Ridley Scott, the genius director behind some of the movies like Alien, The Martian, and, Gladiator, almost made his 1979 film a traumatic experience for millions of fans.
Being a director who often works in the sci-fi field, Ridley Scott directed and created the iconic 1979 film Alien. With Sigourney Weaver in the lead role, the film was something quite extraordinary.
The Ending Was Different
With Weaver portraying the character of Ellen Ripley in the film, all of her crewmates start dying one by one, dying at the hands of the alien Xenomorph on board the Nostromo.
Things take a turn for the worse when Ellen Ripley is the last surviving member onboard Nostromo (and Jonesy, the orange cat). The Xenomorph makes an appearance in the airlock that Ripley is hiding in.
When a sudden hand of the alien appears, Sigourney Weaver is terrified of it. Thinking quickly on her feet, Weaver wears her EV suit and pushes the button for airlock opening. The airlocks open and the Xenomorph is sucked into the nothingness of space.
However, his hands stay stuck on the door frame when Ripley shoots a small harpoon that pushes the alien out. Quickly shutting the door, Ripley sees the alien climbing back on the ship and into the engine thrusters. Igniting the thrusters, the alien is burned alive and drops from Nostromo.
Ellen Ripley reports back to the command center her mission status and the movie ends on a melancholic note. This ending was loved by millions of fans around the world. However, this wasn’t the original ending that Ridley Scott had intended.
Ridley Scott Had Something Else On Mind
Well, from the creative and yet genius mind of Ridley Scott, the alternate ending of Alien was brutal and terrible to imagine for Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley.
As per a report by SlashFilm, Scott revealed that the original ending was that the Xenomorph “slams through her mask and rips her head off.” Then the alien would take a long look at his own self before sitting at the console of the ship.
Imitating the perfect voice of Dallas (one of the astronauts), the alien states that he is coming home. Back on Earth, instead of finding a sleeping Ellen Ripley, humans would have been greeted with the terrible Xenomorph and that would have been the end of Alien.
However, this ending was considered too bleak, and hence, Ridley Scott had no choice but to change it. The end result was a film that spanned multiple prequels, spin-offs, and a franchise.
Alien received a rating of 8.5/10 on IMDB and a whopping 93% on Rotten Tomatoes after its release. P.S.: The reason why Ellen Ripley was the sole surviving astronaut at the end of the film was because having a female hero survive till the end was a shocking factor for movie-watchers.
The iconic film is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
