Well this sure would’ve changed the course of the franchise.
Some hardcore fans of Alien may already know this, but Ridley Scott did not originally intend on Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) surviving the events of the 1979 sci-fi/horror classic. Speaking with Entertainment Weekly this week, Scott dug into his original vision for the ending of the film, which would’ve seen the Xenomorph literally decapitating the beloved genre heroine!
Scott explained:
“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.” Next, Scott says, he’d have cut to the tentacles of the alien pressing buttons on the dashboard. “It would mimic Captain Dallas [Skerritt] saying, ‘I’m signing off.'”
“The first executive from Fox arrived on set within 14 hours, threatening to fire me on the spot. So we didn’t do that [ending].”
Of course, we never would’ve gotten Alien sequels starring Sigourney Weaver if Ripley was decapitated at the end of Alien, nor would Ripley be revered to this day as a badass final girl. Just goes to show that sometimes, changing one thing can change a whole lot of things!
We’re glad you lived, Ripley. So glad.