Editorials
Badass ‘Prometheus’ Alternate Scene Would’ve Made the Movie So Much Cooler!
When it was released in 2012, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus more or less split audiences right down the middle. While some felt that the film was a total mess, full of plot holes and plagued by frustratingly unanswered questions, others praised the heady sci-fi flick for working as both its own movie and a clever prequel to the original Alien. I personally fell into the latter camp, and consider Prometheus a more-than-worthy addition to the overall Alien mythology.
But there’s one scene they kind of messed up.
In the film, the character Fifield (played by Sean Harris) falls into a puddle of alien goo shortly after discovering the creatures known as Hammerpedes, and later is shown to have been completely mutated into some sort of monster. His face melted and his forehead bulged out, the hideous Fifield goes on a bloody rampage inside the hangar bay, and is ultimately crushed underneath the tires of a group transport vehicle. It’s a confusing scene, as it’s unclear what exactly the alien goo has turned Fifield into, and many fans have noted that he looks more like an infected zombie than anything else.
The original version of that scene was SO MUCH COOLER.
In the original Prometheus script (titled Alien: Engineers, at the time), writer Jon Spaihts used the transformation of Fifield as a means to more directly connect the film to Alien. When Fifield shows back up at the hangar bay, he has quite literally transformed into a Xenomorph, described as having an elongated skull, impossibly long arms, claw-like talons, and dorsal tubes tearing out of his spacesuit. Sounds pretty cool, right? What’s even cooler is that the scene, as Spaihts originally wrote it, was actually created in post-production.
When Prometheus hit Blu-ray, the four-disc set contained a whopping 7+ hours of bonus features, including a 3 1/2 hour documentary and all sorts of deleted/extended/alternate scenes. The most must-watch of those scenes that were left on the cutting room floor is hands down the original Fifield attack sequence, which is pretty close to Spaihts’ original vision for the scene.
With generous amounts of CGI laid over top of the practical makeup effects, the alternate scene reveals that the black goo literally turns human hosts into Xenomorphs, adding another layer to the mythology of the creatures and making for a pretty chilling sequence that makes a whole lot more sense than the one that ended up in the finished cut of the film. Yea, for once, CGI was kind of a good thing.
Ultimately, the added-in-post CGI was removed from the scene, presumably because Ridley Scott desired to separate Prometheus from the Alien franchise a bit more than was originally intended. Then again, the film does end with a baby Xenomorph being born, so one has to wonder why this incredibly badass version of Fifield’s transformation didn’t make the final cut.
Is it just me or would a human-Xenomorph hybrid have made Prometheus so much cooler?
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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