Sixty-two hours of Alien - but is it enough?

The re-release on DVD of the four Alien movies is scheduled for December 2. An article in the NY Times talks about the set and about large DVD packages. This set will have nine discs, and is said to run, beginning-to-end, sixty-two hours. Releases like this one and the four-disk sets of the Lord of the Rings movies (the set for The Two Towers was released this week) are seen as reflecting Hollywood's acceptance of DVDs - because people are willing to spend more for extended versions of films and for supplementary material, the film industry is willing to put more into the DVD packages. Some of the effects shots in the last two Alien movies were never finished (I presume they mean in the scenes that didn't make it into the original movie), and were finished for this DVD release.

There's also some discussion of the longer and re-edited versions of movies that often show up on DVDs (called "director's cuts" although many directors will tell you that the version made for theatrical release was their real director's cut). Ridley Scott has re-edited his Alien, putting in some material and tightening up other scenes, ending up with a version one minute shorter than the original release. James Cameron added some 17 minutes back into his Aliens. Peter Jackson, of course, goes hog-wild and adds 47 minutes to The Two Towers, which was already three hours long in the theater.

When does it get to be too much? Not yet, I'd guess; especially after seeing how well these sets are selling. And I certainly intend to add them to my collection.