History WhatCouldHaveBeen / Alien

* Scott [[https://alienseries.wordpress.com/2012/10/19/filming-the-fourth-act/ drew storyboards]] depicting an extended climax between Ripley and the alien, in which she's also hurled out into space with the alien, then she shoots at it in the head with a pistol, climbs back into the escape ship with the cable of the harpoon gun and blasts the shuttle's propellers on the alien, disintegrating it onscreen. It was cut because the movie already went way over budget. Scott also planned to insert a [[TheStinger stinger]] that showed an egg/alien spawn being left aboard.

* Creator/NeillBlomkamp had been making conceptual art in his free time as a possible but unlikely film pitch since Fox didn't even know about his ideas. When the art was released on the internet, Fox surprisingly took interest and hired him for the project. However, the film was put on hold pending ''Alien: Covenant'', Blomkamp has moved on to other projects, and Ridley Scott has stated he intends to retain creative control of the franchise until he dies. Scott eventually stated that Blomkamp's film -- titled ''Alien: Awakening'' -- didn't develop beyond a basic outline and was ultimately scrapped by FOX.

** In this version, the Engineer's sacrifice was not done in order to generate life in a prebiotic Earth, but to infuse his DNA on human cavemen around 12,000 BC; the Earth's biosphere was either natural or previously terraformed by them. The black goo was absent, and the sacrifice was performed with black scarab-like bugs who ate the Engineer alive. As a last touch, the Engineers in this version were much bigger, matching the original Space Jockey at around fifteen feet tall, and were earless.
** Weyland Corp was Weyland Industries, the ''Prometheus'' was called the ''Magellan'', and the setting would have been the original LV-426, the moon from the first film, instead of LV-223.

** The script averted most of the IdiotBall moments introduced in the rewrite, most eminently regarding Fifield and Millburn. In this version, Fifield was ''not'' in charge of mapping the Engineer facility, and both he and Millburn had forgot their wrist computers, explaining how they got lost. Similarly, Janek could not have them watched over the radio because signal was completely lost. (Millburn's idiotical decision to play with an alien worm was already there, though.) Many other moments were absent as well.

** The film would have included more elements from the ''Alien'' franchise, featuring regular Xenomorphs and other Xenomorph variations created by the Engineers, including the Octo-Facehugger, which would give birth to a "Beluga-Xenomorph" very similar to the Neomorph from ''Covenant''. Instead of the Deacon alien, a Xenomorph over sixteen feet tall, the Ultramorph, was supposed emerge from the Engineer. Also, Holloway would have died via chestburster while having sex with Watts.
** The Engineer actually fought with weapons, killing several crewmembers with some kind of alien technology guns. He didn't initially wear his species bio-armor, which was instead fitted on him by one of his machines.
** The script left unknown why did the Engineers wanted to destroy humanity, and it was only mentioned that their plan was apparently developed around 1700 years before the film's date (which makes it incompatible with the reason given in ''Prometheus''). David offered Watts to help her rebuild his body in order to get out of the planet, but she didn't immediately accept his offer, and the film ended with the Engineers facilities sending an automatic signal to their homeworld, implying they would come by themselves to the planet.

