LV 426

Director Scott apparently has less interest in a direct sequel to Prometheus, at least at this time.
Fear not! TMBTM has reedited Prometheus so that its place in the Alien chronology is specific to the first movie.
The tempo has been increased in this one, and there is more ambiguity, bordering on confusion at times.

Video - 1280 X 720p in well contrasted black n white. This is inside a m2ts container, which I worried my computer or player would have trouble with. I did have troubles, but not with the visuals. The editing is expert, as to be expected from TMBTM, including a grim surprise I won’t divulge. The black n white accentuates the Horror component, as well as echoing SciFi movies from the 1950s.

Audio - 320 kbps, 6 channel mix, as well as 2 channel likewise 320 kbps. My computer handled the 6 channel, my player could not. I created a workaround. The sound is robust, dynamic, but never clipped. SUBS? Yes, there were subtitles, French and English. Once again, my player could not render a file, this time the pgs subtitle stream.

Workaround for subs - I demuxed the English pgs subs, converted to srt. There were inconsistencies after the OCR process which had to be sorted. Several long lines had to be broken, typos fixed, and at least one very brief passage needed a longer timestamp. For those who might also have trouble with the pgs subtitles, my srt conversion is here - http://www.addic7ed.com/movie/122414

Narrative - Despite heavy cuts, the narrative holds together and works well. In the final act, the action is extremely compressed, though remains easy to follow. The plot twists are inventive. One passage, however, so befuddled me that I wrote TMBTM for clarification. His reply was lengthy and detailed. Suffice to say, characters make more assumptions in his version, than in the original. When their assumptions are wrong, there are consequences. These add to the ambiguity of the story, and left this viewer with an uneasy aftertaste - in a good way.

Enjoyment - The edit lacks the grandeur of the original, though the original is a disappointing failure of broad ambition mangled by sloppy, poorly focused writing. This is an edit I more appreciated rather than enjoyed primarily because the characters are as annoying as ever. In particular, the Abbott & Costello shtick of Fifield and Millburn abides. Other characters have the depth of Petri dish specimens (aside from David, who is better developed here than in any version of Prometheus I have watched). Nevertheless, as rousing B-movie entertainment, this edit, particularly the finale, is an adrenaline rush. This is a great late night ride. Strap in for high octane excitement.

Prometheus remains, for me, a film that's much more interesting to talk about how it could have been great than it is a film to watch. The original film has a very mismanaged 1st act that, in the hands of most faneditors, is greatly improved. However, the second act is so glaringly awful that it destroys all of the film's momentum that its half strong third act barely gets the film over the finish line. Giftbearer, Special Edition and my own edit - Prometheus Unbound - all try to minimize the damage done in the second act, but admittedly all us have failed. TMBTM is also unable to meet this challenge, but he does go a long way in both improving the original material and finding something none of the other edits have presented.

TMBTM has invented a new way to approach the material with more tricks up his sleeves than any of his predecessors have employed. Envisioning the film as a direct prequel to Alien requires some re-purposing of scenes, clever dialog juggling, and impressive visual effects work. While the original concludes with David and Shaw finding their own ship to head off to the Engineer's home-world, TMBTM has successfully ended the film with all of the characters dead, and a single Xenomorph left alive on the ship, alone on planet LV-426. His third act, especially in comparison to the endings of all of the other fanedits that precede it, is worth the watch in and of itself.

I was sincerely hoping that TMBTM could somehow fix the roadblock that is the second act, marked by the crew's entrance into the dome. However, each and ever clever edit he does to circumvent one problem is often accompanied by another moment of awfulness that went untreated. In this version, David accidentally triggers the hologram recording - which is a great improvement - but he still talks to himself with exposition-friendly lines like, "Impressive," "Sweaty," and "It's organic." This edit removes the senseless line of Holloway saying, "This is just another tomb," but it keeps in dialog like, "Just like home," and "This is just one small step for man." This edit successfully removes the awful sex scene between Holloway and Shaw, but keeps in the even worse exploding head sequence. I understand that, to one degree or another, I have preferences in these regards. However, I think there is a very strong argument to be made that despite removing 30 minutes from the movie - as impressive as that may be - there is still room to make it even more tighter than I ever thought possible.

