The Space Jockey's (Engineer's) ship seen near the beginning of Alien.
For years the satirical outlet The Onion has entertained me. Once they went online I also became a fan of The A.V. Club (which as I recall used to be a movie/television/music review page stuffed in the middle of the printed version of The Onion newspaper). One of the regular features of The A.V. Club is Great Job, Internet! where the editors post about interesting finds on the World Wide Web. On June 11, 2015 they posted an article and embedded video entitled Derelict, an edit of the films Alien and Prometheus by Job Willins and hosted on Vimeo. Luckily I watched the video yesterday because today it has been taken down (Even at that, it was difficult to see the video. A search of Vimeo app on the Apple TV didn't turn up anything. Fortunately the embedded video at The AV Club worked, but even that has been taken down now.)
For readers who have not seen one or both of Alien or Prometheus the remainder of this article may contain spoilers (Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father) and you should stop reading now.
What Job Willins has done is edited and intercut the two films into a single 2.5 hour story. Both films have been converted to black and white. Alien is one of my favorite films, though I found it really difficult to watch Kane's (John Hurt) chestburster scene until it was later parodied in Spaceballs. Mr. Willins mentions how both films look good in black and white (and I agree, especially Alien, since the palette was so dark to begin with, re-rendering them in B&W actually reveals details in scenes I had not noticed before). However, I also want to mention how good Alien sounds. The communications between crew members of the Nostromo remind me of the NASA communications during the Apollo era. If you get a chance, listen to the exchange between Capt. Dallas (Tom Skerritt) and Brett and Parker (Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto respectively) during the assessment of ship's damage after landing. When I first heard about the film Prometheus, I had high hopes for the prequel to Alien, which Prometheus is and yet is not. My expectations were so diminished by the initial reviews of the film in theaters that I just waited to see it on Blu-ray (and actually didn't see it until last summer. My Netflix queue is kind of long). Like many fans I was hoping to see the characters in Prometheus put all the elements in place for Alien to pick up. The blended film Derelict manages to point out how similar the two films and thus raises my estimation of Prometheus.
I recently watched Alien on a flight from Baltimore to Houston and several thoughts occurred to me. First was the idea that the xenomorph is a metaphor for disease, possibly cancer though AIDS seems to be a more appropriate fit. Second was the idea that the events of the film (and of the later film Prometheus) could be viewed as a reminder to obey safety regulations and safety protocols in the workplace. My wife is involved in promoting workplace safety and eliminating workplace hazards and thus I frequently look at activities from the point of assessing their level of safety or danger. In Alien, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) enforces the 24-hour quarantine rule barring bringing an alien organism on the ship, only to have her efforts undercut by Ash (Ian Holm). Of course, without this plot element, there is no movie. In Prometheus, David (Michael Fassbender) is told not to touch the vases oozing a black goo, but while the rest of the landing party is distracted by a sand storm, he brings a vase back to the ship and deliberately infects a crew member. Once again, had he obeyed orders, the movie would have had to take a very different direction.
A third point (one of the similarities revealed by watching the two films in parallel) is that of the conflict of interest between the safety of the crew and the objectives of Weyland Industries (which at some point becomes the conglomerate Weyland-Yutani Corporation). In Prometheus, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) is a rich guy who wants to live forever and doesn't care how many other people have to die for him to reach his goal. In Alien, the company wants the xenomorph for research, perhaps to weaponize it. The company even establishes "Special Order 937" (Priority one: Insure return of organism for analysis. All other considerations secondary. Crew expendable.) The robots Ash and David act to carry out the wishes of the company and of Weyland. Perhaps these films should be viewed in the light of labor/management relations. While David is introduced as a robot in Prometheus, I confess that I did not realize Ash was a robot until he is disabled by Ripley, Parker, and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright). Every time I re-watch Alien, I look for clues that Ash is a robot and I just don't see any. He is the ship's science officer, so of course, he's a little odd.
Perhaps I have lost the thread of what I intended to say, but I'll wrap up by saying that if you get a chance to see Derelict, it is worth the investment. Job Willins has clearly achieved something. I look forward to his future work as a film editor.