** In this version of the film, David was modelled after a young Weyland, implying they were going to be played by the same actor (with the presumable exception of his old version). Weyland himself was going to appear several times speaking holographically to David and Vickers, though reserving for the end the revelation that he was not talking to them from Earth, but from the ship itself.
** David's god complex is hinted to start when Shaw makes him read the Bible during the long travel to the planet. This drives him to read all the other religious texts of humanity, and makes him conclude that humans are violent, hypocritical and flawed.
** Holloway is portrayed much more negatively than in the final cut, as he originally had ''countless'' moments of being a jerkass towards David, openly discriminating against him for being an android, which plays a role in David poisoning him. Holloway's relationship with Shaw is more disfunctional, as he also mocks Shaw's goals and existential doubts when drunk, to the point she physically attacks him while he is ranting against her. David's infatuation with Shaw is shown more clearly, adding a motivation of jealously on him.
** On the other hand, Vickers is a much more sympathetic character. She considers Weyland ignorant and arrogant for his god delusions, and hates him not only for his whimsical management of the corporation, but also because he had effectively replaced her with David in all of his family photos, not even bothering to hide the notion that she was worthless to him next to David. Vickers also strikes a true bond with Janek instead of mere flirting, as he consolates her when he sees her crying after a holographic reunion with Weyland. When she urges Janek to return to Earth rather than ramming the Engineer ship, it is because she believes the Earth's defense systems will shoot it down.
** The idiocy of the scientific crewmen is justified because Vickers was the one who hired them, and it is implied that she handpicked deliberately the '''least competent''' scientists in order for Weyland's quest to fail. Both Janek and a mercenary lieuetenant named Jackson deduce this, with the latter even being shocked that a biologist like Millburn is "dumber than a swamp rat". It is also revealed that Fifield is psychologically unstable and a drug user due to trauma received in other missions.
** Holloway takes off his helmet not just because the air was merely breathable, but because they found proof that the Engineers facilities were part of an ancient terraforming project, which made him assume the Engineers had ensured there were no dangerous organisms or pathogens in the air. His decision is still reckless, but not as much as in the final film.

** Instead of simply dying by the Hammerpede, Millburn mutates too, possibly due to the beastie rather than the black goo, and he becomes a pathetic, fetus-like giant that gets burned to death while trying to hug a scared Janek. Similarly, Fifield's mutated form looked less like a malformed Frankenstein and more like a cross between a man and a Xenomorph, with atrophied eyes and an elongated head (which was how they [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ireq92-7Kk8 filmed it]] initially), and the script states this was the next step of evolution the Engineers had planned for humanity. The sequence when he kills crewmen was much gorier, even cannibalizing one of them at one point, and it was located later in the story, while Weyland and company are leaving for the facility (which again can still be seen in the filmed scene, where one of the vehicles can be seen driving away).
** The Engineers here were much taller than in the final film, correctly matching the fossilized pilot from ''Alien'' at 13-15 feet tall, and they had explicitly a BarbieDollAnatomy, having lost their ability to reproduce at some moment of their history. Their lifespan was mentioned to be at six figures, though they eventually reached at some point a state where even talking took out centuries of life from them.

** Although it is ambiguous whether it would have been subtitled for the audience, the Engineer's plans towards Earth were revealed too in the dialogue with the last of them. After creating humanity, Engineers were upset at seeing that humans were war-like and violent, so they descended as gods to "save their souls". As it didn't work, they then took a human (not named, but obviously Jesus), taught him the value of life, and send it back to preach it, only to see humans punishing him. Now angry at this, the Engineers decided to wipe out humanity to start life over again on Earth, which they called "Rapture". However, either the black goo or the Xenomorph race escaped their control, and the rest is history.
** The fall of the Engineer ship and Vicker's death happens in a different way, not the one portrayed in the film where Vickers looked like an idiot by trying to outrun the rolling spaceship.
** The Deacon scene had originally it leaving the module and purposefully striding out towards the wrecked Engineer ship, not unlike the original ending to ''Alien'', thus possibly implying it was intelligent. However, the script also contained an additional epilogue that connected the film to ''Prometheus 2'': it had Shaw waking up on the second Engineer ship, with a only half-rebuilt David piloting, to discover that they had finally reached the Engineer homeworld. The last line was David announcing her presence was required outside.

** Many fans have theorized that the ''Film/{{Zygote}}'' short film Blomkamp released in 2017 retained many elements that he had originally planned to include in ''Alien 5''. The most obvious signs are the two main characters being Expies of Hicks and Newt who are forced to fight and flee from an alien abomination. It's also been noted how the actress portraying the heroine of the short film, Dakota Fanning, was a perfect match for an older Newt.

