Derelict

As I write this review, I'm only an hour away from seeing Alien: Covenant. I didn't have time for both Alien and Prometheus, but I did luckily have time for this. To start off, I love the decision to take the color out of these movies and make them black-and-white. Ridley Scott's cinematography is already so dark and artful, but black-and-white brings out the beauty in the shadows even more. When I read the description on this edit, I didn't think the narratives would gel, but with the removal of scenes in both films, the narratives intertwine very well and it's not nearly as jarring as I thought it would be. All in all, it was just a nice and interesting way to view both films in one sitting.

excellent edit. Confusing but great!

The black and white idea is a genius solution to the obvious glaring issue of the difference in image quality created by 33 years passing between the two films. And, in itself, it also changes some scenes in both films; the alien planet gets a new vibe and the horror aspects are reinforced.

The intermingling of the 2 films works impressively well, particularly during the first half of the fanedit; the Prometheus scenes replicating the Alien ones are something I hadn’t noticed before and they looked great.

The audio editing was an achievement as well, I’ve noticed only minor issued here and there, but I was still impressed considering the amount of editing that was done.

This is a very interesting and visually stunning mash-up that does a great job at making Prometheus much more of a direct Alien prequel as opposed to a spin-off film that ties into the franchise while setting up things that occur in the earlier Alien. The two films transition into each other flawlessly and I love the use of black and white to really emphasize the shadows and further build up tension and suspense. Both films' narratives intertwine with one another very smoothly thanks to clever editing. I really loved this.

On a quick side-note, I also want to talk about another fanedit from this editor that isn't on the IFDB, a Star Wars prequel fan-edit titled The Chosen One, which I also really liked, as it removes much of the cringier elements from all three prequel films and tells a much more streamlined version of the overall story that works incredibly well, making its best aspects shine all the more brighter.

This is a gorgeous film. I thought the visual editing was absolutely top notch. It was very clever to use black and white to better match the footage and frankly, both movies looked beautiful in black and white anyway. It's hard to divorce myself from knowledge of the franchise but I think the clever bit is that this movie works regardless. If you know what's going on, you'll appreciate how it integrates so well. If you don't, there's a lot of ambiguity that is tied together in the third act. I especially loved the interplay of the two films in the third act, with Ash's speech probably being my favorite. The whole ending was superbly done. I was very lukewarm on Prometheus and love Alien but this is a great way to experience both. This will definitely replace the Prometheus theatrical cut for me.