things - The "Dog Alien" for instance... The directors cut is satisfactory in length, but the Dog-Alien angle is omitted, instead we have a Cow-Alien. Doesn't work. Also, the DC includes some digital Alien footage that should have stayed on the cutting floor, although some of it was made by some of the digital pioneers from Lord of the Rings, some of the digital shots are not very convincing. This is minimal in the Theatrical cut, in the DC, these shots should have been fixed up, they have the tech today to fix some of the digital shots and make it more photorealistic.
Theatrical or Director's Cut - Fincher did a very good job at combining Practical Footage, Digital shots, Puppeteering and Mechanical/Animatronic Effects to give us one of the best Alien stories.
Now although I have inserted a few spoilers here, my only complaint with the film was the Theatrical Length, and of course, After all the stuff these survivors went through to have two of them killed right away at the very beginning, kind of ruined the ending of "Aliens".
An original Alien 3 Script I had read Online had Newt and Hicks surviving and were a huge part of the story. I had heard that a Fox exec forced Fincher to do the story the way it is in his film. But other than the disappointing deaths of Newt and Hicks, this alien-chase through a lead foundry was amazing. As someone said, it takes a while for the action to start, but by no means are there non-interesting events being played out on screen.
For those of you who enjoyed some of the Music of Alien 3, some of this music re-appears in The Matrix- Watch both together, and you will see.