Director Ridley Scott originally had quite a different outcome for his “Alien” protagonist Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver).
The 1979 sci-fi classic is heralded not only as one of the best thrillers of all time, but also for its forward-thinking approach at the time, centering on a strong-willed woman as the hero. But it turns out, in an early version of the script, Ripley would have been killed off at the end of the movie.
Scott told Entertainment Weekly that in the original finale, when Ripley is in the escape shuttle and it’s revealed that the alien is on board, the creature gets the better of her.
“I thought that the alien should come in, and Ripley harpoons it, and it makes no difference, so it slams through her mask and rips her head off,” Scott said.
He added that he would’ve then cut to the tentacles of the alien pressing buttons on the dashboard.
“It would mimic Captain Dallas saying, ‘I’m signing off,’” he said.
That’s quite a chilling ending. And Scott almost lost his job because of it.
“The first executive from Fox arrived on set within 14 hours, threatening to fire me on the spot,” Scott said of when he pitched the ending to the studio. “So we didn’t do that [ending].”
It certainly would have been tough to make a franchise with that ending. Scott’s latest chapter in the “Alien” franchise, “Alien: Covenant,” will be in theaters May 19.
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