Regardless, the second act of the original film is painful and so it goes with all of the edits, including this one. However, the third act is where this edit really shines. The momentum of the film finally starts to come back after the Cesarean/abortion scene. The surprises that follow, especially starting with the confrontation with the Engineer to the edit's closing shot, are totally unexpected and a drastic improvement over all of the versions of this film - including my own. While Prometheus will remain a deeply flawed movie, this edit goes a long way to create not only a more positive experience from the original, but something completely unique compared to all of the other edits that are out there. Strongly recommended.

Audio/Video Quality - I sense the choice to make the film in black in white is less about artistic purpose and more about making the deleted scenes and visual effects work appear seamless. The film was not shot with black and white in mind and a lot of shots suffer on account of it. There are no bitrate or pixelization issues to speak of.

Visual Editing - Nothing out of place here such as flash frames or obvious continuity errors. I am overtly familiar with the source material, and only a moment or two felt like something was missing. For example, the way Janek responds with, "I'll have you know this once belonged to..." without Vicker's first commenting on it didn't feel right. However, such moments will be completely missed by casual viewers. The added visual effects are successfully blended in such that few will complain unless they are expecting the ILM quality from a fan edit.

Audio Editing - There is impressive audio work that includes adding music and changing dialog that is completely unnoticeable to the casual viewer.

Narrative - The surprises in the third act overwhelm the challenges of the second act.

Enjoyment - I found this to be the most enjoyable edit of the film to watch, including my own.

Personally, I like the theatrical cut and my ultimate preference would be an extended cut with only some minor trims to certain character moments. All the same, I don't deny that the narrative is convoluted and it's no surprise that many assumed it was meant to directly tie in with the first Alien film. TMBTM runs with that in fan-mix form and makes changes that allow for this interpretation.

This was enjoyable as an alternative experience. TMBTM is a very creative editor and it's always fun to see what kind of tricks he uses to pull off a concept - this edit doesn't disappoint in that regard. There are some nice visual and narrative tweaks to not just make things suit as a direct prequel, but also to just make it a unique watching experience.

Visual/audio quality is pretty good ( I watched a file, rather than the blu-ray). Black and white is well rendered (I have seen another edit where Prometheus is translated to black and white and it did not look anywhere near as good). I think the only time I found it to be a problem for the edit was when Holloway gets sick and you can't really see how messed up his eyes are, like Shaw can; so the scene loses some impact as a result.

The subtitling of the engineer was well utilised for the concept, but the dialogue itself comes off as a bit clunky due to the lack of punctuation.

I felt that some visual cuts were a bit too quick/unnatural as a result of some narrative trims. Literally only a handful though.

Audio:

The TED talk being watched by David on the ship screen is another example of a cool and unique change, although the audio editing here needed more IMO. It sounded like there was only the audio from the TED clip, when we could have done with some general ship/room ambience to sell the effect of David watching it.

The movement to deleted scenes is generally not bad, but it's noticeable. I watched the surround track, so it may sit better in stereo. With "A king has his reign" extended scene - there is quite a drop in both audio quality and volume here which is a bit jarring. I didn't notice this with any of the other deleted scenes (other than a difference in sound mix).

There are some clever dialogue tweaks, but some didn't work for me - such as Fifield saying he's going back to "gigantic rocks" - it sounds odd from an audio editing perspective, and also seemed like an odd thing for him to say. Given the scenario, he would want to go back to the ship... it's logical. I understand toning down his tantrum, but why change that dialogue?


