Prometheus – Special Edition

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.

Prometheus is to Alien / Aliens what The Phantom Menace is to the original Star Wars trilogy. Fanedits fixed much of the dire mess that is The Phantom Menace and I was hoping, as I endured Prometheus in the cinema, that they'd do the same for it.

And they have. There several worth watching, and this is very definitely one of them.

There are still problems - big ones - but they're down to the script writers. So the egregious science is still there, from the awful archaeology of the briefing onwards, and many of the cast still do very stupid things. But it's much better than the theatrical version.

The picture quality is great, even on the .mp4 version. There are a couple of audio glitches, but the sound quality also reflects the excellent work done on this.

.. but my favourite fanedit is still the Xenomorph edition, which cuts even more of the crap out.

I really didn't care that much about Prometheus so I needed a fanedit to see it fixed.
I just thought "missed opportunity" and moved on.
Then I saw all these posts from new members asking rules-violating questions and that made me think that this must be really something if it attracted this much attention from people not familiar with the world of fanediting. So I had to see it.

The new opening is so much better and it is now more about the mission and less about Shaw's faith, something I felt was handled in such a cliché way. Not showing the dig at the beginning makes Shaw and Holloway look less like hard core fanatics that just travel to the other side of the universe because "they believe"

That religious "because that is what I choose to believe" dream sequence is now gone.
I think you should have cut more of the religious aspect out "we need a true believer aboard" etc.

I always thought that the briefing scene felt stupid; This scientific expedition cost around a trillion dollars and the people hired don't know what the mission is about before takeoff? It is only when they arrive at their destination that they are finally briefed (btw, taking off the helmet bullshit was the biggest failure in this movie imo. and that is not something that can be fixed with a a fanedit) maybe I'm nitpicking, let's move on.

With the two guys left behind it now doesn't feel like "...and while everyone else was off f***ing each other--"

The added scenes with Vickers and the Captain was nice (although when you cut back to Shaw and David it felt awkward) the conclusions that the Captain comes to later on and what he tells Shaw doesn't feel like taken from thin air anymore. Like the filmmakers needed a scene that
explains this and that to the audience and they just came up with something. This feels more natural.

Agent 9 saved this film as much as saving could be done. It's now more connected with the Alien franchise and I believe that is a good thing. The story is now more fleshed out and feel more whole.

If I could change one thing in this fanedit I would change the fight scene between Shaw and the engineer back to the original version. The idea that she would even stand a chance against this creature is really stretching my disbelief to the breaking point. It is so Hollywood, the final girl taking on the big monster. She wouldn't have stand a chance. And the OC was better in this regard.

This is the work of a true faneditor. The deleted scenes had unfinished effects which Agent 9 finished, he color corrected them, they had 2.0 audio so he remixed a new 5.1 track for them. The edit is in HD and there is even a 3d version. This could have been a dvd5 with all the deleted scenes being 2.0 with nothing done to the unfinished effects in them but this really is the Special Edition. Somewhere Ridley Scott probably gets a phone call from the studio saying that there is no need for a director's cut anymore...

While I enjoyed the original Prometheus I had many of the same problems others had and this cut does much to correct those issues. This is a superior version of the film and with that being said I am going to hold it to a high standard of review.

I have very little issues but I will say that while I applaud your attempt to make the 2 scientists less annoying you cut too much footage of them and it kinda stands out when they just disappear from the group. I will say that the editing was seamless for me up till the point when David starts to read the alien script on the wall. Just then the music swells and cuts to a different shot with no music in the background. Other than that the only real problem I had with the editing was the 2 scientists being a little to absent.

I was a little surprised you left the Fifield zombie attack in. I never like that scene and it was never part of the original movie, it was ordered as re-shoots for more action by Fox.

With all that in mind, I feel this version told a similar enough story and completed all the tasks the original set out to that if were the only version of the movie you saw, you would probably be doing yourself a favor.

Just finished watching the edit.
The technical side of it was certainly very strong. The cuts, the integration of the deleted scenes (save for Vickers/Janek intercutting with Shaw/David), the colour correction, the cleaned up FX were all flawless. The audio was pretty good as well, even if there were some mixing problems from time to time (dialogue mixed in the front channels, the score turned up too loud). All in all, brilliant work.

The only problem was that the movie felt a bit disorganised. I can't quite put my finger on it but I think the film flowed a bit better when I last watched the theatrical version. That said, I remember feeling the same way when I first watched it at the cinema, so perhaps it's just a question of repeated viewings.