Nearly all movies are tested in front of an audience before released to the public. There are many reasons behind this, and typically it’s a power play for studio heads to trick data into forcing filmmakers into change. Simply by steering the questions to receive the response wanted, one could ascertain that a film needs to have its opening or closing worked on, or that certain scenes aren’t working. This is a conversation for another day, though, as we’re focusing on Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, which was trimmed by approximately 20 minutes after a test screening.
“I always come out at almost 2:23 first cut,” Scott told Collider. “Look at it, and go ‘I’ve got to get to two hours.'”
Scott gets into the reasoning behind the snips, which I strongly disagree with:
The only reason I take my hat off occasionally to screenings is you think you know everything, but you know you don’t. Something inordinately simple you’ve assumed everyone understands and they don’t. That’s the key thing, isn’t it? You know when it’s a bit too long. And also, if you’re a bit too long you then ask “Right speed? Too slow? Too fast?” If they go “no, too fast” you go “shit, I’ve got to slow down” – because as you edit, you can get weary and want to cut, cut, cut.
Scott’s listening to fans way too much, and it’s resulted in a confused Prometheus sequel that appears to be losing its audience in the box office. As an artist, Scott should have been going with his gut, and do what he’s passionate about. If he were to listen to critics he should have been doing so with a grain of salt. This reminds me of what happened with Rob Zombie’s Halloween; Zombie was trying to do his own thing while also appeasing the fans of the franchise, which resulted in an unwatchable franken-movie.
But I digress, with about 20 minutes of cut footage it would be nice to see some of this on the home video release, although we don’t know if there are entire scenes edited out or just some banter between characters in the middle of a sequence. The Prometheus release was loaded with goodies, so I’m hoping we see a lot of new footage, not to mention Luke Scott’s short films edited into the film (no way that happens, but it would be cool).
Watch for updated box office numbers as they arrive, as well as home video details.
