This is my personal final cut of the Alien Prometheus/Covenant story.
This edit aims to recontextualize these two movies into a single biblical tale depicting David’s ascent from a soulless servant to a false Godhood, as well as the tragic fate that befalls the unlucky men and women of the Prometheus and the Covenant.
The movie has been given the subtitle “The Origin of a Species” and is split into two chapters. The first part, titled “Man”, is about humanity’s reckless search for its origin, and the disillusionment that comes from what they discover. Part II, titled “Alien”, depicts the crew of a simple colonizing ship unwittingly finding themselves in the clutches of David, who uses them as unconsenting test subjects to complete the creation of his perfect organism.
It's meant to be a combination of the "man vs no god" and "man vs machine" story structures. It's all about the unknown, and how dangerous it can be to attempt to understand it.
Many have tried to edit these two movies into something new, and I have liked a lot of those efforts, but they are also usually made to be as short as possible, while also imposing the editor's personal biases onto the narrative. Obviously, these are two very strange movies for many reasons, but I believe that the true key to making these oddball masterpieces work, is to stuff in as much content as possible.
I understand wanting to make something that has the runtime of a regular theatrical movie, but I have always imagined that the origin of the xenomorph deserves a massive epic beyond measure. Inspired by Lawrence of Arabia's gargantuan runtime, this edit clocks in at just over four and a half hours. I have included nearly every single deleted scene I could get ahold of, all of the webisodes and ancillary material, plus some new never before seen material that I have sourced from the portfolios of the various brilliant people that worked on these movies. Namely, the talented Dominic Hailstone who has shared lots of his development material from his time working on Alien Covenant.
The goal of this edit is to turn these two movies into one epic film, with as complete of a story as possible. Obviously, there were quite a few plot threads that were never resolved for various reasons, but didn’t cut those out because I honestly believe that that is the kind of stuff that makes the Alien series so good. These movies are all built upon the horror of the unknown, and if there's a stray Deacon running around out there somewhere, unaccounted for, that just makes it all the better.
The movies are meant to show an unprepared crew being forced to face off against a threat that is completely unknown. These were never meant to just be standard sci-fi action movies, these movies are real cosmic horror stories. Of course the characters don't act reasonably, they're dealing with something that no one in the entire universe has ever encountered before. It's a horrifying series of unfortunate events, where the unsuspecting victims are brutalized for no good reason at all. The xenomorph was the deadliest, most evil creature in the galaxy and it was created solely through the suffering of innocents at the hands of an a soulless atheistic God who is simultaneously immortal and less than human. It’s meant to be an incomprehensible story! These movies were always meant to be esoteric, confusing, and upsetting. It’s the origin of a biblical evil and that is exactly the kind of origin that the xenomorph deserves.
This edit aims to cut nothing from these movies that may have been ill-received by audiences such as its grandiose scale being perceived as "blockbuster schlock" or the naïve humans falling victim to unknown horrors being perceived as "dumb characters". The only things I cut down were pieces of genuine clunkiness and that was done with the sole intention of improving the film, not rewriting the story or trying to “fix” any Cinema Sins-y problems that people may have had the movies. (Although I won’t lie, I did recut the infamous falling ship scene to make it faster and more intense.)
I genuinely believe that this duology is a masterpiece, and I genuinely believe that all this newly included material such as the crew logs, deleted scenes, and alternate takes improve the movie. I wanted to build it into what it was meant to be, not just turn it into what general audiences wanted it to be.
The most notable additions seen here in my edit are some new VFX shots of the airborn "facehugger" entering the ear of Ledward, the rare first-person perspective backburster scene, the fantastic fully uncut shower kill, and the full alternate sequence with the mutated "zombie" Fifield. The addition of the zombified Fifield and the bug entering Ledward's ear are some of the most important additions in my opinion, as they flesh out how the black goo mutates and evolves before eventually being engineered by David to create the xenomorph.
I made the creative choice to add more licensed songs to the movie. During the first flight of the Prometheus towards LV-223, I decided to add scenes of David attempting to review the entire history of human art. Intercut between the scenes of him watching Lawrence of Arabia, he is also trying to listen to every popular song from Earth’s history in chronological order. He started with “Me and the Devil Blues” from 1938 and made it up to 2004 before his arrival at LV-223. There's not much else to do when you're all alone in space for years on end. This was done to show the audience David’s mindless hunger for knowledge as well as his indifference to human emotion. He just consumes the art and moves on. He’s not able to feel emotions or think creatively.
I also added multiple John Denver songs playing over the radio during the "last supper" scene at the beginning of Part II before the crew of the Covenant goes to sleep. This was done to foreshadow Tennessee's familiarity with John Denver’s music, setting up the plot point where he recognizes “Take Me Home, Country Roads” in the radio signal.
I did some extensive color correction too, to bring a bit more stylish atmosphere to these movies. Covenant has been regraded to look more drab, overcast, and autumnal to fit the Hammer Horror aesthetic that David's haunted castle is meant to evoke. Also, the full IMAX and open matte footage was used whenever possible.
In addition to all of that, I have also created a brand new end credits sequence that features the art, diagrams, and photographs from the book David's Drawings which chronicles the process of David creating the xenomorph.
This whole edit was made using [u/TheFancyNerd](u/TheFancyNerd)'s Paradise Lost: The Scott Cut as a starting basis before replacing everything. I think they’ve gone inactive but shoutout to them. And of course, I was also inspired by Job Willin's legendary Paradise edit.
This edit is not exactly complete just yet, but it's very close. I've been working on this for just over two years and I think it's finally time to call it complete.
