Movies
There Was Going to Be a Xenomorph vs Neomorph Fight in ‘Alien: Covenant’
Let… them… fight!
Not only did Alien: Covenant bring back the classic Xenomorph (two of them, in fact), but it also introduced the brand new, all-white creature known as the Neomorph. Like many, I was expecting that a Neomorph and a Xenomorph would at some point share the screen – it never happened, but it was originally part of the plan!
The website Alien-Covenant.com just got the exclusive scoop that a Xenomorph vs. Neomorph battle scene was going to be featured in Alien: Covenant (it’s in the novelization, for what it’s worth), but was ultimately scrapped when it proved to be impossible to actually pull off.
The site writes:
According to our sources, the scene was originally going to play out when Daniels, Walter/David and Lope are running towards the lander, which Tennessee boarded to rescue the surviving Covenant crew. The Neomorph was going to be the one chasing Daniels and Lope and during that chase scene the Xenomorph would have revealed itself, attacking the Neomorph and asserting itself as the dominant Alien lifeform.
The scene was meant to convey just how much larger and nastier the Xenomorph was compared to the already aggressive Neomorph.
They add that the troublesome scene was probably never even completed, so don’t expect to find it on the home video release of Alien: Covenant.
It’s been eight years since Ari Aster came onto the scene and helped usher in a new wave of horror with Hereditary, one of the rare horror movies from the past ten years that still seems to come up in conversation every single week. And it’s back in the conversation this week, with Ari Aster revealing at an event that he’s already written a prequel to Hereditary!
Ari Aster was on hand at the American Cinematheque for Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair last week, a Los Angeles festival that screened all of Aster’s movies to date. The website Gold Derby reports that Aster revealed the Hereditary prequel script during a Q&A at the event, and you can watch the full Q&A conversation below for confirmation on the website’s report.
“I wrote a prequel to this,” Aster told the crowd, referring to Hereditary. “It never feels like the right time to do it. It’s a prequel, not a sequel so I don’t know where this goes.”
Would a potential Hereditary prequel dig deeper into the mythology of demon king Paimon? Unfortunately, Aster provides no further details on his prequel approach at this time.
Aster said of Hereditary during the same Q&A, “I was just trying to make a really good horror movie.” I think most horror fans would agree that he more than accomplished that goal, and the past eight years have proven that Hereditary is an enduring classic of its generation.
We celebrated the fifth anniversary of Hereditary here on BD back in 2023.
Ron Breton wrote, “Hereditary offers a similar emotional resonance to this new generation of horror – my generation of horror– as movie-goers in the seventies when they first saw Exorcist. Much like Aster’s film, we see the incomprehensible evil wear the face of a young girl; the victim of a raw deal she had no say in, as it tears a family to its core. Sure, both films offer so many terrifying visuals that can make the hair stand up on anyone’s neck – but it also depicts intense relationships and emotions that are tangible. Real. Familiar.”
“In that familiarity lies the uncanny, ready to rear its ugly head and force us to confront thoughts and horrors laying dormant and clawing at our psyche,” Breton continued his 5th anniversary celebration of Hereditary. “And it doesn’t matter if it’s been five or fifty years. These horrors are always there, as we become pawns in its horrible, hopeless machine.”
Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, Ann Dowd, and Milly Shapiro star in Hereditary. In the film, “A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.”
That’s putting it mildly, eh?!
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