I recently watched the Blu-Ray ALIEN director's cut (which is something of a misnomer; Ridley Scott considers the 1979 theatrical version the definitive version. He did the alternate version more to humor those making the big DVD set.
He added 4 minutes of footage, and removed 5 minutes of footage.
The most obvious addition is when Ridley finds the two crewmembers cocooned. I can remember this scene from the Alan Dean Foster novel (which I read in 1979, being too young to see an R-rated movie!).
There's another scene, apparently not in the theatrical version, where they state that the Moon they're landing on is 1200 kilometers across and has .86 Earth gravity.
1200 kilometers is really tiny --- about 1/3rd the size of the Moon --- and seems unlikely that the planet would later be terraformed.
Furthermore, it having .86 gravity is impossible. A friend of mine calculated that LV-426 would have to be 2.46 billion times the density of uranium to have .86 Earth gravity.
Admittedly, that's still only about .01% as dense as a low-end neutron star.
Which may be why the scene was cut from the theatrical version.
Apparently this is a known film goof, and in the COLONIAL MARINES TECHNICAL MANUAL, they update it as 12,000, rather than 1200, kilometers diameter, which makes a lot more sense, and makes the moon roughly the size of Venus, just a little smaller than Earth. -------- Incidentally, I saw PROMETHEUS last week at a sneak preview, here's my review.
All good stuff in your comments. I remember all the Alien items that were released when the film came out, including the novel which I also read. The best scene in the book and almost included in the film was the one where they tried to trap the alien in the airlock but almost lost all the ship's air in the process. I loved the stuff surrounding this mysterious film at the time, including the huge Alien photonovel, the Book of Alien, Heavy Metal's graphic novel, and the little 8mm viewer with about 90 seconds of film footage to watch (this is before the proliferation of home video, folks!) I also remember holding the Alien toy figure which was withdrawn from the market due to complaints from parents here in America. (Take a look at a toy or collector store these days - my, have things changed...) Last time I looked an original Alien doll from 1979 in the box was worth about 500-700 dollars. Wow! Wish I bought a few of those back in the day. I liked your review of Prometheus and the other content on your site and recommend it to our readers who like sci-fi and horror! -Xim
Yeah, that little ALIEN film clip viewer was strange.
There must have been some traumatized kids. Particularly because the film cartridge was the same size as for the identical Fisher-Price movie viewer (which showed more regular kid fare, like Disney's LONESOME GHOSTS.
It's that one picture of the little kid joyfully viewing 3 minutes of Xenomorph mayhem on his Kenner ALIEN Movie Viewer that gets me. Particularly because it seems that cartridge is the same format as the Fisher-Price Movie Viewer, which came with more normal kid fare like a clip from Disney's LONESOME GHOSTS cartoon.
He added 4 minutes of footage, and removed 5 minutes of footage.
The most obvious addition is when Ridley finds the two crewmembers cocooned. I can remember this scene from the Alan Dean Foster novel (which I read in 1979, being too young to see an R-rated movie!).
There's another scene, apparently not in the theatrical version, where they state that the Moon they're landing on is 1200 kilometers across and has .86 Earth gravity.
1200 kilometers is really tiny --- about 1/3rd the size of the Moon --- and seems unlikely that the planet would later be terraformed.
Furthermore, it having .86 gravity is impossible. A friend of mine calculated that LV-426 would have to be 2.46 billion times the density of uranium to have .86 Earth gravity.
Admittedly, that's still only about .01% as dense as a low-end neutron star.
Which may be why the scene was cut from the theatrical version.
Apparently this is a known film goof, and in the COLONIAL MARINES TECHNICAL MANUAL, they update it as 12,000, rather than 1200, kilometers diameter, which makes a lot more sense, and makes the moon roughly the size of Venus, just a little smaller than Earth.
--------
Incidentally, I saw PROMETHEUS last week at a sneak preview, here's my review.
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Yeah, that little ALIEN film clip viewer was strange.
There must have been some traumatized kids. Particularly because the film cartridge was the same size as for the identical Fisher-Price movie viewer (which showed more regular kid fare, like Disney's LONESOME GHOSTS.
From io9's Old ALIEN toys ads will ruin your childhood all over again!
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