Paradise

As a fan of both Alien and Riddley Scott's work this edit perfectly conveys the central message that spans both movies about creation. At first I was hesitant to watch a fanedit that combined both Prometheus and Covenant (I like both films) but without a doubt they are all the better for it. The David centric story is spectacular, it has weight and purpose throughout the film making it all the more rewarding to watch certain scenes. The editing was superbly done as was the addition of scenes like the TED talk and the arrival of David to the engineer planet. One of the best fanedits I have ever seen and most definitely the best way possible to enjoy Prometheus and Covenant without useless plotlines and tedious action.

This is my favorite film for the last six month - I keep watching it when nothing else is on. So Good!
I am not sure this film will resound as well if you haven't watched the originals, but if you have, this is the BEST way to revisit the best parts of both films. Job, you are my hero!

I love the android focus now, the beginning was odd to me the first time with the justaposition of the two films, but when it hits the outbreak, it all makes sense, and repeat viewings make the beginning even better.

Thank you Job, big fan, hope you keep making awesome stuff!!

As you would expect, when you start watching it is a bit weird watching two separate crews on two separate missions interspliced, but it's only weird a little bit and the stories will fuse nicely with unseen footage and some fantastic voiceover that really binds this into the definitive edition of the story so far. I highly encourage radical approaches like this. Pure joy to watch, really.

The video quality is very good even though it uses a last-gen codec. Imagine how absolutely gorgeous it would've looked like with x265 and the same bitrate.

Wow! I was really looking forward to a character-driven mashup focusing on the malevolence of David and the Creator/Creation theme. The editor has executed this thesis perfectly. Both original films were very unsatisfying to me, given the Hollywood box-office-appeal choices that were made. This edit strips away much of that artifice. The editor made lots of great decisions, cutting back the TED prelude to its essential message and presenting in B&W; a classic tool to set up a past significant event.

The interweaving of the content from the two originals was to my eyes done seamlessly and purposely to navigate the scenes in the new direction chosen by the editor. Visually, the film looks gorgeous when viewed in full 1080p resolution on my tried and true plasma display. [A quick note that has nothing to do with edits. Many thanks to the editor for making this available directly from Google Drive. I don't burn physical copies, so a direct mp4 upload saves soooo much hassle as a Mac/ATV4 user.]

I like the use of the Beatles in the soundtrack. I'm not sure why this is such a sticking point with folks. If the finale had been set off by "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" I could relate, but I thought the tunes were tastefully chosen. I particularly liked the use of the minor key driven "I Want You (She's so Heavy)".

The overall effect is to set up these films and the next upcoming release as a "David Trilogy". I find this way more satisfying than the emphasis on the Engineers or the Creature. I'm putting this film into heavy rotation both at home on when traveling. Fantastic work!

JobWillins’ Derelict was quite the experience, combining two Ridley Scott films separated by over three decades into a coherent and suspenseful single storyline. After Alien: Covenant was released, I suddenly had a spark of inspiration; why couldn’t Prometheus and Covenant be combined in a similar way? After all, both films feature a central character in David, the murderous, disturbingly creative android, so why not give it a go myself? Well, little did I know that JobWillins was already on it, and let’s face it, he was always going to do a better job than I would.

As it turns out, JobWillins had conceived of the Paradise idea long ago. From his Tumblr:

“When I edited Derelict a couple of years ago, combining Prometheus & Alien in black & white, it was mainly because I found Prometheus unsatisfying as a standalone film. Its ending promised (and begged for) a sequel, but that sequel kept falling behind other Ridley Scott productions. With a sequel in doubt, I tried to use material from both films to make a single experience that felt more like a satisfying whole.

“We eventually did get a sequel 5 years later in Alien: Covenant. Half of it felt like a Prometheus sequel and the other half an Alien prequel. In my opinion it didn’t fully succeed in either role. I enjoyed parts of Covenant very much as I did Prometheus, but also much like Prometheus, it ended on an intriguing promise of a sequel. That sequel may never come thanks to its relatively poor box office performance.”

And so, here we are with another expansive, 2.5 hour sci-fi epic!

Opening in the all-too-familiar black-and-white style of Derelict with the ominous Peter Weyland TED Talk, Paradise shifts into full color with the excellent prologue of Covenant, David’s first day of life in the company of his father. However, the prologue stops short, giving us the new title as the Prometheus flies through space. Throughout the film, this prologue will return periodically, as if to punctuate the themes of creation and godhood with increased clarity as the narrative bounces between time frames.

While the transitions aren’t quite as good or numerous as those witnessed in Derelict, JobWillins covers this with a restrained hand, ensuring to keep both films at least thematically-synced. Probably the best example of this would be Covenant‘s backburster scene, intercut with Holloway’s agonizing death in Prometheus. As Ted Kurzel’s brilliant score pulsates away, the horror of both Shaw and Oram seeing their spouses’ deaths is compounded nicely. A lot has been cut from both films, including some of my favorite bits, like Milburn and Fifield’s run-in with the Millipede and various snippets of the Covenant crew’s first trek across Planet 4, but again, this is all in the name of ensuring the finished project isn’t so long that viewers check out for other offerings.

As before in Derelict, several deleted scenes from both films are used, as well as some of the online viral content from Alien: Covenant. Major props to JobWillins for his beautiful rendition of the ‘Crossing’ prologue. As for changes wholly his own, some may or may not like his musical choices for the beginning and end of the Covenant storyline, but I for one enjoyed them.

For this review, I watched his full-quality offering of the edit from Google Drive, which at a file size of 9.62 GBs, is plenty enough for home theater viewing. The video bitrate is a little lower than Derelict‘s at 8 mbps, but this allows for the inclusion of both stereo and surround audio tracks, and I honestly didn’t see any video quality loss, at least on my 1080p equipment.

While Derelict seemed to emphasize the mystery and intrigue of the films it sought to combine, Paradise is an edit more preoccupied with the grander themes at work within Ridley Scott’s mind: themes of creating life from nothing, of going against the natural order, themes more reminiscent of Shelley than Lovecraft, which is something I picked up from Covenant that I’m sure most viewers either didn’t see or didn’t appreciate. JobWillins certainly did, and that’s just one of many reasons why I love Paradise. I’m still thinking of doing my own Prometheus/Covenant fanmix, but not because Paradise was inadequate. On the contrary, if I never got around to it, I wouldn’t feel that bad. I still have this gem to come back to.