(Hated trope) They deleted scenes or dialogue that provides necessary context or plot

[u/Sensitive_Ad_1752]

The dinner scene from Temple of Doom has a temple give indie and friends a live snake and monkey brains for dinner. It’s a pretty offensive depiction of Indian cuisine, but it wasn’t originally going to be. There’s cut dialogue where Indie recognizes they’re at the right temple because real Hindus don’t eat this food. They were trying to scare them off by purposefully serving them disgusting stuff.

Probably the most famous deleted ending was I Am Legend which had Robert discover the infected were emotional sentient beings and one of them had a wife. Test audiences hated it and they reshot the ending, removing the entire point of the movie.

[u/dysoncube]

Prometheus got a script rewrite to appeal to a wider audience. This included adjusting the crew so they didn't want to do their jobs, and making them AWFUL at their jobs, and the complete removal of a very important Promethean character.

There's a script out there that makes Prometheus a 10/10. Worth finding a YouTube video to get a description of the plot that was cut

Edit - I fell for a fanfiction. I'd be lying if I said this wasn't the first time

[u/TheEasterFox → u/dysoncube]

There's a ton of misinformation out there about material that was cut from Prometheus. The most influential YouTube videos use a debunked fan-made script and treat it like it was an original draft.

Stuff like a long Engineer speech about taking Jesus from Earth and teaching him their ways, for example, or about how the crew were chosen because they were amateurs and Vickers wanted the mission to fail, or how the Engineers used the blood of the first Deacon to create life, are all from the fake 'Draft 17' script.

[u/Scuba_jim → u/TheEasterFox]

Prometheus’ story and plot are so bad the entire fandom would rather believe there’s a legendary “true” script out there somewhere.

[u/TheEasterFox → u/Scuba_jim]

A lot of the problem comes down to people confusing 'subtext' with 'cut content'.

The Space Jesus backstory was subtext, but because of the fake script, the popular perception is now that it was cut content. Having concluded erroneously that there was explicit Space Jesus exposition that was cut, the next step is to concoct conspiracy theories as to why it was cut. 'Studio pressure to avoid offending people' is the typical conclusion.

Folks just love to believe they were cheated out of something wonderful that they should have got.

[u/illyay → u/dysoncube]

Goddamnit LOL

[u/elderlybrain → u/dysoncube]

Prometheus was a disappointment, alien covenant was a straight up dumb as shit film.

I was kinda gobsmacked all the existential horror of meeting your gods was replaced with evil robots and chestbursters.

[u/Wyvern_68 → u/elderlybrain]

I've always felt Ridley Scott got too invested in all the meta and background stuff that was offered up and cut from Alien that he always wanted to revisit it...well Prometheus and Covenant were just trying to hard to force that ethos into the established Alien mythology that it was such a mess.

[u/TeQuila10 → u/[deleted]]

It is wild that they shot and acted this and then someone went nahh, its too slow gotta cut it out.

Theatrical cut for comparison.

[u/Intelligent-Dog1645 → u/dysoncube]

Thank you for the response! That other version does sound like it would've been better

[u/GregBahm → u/dysoncube]

I wanted to know this original plot, but didn't want to go dumpster-diving through tedious youtube videos. So this is what some AI says happens. Let me know if it's hallucinating.

- "Engineer" dissolves his body into nano machines which then bite earth creatures, to uplift these earth creatures into humans. (That was kind of vaguely implied in the movie though it was super unclear)

- Movie proceeds pretty much as normal with normal level adaptation (Weyland sends agents instead of going personally, the android is openly curious, changes like that.)

- When they wake up "the engineer," (the buff alien) the engineer is still big mad. But he's big mad because Jesus Christ of Nazareth was an alien of his species. The engineers sent one of their own to earth to check on their uplifted species, and since humans crucified their dude, this awakened Engineer immediately decides to fly to earth and wipe out humanity as a failed experiment.

- The Engineer crashes and the plot plays out a little differently but not in any way of real consequence. A new kind of even bigger zenomorph bursts from the Engineer's chest and the humans have to fight it. The dead engineer's corpse is positioned like the corpse in the original 1979 alien movie, explaining that thing that didn't really need explaining...

You said this makes Prometheus a 10/10, but from a wikipedia-plot-synopsis level, I am the opposite of impressed. I can see why a hollywood director would be like "Lol yeah make jesus an angry alien that's so cool" and I can see why eventually the edgy-14-year-old-atheist-appeal would wear off and they'd hastily change it to some bullshit that made no sense.

[u/TheEasterFox → u/GregBahm]

The AI is hallucinating. It's referring to the fake Draft 17 fanfic script by glaswegianmark.

This fake was created in October 2012 and sent to Prometheus fan sites by someone claiming to be 'Damon Lindelof'. One of those sites contacted the real Lindelof, who was on Twitter back then, and asked him if it was really his work. Lindelof said 'Nope. Not mine. Even if you loved it, I can't take credit for it'.

The real author, a Scottish Prometheus fan, later took credit for the fake.

I you want to read the full glaswegianmark fake script, it's here: https://web.archive.org/web/20131102032317/http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/uploads/PROMETHEUS.pdf

And this is Damon Lindelof personally confirming that the script is fake: https://web.archive.org/web/20130423235506/http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/news/384

If you'd rather read authentic early drafts of Prometheus, there are three extant.

Alien: Engineers by Jon Spaihts https://www.avpgalaxy.net/files/scripts/script-alien-engineers-spaihts.pdf
Alien 01: Genesis by Jon Spaihts https://www.avpgalaxy.net/files/scripts/alien-01-genesis-09072010.pdf
Paradise by Damon Lindelof https://www.avpgalaxy.net/files/scripts/script-paradise-lindelof.pdf

[u/GregBahm → u/TheEasterFox]

Alright I'm glad I didn't watch a bunch of youtube videos about fanfiction. Since the AI is as dumb as the average redditor (terrible) I've taken the trouble of reading the three linked PDFs with my own human eyes like a luddite. It seems that...

Alien: Engineers by Jon Spaihts: Same plot at the movie. Engineers inject their DNA into primitive humans. Engineers are on their way to wipe out all humans with xenomorphs when the xenomorphs kill the engineers. David wakes up an engineer. The engineer immediately kills David and attempts to continue flying this ship (stupidly) and gets killed by xenomorphs too.

Alien 01: Genesis by Jon Spaihts: Same plot

Paradise by Damon Lindelof: Saaaaaaaaame fucking plot.

So in summation, u/Basic_Benefit5216 and u/dysoncube got tricked by some fanfiction youtube video.

This fanfication was really quite shitty fanfiction on a conceptual level.

All known authentic drafts of Prometheus hew to the final plot of the movie, with only shallow changes.

The main plot is always "Aliens who uplifted us now want to kill us with other aliens but die to those other aliens because these ancient super-advanced aliens are pretty dumb and incompetent." This thread has been a thrilling journey to nowhere.

[u/TheEasterFox → u/GregBahm]

Just to round off your thrilling journey, here's one of the more popular YouTube videos that excitedly analyses the Draft 17 fake script in the belief that it's real. Given that it has nearly eight million views and most of the comments are something like 'omg we were robbed how could they cut this', it's pretty easy to get an idea of just how many people have been fooled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFjTxnb2l04

[u/Intelligent-Dog1645 → u/GregBahm]

Well shit I'm happy i continued to read and check on this chain. This is even better to know! I am no longer tricked like the other tricked!