Post script or What Ripley did next!

I believe that if you are going to watch all these films before you die, it would be churlish not to take in Alien³ and Alien Resurrection and look at the whole story of Ripley.

Wasn't that a happy ending to Aliens? Apart from all those people dying, that is. Ripley is on her way back to Earth with a hot marine and a pseudo daughter in tow. They are travelling on a fully functioning starship. What could go wrong?
 Well let's set fire to Ripley's pipe dream and kill off the daughter and hot marine before the credits have finished rolling. The alien queen left an egg on board the ship. Naughty queen. Cue alien blood causing a fire in the cryogenic chamber and all the pods being put into an escape 'shuttle'. This is jettisoned of onto a nearby planet, crashing into the sea and killing all bar Ripley. Oh and this planet is actually a male prison colony housing rapists, murderers and child molesters. I think I'd rather have taken my chances on the Sulaco. It was a bit of an over reaction by the ship's computer. Couldn't it have just put out the fire?
So anyway, it's another shit ride for Ripley. Also on the escape pod was another egg (clever queen) the other having hatched and planted a queen embryo in Ripley.

The adventure, this time, is helmed by David Fincher in his first feature. Once again it is visually stunning, but the story is ever so meh and this film got panned. I personally thought it was rather good and had some excellent scenes. The cremation/alien birth scene is fantastic and I was rather a fan of the ending. Ripley finally getting some closure on this hell ride.

Watching the quadrilogy DVDs however, I saw there was a director's cut and decided to watch that. It is a ton better than the theatrical cut of the film and quite different, dramatically. 20th Century Fox cut and messed around a much better film, all to get the right length and sell more tickets. Bunch of bastards.
The director's cut has a side story of Golic, played by Paul McGann. In the original cut, he is a very minor character who was seemingly driven a bit crazy from witnessing an alien attack. In this version, there is more to his story. He actually IS a bit crazy anyway and has bad hygiene problems. None of the other inmates want to work with him. Two are forced to and it's their deaths he witnesses and is blamed for. Meanwhile, Ripley and the inmates manage to capture the alien in a vault. Golic is getting more and more cuckoo as he is held in sickbay. He eventually manages to persuade the inmate guarding him to unlock his shackles, then knocks this inmate out cold and goes off to unleash the 'dragon' and help it kill. This dragon works alone and thanks him by eating him. Paul McGann is excellent as Golic and it's a shame this storyline is cut. You get to know more of the prisoners and they aren't just random nameless bald Brits being offed one by one.

Why are they British anyway? Bit of an odd casting decision? I think Charles S Dutton was the only American amongst some rather elite British thesps.

Some things in the director's cut aren't so good. The cremation/alien birth scene doesn't work as well. In that version, it is one of the oxen that is impregnated. The dog works better and also makes more sense. I think you'd notice a face hugger on one of your cows, whereas the dog could simply go missing.
Ripley's Christ dive at the end is slightly different in that you don't see the alien come out. I think both scenes are a little too false and this finale should have been shot so much better. It looks hurried and tagged on. The major problem during filming is that there was never a final script and it was all a bit winged. Given such a crapload to deal with, I think Fincher (the 3rd director to be attached) did rather well and you could see he would go on to do great things and not just awesome Madonna videos.

And so 20th Century Fox grew more greedy and decided to pull out another one. I actually thought the third was a pretty decent finish and had a great arc to Ripley's character.

I think this film is quite frankly, unnecessary and a bit of a mess. Ripley is now a cloned hybrid of Ripley and the queen alien. It's not Ripley, it's something else and I cared about as much for her as I did for any of the characters in this okay film.

Is this one worth a watch? Not really, but it's this that really paved the way for the ridiculousness of the Alien vs Predator films(although Weaver came on board because she heard about the planning for that film and wanted to make something more worthy of the franchise), so it's interesting to see that path. The franchise makes full circle. From the original alien almost becoming a Roger Corman monster B movie, that's actually what the franchise has turned into. Shame.