As a youngster I preferred Return of the Jedi to The Empire Strikes Back, I preferred Jaws 2 to Jaws, Rambo II to Rambo and I preferred James Cameron's Aliens to Ridley Scott's Alien. However as you grow older you realise Teddy bears with spears don't beat a good story line (Jedi) and an increased body count can't beat well generated suspense (Jaws& Rambo) as it is with Aliens, while the film pumps along at a great pace (once they land on the planet) there is never quite the same suspense or tension that there is in Alien, though whether this could have been done even if staying closer to the original style is debatable, Alien 3which has a story and set up closer to the original although having some good points (and possibly many more if the director had been allowed to release the version of the film he wanted to!!) was less successful than it’s predecessors.

Special Edition
There are two main types of films released as special editions/directors cuts. There are films which didn’t do as well as expected at the box office (Abyss, Blade runner ) which are re-released to try to get some more money back from a cult audience (even if in the case of Blade Runner it was more through accident than planning). The other type of special edition is the cash-in re-release of a financially successful film (Star Wars, T2 , Lock Stock) usually to allow an additional theatrical run or a video re-release of the “directors definitive version”. Aliens falls into this second category, it had an extremely good release, making more money than the original Alien.
There are three main added scenes in the special edition. The first and probably most important is the scene before the inquest, which shows Burke telling Ripley about the death of her daughter while she was in hyper sleep. This is probably the scene that adds most to the film as it helps develop the relationship between Ripley and Newt seen later in the film. The second scene shows Newt’s family being sent to the derelict ship to investigate on company orders. This doesn’t really add much to the storyline as it is explained later in the movie anyway; all it adds is that it was Newt’s family that was sent. The final major scene is an additional scene showing an Alien attack being repelled by the sentry guns, the scene doesn’t add much but shows the aliens trying numerous ways to get in to the complex before they succeed, showing their intelligence. Other scenes throughout the film also have additional dialogue or are extended, in total there are 17mins of additional footage that wasn’t in the original release and it is debatable whether this footage improves the film or not. The additional scenes push the running time of the film up to 2 ½ hours; maybe this should have been done with seamless branching as with the Abyss allowing either version of the film to be viewed? The most interested scene deleted from the film I have heard of is a scene where Ripley finds Burke cocooned whilst she is searching for Newt. Ripley gives him a grenade so he can kill himself; unfortunately this scene although it was filmed isn’t on the DVD even as a deleted scene, which is a shame.