It's a two and a half hour long fan-edit of both of Ridley Scott's disappointments: 'Prometheus' and 'Covenant'. The first one tapped into the 'Ancient Aliens' hype as peddled by the History Channel and the second doubled down on this cringe, driving a stake through the Aliens franchise altogether.
The fan-edit is a more clinical/documentary style adaptation of the available footage (including bonus material). It follows the synthetic 'David' and explores his motivations and character arc more fully. It removes much of the cringe, but does not manage to excise all the Hollywoke stupidity. E.g. the study of micro-organisms was apparently never developed in this universe, explaining the complete and absolute stupidity of the characters in removing their protective suits in a xeno-biological environment or never bothering to put them on in the first place (as is the case in the second movie).
It was definitely a good attempt and it even gave off vibes of the original 'Alien' movie, but it also had a lot of smaller narrative plot holes. But all things considered, it was still better than the original.
Weird timing I actually just watched Prometheus last night and I'm watching Covenant tonight.
I consider Alien to be a masterpiece, although I'm not as big of a fan of Cameron's Aliens. I thought it deviated too far from the formula of the original.
Prometheus really was just a pointless fucking movie to make. It doesn't add anything it just seems like an interesting diversion. There's no basis in science or fact and the characters are all dogshit.
I'm watching it chronologically (AVP / AVP 2 / Prometheus / Covenant / Alien / Aliens / Alien 3 / Alien Resurrection) to make sure to end on a strong note. I'm one of the few people who enjoy Alien 3 / Alien 4 mainly because I'm huge fans of the directors involved (finch / Jeunet) and I appreciate them both putting their stamp on the franchise while keeping with the original themes.
But Prometheus and Covenant are just...so unnecessary.
There's DOZENS of us!!
I couldn't stand how a single xenomorph went from a goddamned nightmare in Alien into just bullet magnets in Aliens.
Weakening the main opponent simply so you can churn through them in action scenes was such a stupid choice.
Yes.... and no.
I rewatched the director's cut a few years ago, and one of the key narrative hooks for how they burned through so many xenos so quickly was because they were using I think armour piercing explosive rounds. It's why in Aliens 4 they had such a hard time just killing one xeno, since they weren't using the same kind of ammunition.
Still, it made the xenos in Aliens seem like a cakewalk, even though technically it was due to their advanced weaponry. But yeah, I really wish they would have taken better time to showcase that without those kinds of weapons, humans were easy fodder. That was something they never really properly explored in any of the films, as opposed to say, Predator, where we at least -- multiple times -- saw how small arms fire barely did damage to the Predator and that it was more like annoying flesh wounds than fatal for them.
In the Aliens franchise they never outlined the consistency of just how hard the outer carapace was for the xenos (we sort of had hints of it in Alien 3, and again, a little bit in Aliens 4, but it was completely tossed away in Covenant).
The size always bugged me.
Every single film got the dimensions wrong on the xenomorph from Alien. They simplified the creature from Giger's vision into something more bland and easily reproducible. They also made them smaller and the heads much different.
Overall they turned it from a detailed, interesting, intelligent and efficient stalker into just rampaging zerglings.
I heard that theory a while ago about the weaponry in Aliens explaining their effectiveness against the xenomorphs but explosive or armor piercing rounds would have triggered the cold fusion chamber they were inside that required them to give up their mags in the first place.
They also infer that those sentry guns basically destroys hundreds of xenomorphs considering the population of the colony that was taken over.
Yeah that's why in that scene they were told to hand over those mags. They switch to basic ballistics and essentially most of them get wiped out in that very chaotic scene.
The only two who kept some spare mags were the smartgun pair (Vasquez and her partner), and they briefly take out a few xenos on their way back to the APC while most everyone else gets merc'd.
The problem is that that initial encounter is so chaotic it doesn't really make the xenos seem anywhere near as threatening as the one from the first film, and just more like a cluster of chaos and death.
They do use the armour-piercing explosive rounds later on during the defense against the xenos attacking them in the room, and -- to Cameron's credit -- he does show that the xenos are basically exploding when being impacted by those rounds. The only time we see that the weapons are mostly ineffective is when they get in the air ducts and Vasquez has to resort to a pistol, which has very little effect on the xeno until she pushes its head against the side of the vent and pumps an entire mag into it at point blank, which compromises and immobilises her in the process.
But you're right, they really did treat them too much like zegling ants as opposed to stalkers (which is odd, because they had that one guardian xeno in AVP take out two Predators by itself by stalking them and using the environment to its advantage, which goes back to the inconsistency in how the xenos are portrayed).
Yeah in the director's cut they just show them mowing down countless xenos until the turrets run out of ammo. This did and didn't bother me because the logic was that the queen knew there were survivors and was willing to sacrifice drones to drain the turrets dry to could get past the defenses. But I always wondered how did the queen have that many disposable drones when it seemed like the colony only had a few hundred personnel?
I couldn't stand it any other way lol. It's a fully armed platoon of space marines. No lifeform is naturally adapted to deal with that. Then they still got wiped.
Exactly. If your mechanised infantry aren't better at killing things than a bunch of space truckers, then what's the point of having mechanised infantry?
I also think The Terminator is better than Terminator 2.
No Predator 1 & 2 at the start?
I thought about that but Predator and Alien are two different franchises, mixing in Predator adds like 8 movies.
