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I'm probably wrong, but I thought I heard somewhere in the supplemental materials that the idea in the cocoon sequence was that the alien had the ability and was in the process of turning Brett into an egg that would produce a new facehugger that would attach itself to Dallas.
Anyway, I prefer the theatrical cut over the "director's" cut for similar reasons to Surf and the other posters. I do like the cocoon scene, for me it's more a matter of where it's placed in the movie. It definitely slows down the movie at a time where time is not a luxury Ripley can afford. Another scene I felt slowed up the pace is the first new scene where the crew is listening to the alien transmission. But I really did like the Ripley/Lambert slapfest, for helping draw out some of the tension the crew memebers feel towards each other.
For Aliens, I think the special edition stands head and shoulders above its theatrical cut. I had never seen the theatrical version until I picked up the Quadrilogy. On first viewing, I immediately noticed which scenes were not included, particularly the smart gun scenes, and I felt the movie really missed them.
Alien 3's new version was different, but good. I think the movie still suffers from the fact that most of the prisoners are indistinguishable from each other and I really wanted to see more developement of some of them. The one probably most developed, Clemmons, is still killed off way too early. I liked the oxen chestburster, though when Murphy is killed, he still mentions his dog, Spike, that now we don't get to see. The Golic subplot is cool, too; he kinda just disappeared in the theatrical version.
Alien Resurrection doesn 't change much from cut to cut and it's still a blah movie. Not bad, just blah.
The extras were great, not a lot of overkill. Only minor complaints would be Sigourney Weaver's lack of participation in the commentaries for the last three movies along with new interview material for those same three movies. And of course, what did Fox cut out of the Alien 3 doc?
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