Narrative is generally nicely trimmed and tightly paced. There was a sequence early on where things felt a bit rushed, but this was short-lived. Some qualms:

- Because Millburn and Fifield are no longer shown to be lost, it doesn't really make sense why they continue to stay behind wondering around while the rest have evacuated. The dialogue change saying he's gone back to "gigantic rocks" doesn't really cover this IMO.
- Eliminating the sex scene is an odd choice given Shaw's pregnancy remaining. It just eliminates foreshadowing and makes the plot point feel a bit sudden.
- Moving David visiting Weyland/Vickers confronting David to after the deleted scene with Vickers feels like an odd choice and didn't really feel natural for the character. It also robs the film of foreshadowing

The climax is the best part and some very creative and skillful visual editing is used to aid the new narrative, which I wouldn't want to spoil. To be nit-picky, I'm not really a fan of the choice of re-scoring (the sparse sound design during the ship crash in the theatrical is awesome), nor the repetition of the line "the trick is not minding it hurts". I don't think it's really used to all that great affect, and given that David is an android it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me when used at the end. All the same, the ending is a neat, dark twist and the whole edit is an interesting alternative that's well worth checking out.

Prometheus, while most would agree is a beautiful and thought-provoking film, is also incredibly divisive. Some, like myself, praise the mystery it has injected into the Alien franchise, while others have derided it as containing unbelievable characters, too many open ends, and even of not being a true prequel. This last point of contention certainly has some truth to it, as Lindelof’s entry into the project sought to distance it from established Alien continuity, and take the story into the uncharted realm of the then-called “Space Jockey” race as Ridley Scott wanted.

Enter The Man Behind the Mask, a prolific fan editor behind such edits as War of the Stars (the Grindhouse version of Star Wars) and the heavily shortened Kong. TMBTM’s vision for Prometheus is rather straight-forward: change LV-223 to LV-426 to make the film a direct prequel to Alien. This isn’t as simple as just changing the name of the planetoid on a star map and calling it a day, however. LV-426 is in many ways a radical departure from Prometheus, losing over 30 minutes of the original runtime and using new VFX work to alter the ending.

Taking a cue from JobWillin’s Derelict fanmix, TMBTM presents the film in black and white. While it looks great, I don’t know exactly why he went with this aesthetic. While Derelict is presented in this way to better marry the distinct visual styles and color palettes of two different cinematographers separated by 33 years, LV-426 doesn’t have this disadvantage, so what’s the point. Oh well, like I said, it doesn’t look bad at all, so there’s that.

Right off the bat, there’s a big difference: the entire opening. Gone are the ‘Beginning of Time’ and Isle of Skye sequences, replaced with voiceover from Shaw’s video message to Peter Weyland, pulled from one of Prometheus’ blu-ray features. This greatly speeds up the narrative, a theme that is carried through the entire film. In some spots, deleted scenes are used to fill the gaps, and with the exception of one, I enjoyed seeing all of them put back into the film. On the other hand, some other editorial changes I wasn’t too fond of, like the loss of David’s viewing of Lawrence of Arabia and all subsequent references to it, some of the humorous banter between Fifield and Millburn, and the wonderful ‘Navigational Map’ sequence, in which David activates the computer aboard the Engineer vessel. I also wan’t a fan of the repeated line, “The trick is not minding that it hurts.” Once was enough, and it is in no way better than another line it replaces at one point: “Big things have small beginnings.”

Video and sound quality are in tip-top shape, presented in over 15 mbps. The soundtrack is in 2 channels with what sounds like a Dolby Digital encode. It’s pretty solid, and has a bit of surround activity, or as much as can be expected in a stereo presentation. New VFX work is very subtle and almost unnoticed at the beginning of the film, but the biggest shots come at the very end. Beware, spoilers:

TMBTM removes the end ‘Deacon’ scene, instead digitally matting the creature into the Engineer as he is locked into the command chair, thereby revealing him as the dead Engineer from Alien, and the Deacon as his killer. This is a bold vision, but not one without its own set of discrepancies. If the Juggernaut from Prometheus is the Derelict from Alien, why is it fossilized after only several decades? What happened to the planetoid that so changed its environment (listen closely during Alien to discover that the Nostromo team’s walk to the Derelict occurred during the day–why is it so much darker than in Prometheus)? These problems certainly show how a direct sequel to Alien was certainly not the best direction to go.

That being said, TMBTM’s edit is a fun way to kill an hour and a half. It’s stark and beautiful, its tight and suspensful, and it uses the much better Xeno-Fifield scene that so many fan editors are enamored with. It is not my prefered version of Prometheus, but I enjoyed my viewing, and that is way more than what I expected going in. Recommended as an alternate view of what could have been.