Basic edits that might have helped more.
I would have had the theatrical Ripley death. The one seen in the assembly cut looks like an action figure. And the way Ripley embraces the doomed Queen makes it look she has even gained compassion for the thing that has killed her friends and ruined her life.
I would heavily trim the expletives so they they sound more naturally derived from the situations the characters are in. They often feel forced.
The “ass end of space” speech needs a bit of attention. It always sounded like Ripley is winking at the audience and acknowledging she is in the final part of a trilogy.
“it was crew expendable” I would change to “my crew was expendible” for example. Making it more about her experience and less about the film series. Generally the dialogue nerds to sound like how real people speak and less portentious. “what sort of animal would do this to a dog” needs to sound a little less like a quiz host announcing a prize.
If there is a music free track I would remove some of the repeating themes. It’s not a bad score but too much of it is reused.
I would cut the Narcissus radio message. Instead I’d go back to the ox and have a 3rd chest buster come out. Sure it’s cheese worthy of an Elm Street movie but it makes sense story wise and isn’t another Romulus style call back.
The big fixes would obviously be replacing the rod puppet which always looks bad and maybe making the face hugger into the queen face hugger somehow to explain how more than one embryo was implanted.
That’s my thoughts.
It’s still a great but flawed movie.
