It's the atmosphere

Rating: 9/10 (13 March 2009)

First of all,I agree on all who blames the theatrical version - it deserves all the blame - a movie should never be mutilated the way it was. So my comment is about the Director's Cut.
I think that this movie is more about the notion of 'purpose' than about the alien. The convicts are possible on the lowest level a human can be: day-to-day living, no challenge, decaying environment (both physically and intellectually), absolutely no further purpose one can work towards. They are constantly waiting - for God to raise his servants? Or for the end of their respective sentences? Both are something vague and no one really believes it to be possible. Ripley and the alien intrude into their stable world: Ripley represents the temptation against which the convicts have to struggle inside themselves, the alien represents the external threat - something which they haven't had to encounter on Fiorina. The woman threatens their soul, the alien threatens their body. Andrew aims to preserve the stability - his purpose may be said to be the restoral of the purposelessness, but one cannot prevent changes from happening once they are imminent. The movie goes deep and explores this aspect of life and ultimately conveys the message: this place is as good to rise to heaven from as anything else. The alien is just a means of illustrating the utter inevitability of the change: there is no way to ignore it. You may trap it - but from that on you have to be on alert. Or you may kill it - this requires cooperation and that you put personal differences aside as the common aim is the one that counts. After that (let's assume that many other convicts survive, just for the sake of interest) the entire community would be different, they would have changed to a real community, united on a higher level. This is also a change what would be inevitable, no matter that the alien would have been killed.
So I think this to be the ultimate message of the movie: there is no bottom point you can't get out of. No matter how deep the pit is, there is always a way out - sometimes a path too weird, frightening, difficult to take, sometimes even to think about.