Prometheus – Special Edition

I really don't have that much else to say that others haven't already, and I could very easily just copy+paste my review of Giftbearer onto here if you want to know my thoughts. Like Giftbearer, this incorporates previously deleted scenes into the Prometheus narrative to create a much smarter and more satisfying experience than the version released in theaters, and it does its job very skillfully. All deleted material is integrated into the story excellently and it flows much more swimmingly than before. Again, like Giftbearer, fantastic stuff.

I'm one of the people who actually liked Prometheus when it came out, although I certainly wasn't blind to its flaws. The story was told in a very convoluted way, but my main issues have always lain with the lack of character development. Anything else that gets fixed is a bonus.

Visual/audio quality - Visual was good, audio was mixed. Deleted scenes, although well integrated visually, were often noticeably lower audio quality, and sometimes when the volume ramped up it felt like the mix was struggling to breathe.

Audio during the Ted Talk, specifically, was phasery - particularly during applause.

Visual editing was fine. I didn't notice a single (visual) cut.

Audio editing was mixed. One cut was jarring, most of the rest of my qualms were with the rescoring. All of the soundtrack references from other films were noticeable and distracting. Although it's a nice idea, I don't think it worked. The score would often fight for dominance over the dialogue as well, which isn't ideal.

"ok then, on with the show" - felt too sudden, having had dialogue removed prior to it. The removal of "never had to follow a dead guy" was a bit awkward as well.

Narrative - I watched this with a friend who'd seen the theatrical before and found the story confusing. He felt the edit made things much easier to grasp, and I would agree. The story flows better and some character motivations make more sense. Pacing also benefited.

Some of the tiny cuts, particularly towards the beginning, I wasn't a fan of. They felt awkward and robbed characters of little chunks of development. Some examples:

Fifield's "I'm outta here" was rushed and random. No follow up from the other characters. He just leaves without anyone batting an eyelid. I get people don't like his tantrum, but that's his character. Better a bad character that makes sense, than an underdeveloped one whose actions are unclear.

Deleted scene with the captain in blondies quarters (post-flamethrower murder) makes little sense since them sleeping together was cut. The last thing between them was him asking her if she was a robot. If they had slept together then there would be a degree of intamacy and her letting him into her personal space would be more believable.

On a positive note, I thought the running in a straight line was very well handled. It never bothered me before as I thought the shot was cool, but the new sequence worked really well and was more logical. I was also happy to see the extended final fight with the engineer make it in.

Overall, a good edit, but I would still watch the theatrical over this, chiefly because there was a lot that took me out of the film audio-wise. This was mostly on the right track though and I intend on checking our other edits that tackle similar aspects of the film.

I'll have to re-watch the Prometheus Unbound edit to see if it's still a more favorable edit than this as I originally pegged Unbound as the near perfect edit, but narrative-wise this feels like a close call.

This edit has a ton of re-working done to [mostly] seamlessly remove not only the larger issues, but nearly all of even the small things without affecting the original narrative. While I'm not happy that the TED talk made it in here as well (I seriously don't get why people think it belongs), everything beyond that is pretty smooth. There are some minor issues with audio editing where it clips in, as well as some of the 3rd act editing can get a bit choppy but nothing that stands out too much. Ultimately, the narrative here is smooth and I'm glad it didn't include any of the Earth/excavation scenes, and the Fifield departing from the crew bit - actually the whole Fifield subplot - worked very well.

Outside of the narrative, my only issues are with audio and video editing and [take this with a grain of salt] the video quality of the 1080p release that I happened to watch. It was very blocky, blurry, and just looked like it was encoded with a low bitrate even though the bitrate is 11mbps. Maybe it's just my source. I don't remember where I got it from to be honest, but if the version I watched is an official release, it looks upscaled. Regardless, it's a great edit and potentially in the run for best edit out there... I recommend this and Prometheus Unbound. Both are great edits.

When I first saw Prometheus I hated it. Well, I thought it was bland.

This edit improves the movie so much, I love it! There are still issues left (the biggest being the scientists acting like complete idiots), but it salvaged the movie for me.

The added VFX are great, never noticed anything wrong. Great job Agent9, my brother and I enjoyed this!

Definitely recommended!

I thought this was a great fanfix. The original was a big disappointment and this improves on it immensely. Can't say much without repeating all the other reviews. There were a couple of scenes that could have used more work where the added score drowned out the dialogue and it would have been nice to have 5.1 audio, but other than that it was excellent. Well done Agent 9. Highly recommended.