Alien 4 had too many problems. It had bullets going through the outer hull of a ship that looks like a space fortress. Earth has no defensive capabilities. A goofy human-alien hybrid that tried too hard to be bad-arse but just looked like a failure in every regard. Same applied to that ragtag group of misfits. Not impressing anyone. They were also playing hoops in space. ;)
You are 100% correct about Alien 4, it is the 'goofy' Alien film. That comes from the directors, who tend to insert really surreal and black humor into their work.
I recommend you check out Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, their two masterpieces. Both are pitch black as far as comedy and theme goes, they throw in a ton of dali-esque surreal sci fi stuff. Delicatessen makes some incredibly fucked up themes really funny and strange...it is just how they handle sci fi.
That's why most people hate it, and I don't blame them for it. You really have to appreciate the unique approach Jeunet takes in his films and he refused to change for a major film. It ends up with a bizarre mix of horror and sci fi.
Seriously check those two films out though they are both bangers. Subtitled, don't do the dubs they are awful.
I'll check them out at some point.
The coolest thing in Aliens Resurrection is Sigourney making that basket on the first take.
I don't think that's ever been the official claim. I think the official claim, which may also be fabrication for cool points for all I know, is she sunk it on the last shot; i.e. the director gave her one more chance to manage it, and she got it. It took her many, many tries to manage it.
Okay, you got me.
According to Sigourny and her journal, she got it on the third take.
But she had been practicing for weeks wit a basketball pro player as a coach.
It's Hollywood. They lie about everything. ;)
Also weird timing I just got a copy of Paradise but haven't seen Prometheus or Covenant, was curious to watch the fan edit first just of curiosity.
Recently watched the 'spicediver' fan edit of David Lynch's Dune and it was a million times better than that dumpster fire of a film. Planning on watching a hobbit trilogy fan edit called the tolkien cut soon too.
I saw that Lynch Dune edit and enjoyed it. Then again I like anything Dune related so I'm biased.
Let me know how that Hobbit edit is, curious to see what they did with that.
So I decided to watch the Hobbit edit tonight and it's still trash. Only ever saw the first one so not sure how much is changed, but I know I hate it.
I also liked 4
Felt like a good way to take it after the initial horror of it had passed and it’s no longer as scary. Gotta do something to up the horror, having humans try to keep it in a lab and making chimeras with it and human tissue is prescient.
Did they ever explain why they were all female astronauts?
Think you're referring to the 'prologue' of Covenant?
I saw Juicy Smelly in the Covenant portion of the movies, which is annoying. He stands out so much to me thanks to seeing his smug-ass face for so long, it's like a 4th wall break every time he's on screen. He is used for an interracial sex scene with a White woman, but fortunately both are killed by the Alien.
I also noticed that both Strong Ripley Characters lose their boyfriends/husbands in the first act in each movie. Noomi Rapace's bf gets infected by the android with the black goo (then flame-throwered), and the other lady's bf gets incinerated in his cryopod when they have to emergency wake-up. Can't keep those ladies down with a dumb man, now can we?
I don't especially like the jump back and forth from one movie to the other because it ends up feeling like I'm pausing one movie to watch the other for a few minutes. Fortunately this doesn't happen excessively often, but I do include it as a criticism.
Both movies most likely would not have been made if the leads weren't female. Almost all modern-day science fiction is now gynocentric, resulting in the worst television known to mankind.
Took me a while to sit down and watch it, but I finally did. I think it was pretty decent given the material they had to work with, and it's definitely an improvement showing the films in this way as one conjoined work, though it doesn't suddenly make the bad writing in either good, just more coherent.
Something I am curious about is how well it would be received by someone who hasn't seen both Prometheus/Covenant and went into Paradise blind. The first half of the film is a bit rough in my opinion due to the constant cutting back and forth between Prometheus (the past) and Covenant (the future), and while I had no issue following those constant shifts, I do wonder how someone who doesn't know these films would go with keeping up.
I remember watching RLM for their Rise of Skywalker video and one of them used the line "Did they spin straw into bronze", a joke about JJ making the best of what he could with the trash he was supplied with, and I think that's a similar case here. The base content of Prometheus and Covenant is trash and no amount of editing will suddenly make that good, but this fan edit has made the best of what he had to work with. It's an improvement, but it doesn't make it good.
Overall, if I ever feel the need to self-harm and want to rewatch either Prometheus or Covenant, I probably will just watch Paradise instead. Or I could just watch a good movie instead. But either way, it was interesting to watch and get given a different take on the presentation of the films.
You can watch it on vimeo or download it through Mega/Google Drive.
Google: job willins fan edit paradise
I would link you to the wordpress site, but I don't know what the rules are on 'win' about fan edits.
Others have mentioned other fan edits, and I've never really watched any of these things in the past. Where in general do you tend to find these things if someone is interested in getting into them and watching more of these fan edits?
Looking up his search terms gave me this result.
That seems to be part of this larger site, which has forums:
There's also a reddit group but who wants to go there?
I tried searching fanedit db for the other edits mentioned here. Strangely I don't see The Hobbit "Tolkien Cut" there, I did find the Spicediver edit of Dune.
Of course they don't host any of the files but you can easily find them or others once you know the fanedit name or name of the editor.
Thanks for this, I'll look more into it later.
Yes, if its like the machete order, it can improve badness but you can only go so far when the source material isn't great. Still, I'm curious.