Alien Origins

Faneditor Name:FairFriend
Tagline:Big things have small beginnings.
Original Movies.

• Alien: Covenant
• Prometheus

Genre:Horror
Franchise:Alien
Fanedit Type:FanFix
Original Release Date:2012, 2017
Original Running Time:246
Fanedit Release Date:April 2020
Fanedit Running Time:148

Brief Synopsis:This edit brings together Prometheus and Alien: Covenant in one single movie of 148 minutes, that sticks as close as possible to the atmosphere of the very first Alien, whitout ruining its lore and mythology like the original movies did.

Intention:I was unsatisfied by both Prometheus and Covenant because they featured many unneccesary characters who died a cheap death and because they over-explained the origin of the xenomorph. With this fanedit I attempted to make the tone of the movie much more serious and ominous, in line with that of the first Alien. To do so, I deleted all the scenes that were superflous or that showed too much of the xenomorph and the other creatures. Some of the novel creatures that were introduced in these two movies have been cut, in order to make the genesis of the xenomorph less confusing and, frankly ridicolous. Many other changes have been made, like for example tweaking the character of David in Prometheus, who is now less deranged and a much more logical and "grey" character.

Editing Details:Firstly I stiched together the 2 movies. Then I deleted all the scenes that didn't fit, in chronological order. I moved on to smoothing the transition between scenes that were not linked together originally. I rewatched the fanedit numerous times to make it sure that it flowed as smoothly as possible, and that it made sense narratively, notwithstanding the many deleted scenes.

Cuts and Additions:No additions. An incomplete list of the cuts made:
-Deleted opening scene with the Engineers
-Deleted scene on Earth
-Deleted scene in which David spies on Shaw
-Tweaked breakfast scene and debriefing scene
-Deleted scene with Vickers
-Deleted and tweaked scenes inside the alien structure, especially those featuring the 2 scientists who die later on
-Deleted the scene in which the head of the Engineer explodes
-Tweaked scene in which Shaw records her thoughts
-Deleted the scene in which the corpse of one of the dead scientists comes back to life and goes on a rampage
-Deleted the scene between Idris Elba's character and Shaw
-Deleted scene between David and Shaw before they go out to meet the Engineer
-Deleted the fight with the Engineer
-Deleted the fire aboard the Covenant
-Deleted all references to the fire and the medical pods
-Tweaked many of the early scenes on the planet
-Deleted one of the proto-xenomorph in order to make the ensuing action sequences much easier to follow
-Revamped the whole section inside the dead city of the Engineers. Way to many scenes and changes to list. Most notably, deleted all the scenes that contradict what we know about the life cycle of the Xenomorph
-Deleted the "you do the fingering" scene
-Deleted fight against the Xeno aboard the Covenant

Have you considered using any footage from alien covenant the crossing prologue as a bridge between the two movies- I noticed in your list of changes you said that you hadn’t added anything

stferguson78 said:

Have you considered using any footage from alien covenant the crossing prologue as a bridge between the two movies- I noticed in your list of changes you said that you hadn’t added anything

Click to expand...

Yes I did, but I wanted the edit to be as short as possible, so in the end I opted not to.

BTW, the submission to the database has not been approved yet...If anyone who can approve it passes by this thread, could you please take a look at it

This is a great cut of the two movies. It turned 4.1 hours of footage into 2.5 hours, and I didn’t miss any of the cut Prometheus scenes and didn’t even notice any of the cut Covenant scenes. It did remind me how terrible Covenant is though. This is an excellent piece of work and well worth watching if you want to salvage any of the prequel Alien movies.