Review Detail

I have had so many reviews floating around in my head for all of these brilliant fan edits (of which I can only dream about having the skills to do one of my own), though this will be the first one that I will committed to in black-and-white, so please be gentle with my first and lengthy outing below.

Overall, the editing of Beezo's P:U is seamless for its technical and narrative merits as well as the overall pacing and plot.

On the constructively critical side of things ... the initial lengthy montage of surreal images suffers from a severe lack of general variety, so this limited array should have been trimmed down by a factor of five (and I started to wonder if the editor came off a viewing of 2001 or Star Trek 1 here). Also, the "very difficult to re-edit" editing of the "dimwitted Laurel and Hardy meets alien/snaky thing" (aka the "here, kitty kitty" sequence) has an unavoidable jar in this version, however I will give a 10 to anyone whom can successfully eliminate this stupidity-of-character-motivation element with maybe a creative scare cut thrown in: let me here the words "Challenge Accepted !" ... now, on to the many positive aspects of this edit ...

I agree that Weyland's TED Talk does not remotely hint at the burgeoning Alien franchise (as much as its director purports this movie is not meant to be a part of anyway), but then neither does the Scottish Highlands Field Trip or even Ripley's Interrogation scene in Aliens. But I do believe this new introduction serves a dual purpose in that Weyland's desire to win support for unfettered evolution is then paralleled by Shaw's message of her eternal search for the answer 42 (of which Weyland surely ignores at his peril) .. this concept is ultimately book-ended by ye olde Weyland pathetically hanging onto every verbal morsel uttered by The Engineer (before using David's skull as a soccer ball) thereby amplifying one's scorn of humanity hence the decision to cease their laboratory experiment on Earth, lest this primary carbon-based life-form would risk infecting the far corners of the universe ... at least that's what I took out of these proceedings ... btw, when the theatrical version mercilessly cut out all of said Engineer's dialogue, this must have made all the characters as well as the audience wonder "what the hell did we come all this way for, then?".

Also, after Holloway is flame-grilled by Vickers, the desaturated flashback of Shaw reminiscing over their discovery of the Cave Of Wonders resonated with me about the protagonists' sense of hope for the future, if not humanity. I was also taken aback by the next (deleted) sequence in which The Captain (name forgotten) confides in Vickers of his regretful wartime experience whereby an impossible choice was made under the heat of battle, which was an unexpectedly very deep bit of prose in correlation with Holloway's demise (that would have likely bored the regular theatrical crowd to no end) ... additionally, the last scene here when Beckers says "I burnt my hand" in response to her misconstrued look of pain over killing Holloway is priceless (though I'm not sure if the lost second or two at the end was an intentional short-stop to enhance the levity inherent, or was simply due to the limited length of footage available) ... again, maybe I'm reading more into all of this than the more dissuaded of us Alien Prequel hopefuls would be.

Last but not all, the sequence of Fifield going postal on the red shirts on ramp was (I believe) from the alternate CGI renderings off the cutting room floor and is ten times more terrifying to watch than the theatrical presentation, mainly because it seemed to contain some very effective "frame jump cuts" that heightened the viewing experience (much like my favourite medieval comedy Army Of Darkness had used this method to good effect too) ... I know not if Beezo added (erm, removed) these on his own, but in any case I had no idea there was enough of this footage available from the Blu-Ray archive for assembly here. Finally, was that Jerry Goldsmith's score breaking through the abortion scene?

in summary, it seems even this movie can be saved from the clutches of Hollywood Hell and I look forward to Beezo's next outing.