Neill Blomkamp's Alien 5 / Aliens 2

[Mischief Maker]

To be perfectly honest, though, the franchise turned that way as early as the Aliens director's cut. The suspense/fear of the unknown aspect only got reintroduced to that movie when people with some sense decided to cut away a lot of crap Cameron originally shot.

Actually, this is a really interesting question: theatrical vs director's cut. I think a lot of people will go with director's cut because it is longer and explains more, but I think it can be argued that a lot of that stuff works better on the cutting room floor. Unlike the cut footage from Terminator, it is really well done, and anyone who loves the film should watch it, but there's something to be said for seeing the film the first time without any clue what the marines are going to run into. I think the one error here was taking out the scene of the auto-cannons running out of ammo. Great suspenseful scene.

To be clear, I like the film both ways. I will always opt for the director's cut now, but not really sure it is superior.

James Cameron is definitely a director who benefits from studio interference more than it hurts him. Aliens lost one good scene with the autocannons, but replaced it with an unnecessary motivation for rescuing newt, and a painful scene of Hudson parading around the dropship and telling Ripley not to worry, modern space marines are invincible. Unsinkable, even!

Same with Terminator 2. You lose one good exposition scene (unlocking the Terminator's CPU, which explains how it learned the meaning of love) but end up with a horrible scene of Sarah Connor getting a dream pep talk from the ghost of Kyle Reese. AND the unnecessary and easily predictable scene of John Connor's dog getting killed by the T-1000.

The Terminator had no worthwhile scenes cut. It's amazing what a lean and fast film the original Terminator was, despite all the necessary world building.

The theatrical cut of Abyss made no sense, but the director's cut revealed the whole thing to be a painfully childish ripoff of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

That's my long roundabout way of saying if it's a Cameron film, I'll take the theatrical cut.

[BryanM]

is seen in some earlier fiction (i.e. the Book of Revelation) but I think it only really became a thing with sci-fi appearing on the scene.

Oneupsmanship is definitely as old as stories. Beowulf going from ripping off a hobgoblin's arms with his bare hands to fighting a friggin' Dragon comes to mind. The dragon is so dangerous, he bothers to bring along a buddy and uses a weapon! What extravagance.

Zazz inflation is easy to work against in serial works: just reset it every now and then. Magic The Gathering does it. Breaking Bad did it. But the pressure on a movie sequel that comes along once every TWENTY freakin' years has to be incredible.

To quote Mike Stoklasa, "No matter how good a film is, it will always be hated because it didn't live up to incredibly high expectations."

James Cameron is definitely a director who benefits from studio interference more than it hurts him.

Cameron isn't actually a walkie-talkie, ewok inserting mad man like Lucas is. An entire hour worth of material either finished or partially done was cut from Space Pocahontas, and you don't think he doesn't have full and total power like a god on his films by now?

In the commentary of T2: Extreme he's pretty forthright in saying the film is much better without Dream Reese in it. It looks like Sarah is visited by an angel, says James, which is pretty absurd. He's just fine with these alternate cuts existing for hardcore fans who've already seen the movie a million times and want to see a little more.

To quote South Park, "James Cameron doesn't do the things James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does the things James Cameron does because he is James Cameron."

[Squire Grooktook]

James Cameron is definitely a director who benefits from studio interference more than it hurts him.

So I guess James Cameron director cuts are a lot like auto fire in Darius Gaiden, than.

[Mortificator]

Aliens lost one good scene with the autocannons

I'm not even a fan of that, since it has the aliens acting excessively dumb & insect-like, and diminishes the feeling of doom by vastly cutting down the odds against the protagonists.

[JBC]

Alien: Out Of The Shadows was pretty good. It has an implausible premise - Ripley waking up early from her hypersleep between the first two films for another adventure, but they find a pretty convenient excuse for her to forget about it by the time you see her in Aliens thanks to technology introduced in Prometheus. It's supposedly a part of the new canon, but then again so is Colonial Marines.

Still, it's actually a pretty good story & even brings back Ash in a cool way. Ties into Isolation, & introduces a totally new alien species. Can't wait for Scott & Blomkamp's new movies to shit all over everything they establish lol