It makes more sense then, why Fox let him direct not one but two films following this period. I would have figured him to have more of an ego and acted more defensive towards his vision for the direction of the franchise.

What do you make of Cameron's directors cut, as opposed to the theatrical one for Aliens?

Thought that while the name exchange near the end is a nice scene, it ruins the near unbearable intensity that runs through those final set-pieces. The rest of the additions are interesting but unnecessary. When I rewatch it, I usually choose the theatrical version. Alien 3 is the only one of the series whose alternate version I prefer (and by a lot).

I also prefer the theatrical cut of Aliens as, despite enjoying the extra scenes showing the colony before the aliens infest (or Ripley mourning her daughter, and perhaps feeling disconnected from any living relatives as her bloodline has moved on without her in the intervening years), there is no real need to know any of that stuff.

The initial exploration of the eerily empty colony also plays better when you are discovering it with the marines too (and the re-use of the one corridor location for the scene of the bustling station that gets used for the marine's initial entrance also plays a little bit too much as if the filmmakers are re-using sets due to limited resources when it is seen twice in such quick succession!)

Then there is the way that I'm always thrown out of the film by Mac McDonald appearing as the captain of the colony in Aliens, since he strangely turns up a few years later in the very first episode of Red Dwarf, again as the captain of a ship in a few scenes just before everyone dies there as well and we are left with our main characters!

He's also a cop in The Fifth Element. He's basically been typecast as a futuristic blue collar worker!

You can pick it up on Amazon for 19.99, just for today.

Jesus, I remember when the DVD of this was $75.

Yeah, this is an incredible price. While I only love the first film, and the like the second and third films, this is a fantastic set and worth having on the shelf. As said above, the Alien3 documentary really makes this set as well as the Assembly Cut of that same film.

Of all people, they hired one of the guys who wrote the Green Lantern movie?

I'm going to do a more in depth post of it in a little while, but I do think that the recent Ender's Game:

Well, I'm excited.
Though no doubt Fox'll make every attempt to make Blomkamp's film as generic as possible.
Personally, I think they should let go of Ripley, and try the approach of the Dark Horse comics by making a series of standalone films that gradually create a richer universe. No need to reboot, no need to find a way to wedge it into Ripley's narrative; as much as she's an interesting character portayed by a great actor.

I'm just terrified that the higher ups are going to meddle too much with Neill's version. Hopefully that isn't the case because he seems really passionate about this and it'd be nice to see a good Alien film again.

What, you didn't like Prometheus? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...

So, because half the cast logistically cannot come back, they'll just be left to kill them all off again?

If we assume that the four survivors will be back, Weaver is on board and Biehn and Hendriksen are hardly in demand A-listers and would probably be happy to sign on to a major pay check. The retired-from-acting Carrie Henn can easily be recast with an adult as she was still a child, should she not be willing to come back.

As an alternative, as this film will have to be set several decades after Aliens due to Weavers age, the other survivors could easily be written out without having to be killed off.

Can no one make a sequel to a film made more than two years ago, that actually allows for previous continuity any more?

Ignoring sequels and continuing from an earlier sequel is actually relatively rare. Only a few franchises have done that. Halloween H20, Nightmare on Elm St 3, The Exorcist 3 and a couple of others did it, but not many. You are probably thinking of "re-boots" which are a different thing.

Before Midnight, Dumb and Dumber To, Wolf Creek 2, TRON: Legacy, Jurassic World and the new Star Wars trilogy all are recent or upcoming sequels with a long gap since the last instalment, which are honouring continuity.

You seem to be in a minority who wants the further adventures of Clone Ripley and Call, that fembot played by Winona Ryder.

Not to get us too far down the rabbit hole, but Star Wars famously might have the worst possible history of "honoring" continuity.

I'll leave that to the Star Wars fans to obsess over, of which I'm not one. From what I gather it is supposed to be a straightforward sequel to Return of the Jedi and whatever details Lucas tinkered with won't have that much of an impact of its continuity.

I'm not saying you have to have an opinion about it, but as an example to support your argument, you couldn't have picked worse. The director re-edited the earlier films to fit in with his new continuity and then stifled the viewing of the original versions to a point where an entire new generation grew up with a different set of films. I don't actually care a great deal myself, but it is a somewhat fascinating cultural experiment.

That's actually quite a different point from the one I made and one I'm not very interesting in pursuing further.