Prometheus Unbound

This was a wonderful Fan Edit. I liked the extended intro with Weyland. I have always enjoyed that intro and still scratch my head as to why it was removed for the Theatrical release. It was nice to see Beezo liked it also. The changing spacescape was nice too. I'm a sucker for pretty things in HD tho. The removal of most of the secondary character development was great and really allowed the viewer to concentrate on the primary story with out a bunch of pointless distraction.

One of my biggest peeves of Fan Editing is character introduction. When extra content is introduced it inevitably leads to character introductions being pushed farther back into movie run time. I hate late character introduction so much. It really pulls me out of the moment. Explanation, sometimes characters can be introduced so late that they feel more like a plot device than a character. I can't really blame Beezo for this to much as the Theatrical release of Prometheus introduced the entire crew of Prometheus late into the movie also.

The most impressive part of Beezo's edit was the focus on Weyland. Bringing his story more to the front really brought home how egocentric this S.O.B really was. Beezo made a connection for me that I really failed to see in the Theatrical cut. I really had a, "oh wow." moment watching this edit.

Beezo you did a fantastic job in creating a Fan Edit that is thought provoking on a level that the Theatrical cut was not. This is a Edit I will be viewing again in the future.

First review here. :)

It is so sad what they did with this movie in theaters... it could have been great. But it was a complete mess, full of stupid moments and nonsense.

Beezo here tries to solve all that problems and succedes... to a certain point. There are some things that just can't be fixed, like character interaction and some plot inconsistencies.

The story now has more sense (or less nonsense). As for the editing, I didn't notice most of the cuts and that's a good thing.

Impressive work.

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.

Firstly, the quality and editing of this fan edit is without doubt great. My issue is that this is further confirmation that you cannot polish a turd when it comes to Prometheus. In contrast to other reviewers, I liked the TED talk opening and the following Max Richter track is a stroke of genius. However, what follows, whilst no criticism of the editor, is among the worst films I've seen so far this decade. The plot can be written on the back of an envelope but above all, it's just sooo boring. I was hoping there may be cut scenes that would enhance it but the middle act is just painful to watch and is followed by a final act which I could not care less about. A tremendous effort and my criticism extends only to the film itself.

I'm just shy of saying "finally a perfect edit" on this one mainly because of the opening. Really, that's the biggest ding I have on this edit...beyond that, it's damn near perfect. But it's an annoyance enough to warrant knocking 1 point off the enjoyment scale because it's an issue to me.

Why? Because I'm not a fan at all of editors inserting the completely unnecessary supplemental footage from the TED talk and Shaw communication. I don' know why people insist on doing that. Neither of those things have a place in the film, especially the TED talk. They're so out of place for what amounts to an "Alien" movie. And they're followed by a very lengthy sequence of space shots from Tree of Life that just goes on for too long. I kept expecting it to move forward with the movie but that sequence kept going for a while.

What would I do to fix this edit's opening (if I had any editing skills)? I would open with the original black screen slowly spelling out the title, fading in to the space shot of the ship bolting through space, the text scroll spelling out the ship name and crew, then go into David's intro. That's it. That's all the opening this movie needs. And from there just go into this cut of the film. Perfection.

Anyways, outside of my big gripe on the opening, I would say that this is the best paced cut of the movie I've seen so far. When the shit hits the fan, it happens all at once and with perfect timing. With only minor plot issues near the end that just can't be fixed (Shaw's event) as far as I can tell because there is no existing footage to fill in that gap. Regardless, this is a fantastic edit.

For the 720p release: Video quality is mostly very good, but there were some points where artifacts plopped in and some blurring and banding happened, but overall it was solid. No audio issues that I noticed.

I finally grabbed the BD25 of this edit in full 1080p, and it looks gorgeous. I recommend that option if you have the bandwidth and space. I actually took the time to learn how to edit and ripped the BD and cut out that opening sequence I didn't like, and recompiled the film and I'm in heaven. Great edit made even better IMO. :)