The Assembly Cut adds a lot of additional context that sets up the various prisoners of Fiorina 161, changes the animal variant that the Xenomorph mutates from in the first act and even reverts Ripley’s death into a Chestburster-free affair.
If you thought we were going to discuss Alien franchise alternate cuts and not bring up the Assembly Cut version of Alien 3, then you’re sorely mistaken.
It’s not the magic bullet that fixes everything back to David Fincher’s original vision, but Alien 3’s assembly cut is a definite improvement that shows what could have been.
One of the most stressful productions when it comes to the battle of studio and filmmaker, David Fincher’s personal hell making his feature film debut left him refusing to even take part in an official Director’s Cut for the Alien Anthology Blu-ray set.