* In the original script by Dan O'Bannon, the derrelect Engineer ship resembled a large mushroom, probably meant to evoke the classical UFO shape, whose inner corridor had marks of some kind of desintegrator gun, as if there had been a full-fledged battle inside. The Engineer corpse was originally a skeleton, not a fossil, and wasn't a large humanoid, but "a grotesque thing, bearing no resemblance to the human form" whose head they took to analyze. But most importantly, the Alien eggs weren't in the ship itself, but in a nearby pyramid in the planet's surface, built by a race completely different from the Engineers, whose shape the Engineer pilot had scratched in his panel. Inside the pyramid, where there was breathable air, they would find hieroglyphics showing creatures "half anthropoid, half octopus," presumably its true builders. As it can be inferred, many of those ideas were later reused in both ''Film/AlienVsPredator'' and ''Film/{{Prometheus}}''.

* Early drafts of the script by Whedon included an extended sequence where the survivors drive a jeep through the Auriga's garden complex while being attacked on all sides by xenomorphs, as well as a very different ending where Ripley and Call would battle the Newborn (a four-legged, eyeless derivative of the Alien Queen with pincers on the sides of its head) on a snowy mountain using a farm machine called the "Harvester", that was salvaged from the spaceship. Additionally, the original drafts included several more characters, and the characters who made it to the final were originally very different. Christie in the final film is a (watered-down) composite of the original Christie (tall calm black warrior guy) and a character called St. Just (hedonistic Asian fancy gunslinger). Hillard was older and tougher, and effectively became the leader of the crew of the ''Betty'' after Elgyn's death. There was also a rookie character on the ''Betty'' called Rane, and another USM soldier taken hostage with [=DiStephano=]. Vriess was more congenial, Call was less vulnerable, General Perez was ''much'' more badass and less of a ditz, and mostly significantly Ripley actually [[CharacterDevelopment became more humanlike throughout the story]] to the point that she had ''no'' connection or sympathy toward the aliens by the end, unlike the finished film. Details can be found [[http://www.cc2k.us/component/content/1801?task=view here]]

* Jeunet wanted to include a scene where a mosquito would bite Ripley - and then be dissolved from the acid in her blood. He had to drop the idea when the SFX team told him how much it would cost.

* Perez was supposed to die by being sucked through a hole in the side of his ship. Blood from a Xenomorph that is killed during the evacuation of the Auriga splatters on one of the ship's windows, and Peréz is gruesomely sucked out through the opening until all that remains is his skull, with air continuing to rush out through his evacuated eye socket. Several nearby soldiers cling to the walls and floor against the depressurization until a watch one of them is wearing is torn free and flies across the room, blocking the socket in Peréz's skull and sealing the hull breach. Jeunet felt this was too spectacular for such a minor character, and so that death was given to [[spoiler: the Newborn]] instead. Perez's actual death was almost cut, as the studio disliked it, but kept in after test audiences responded favourably to it.
* [[https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Resurrection_deleted_scenes There were a whole load of ideas that didn't make the cut]].

* The original draft of what would become ''Film/{{Prometheus}}'' was Jon Spaihts' 2009 script, ''Alien: Engineers''. It was far more closely tied to set the movie up as a direct prequel to ''Film/{{Alien}}'' while still allowing for a sequel departing from it as Scott had always wished. The main cause of the film's massive rewrite was Scott's decision to hire Damon Lindelof (the writer for ''Series/{{Lost}}'') to review the script, leading to their joint decision to remove the direct connections to ''Alien'' and revamp the story as something different.

* Originally, when Ripley opened the hatch on the ''Narcissus'', she too was sucked out by the explosive decompression, ending up hanging in space attached to a safety cable with the Xenomorph clinging to the end. She uses a gun to shoot the creature in the head but with little effect, before she scrambles back aboard the shuttle, sealing the hatch behind her. The Alien, still alive, begins clawing at the hatch, so Ripley ignites the shuttle's engines and sets it alight, flinging it away into space where it explodes. This was cut due to a lack of budget.
* One final idea was a SequelHook showing either an Egg or a second Alien stowed away on the hull of the Narcissus after Ripley kills the first creature, although the footage was never filmed.

* According to Creator/HarryDeanStanton, Brett originally uttered several humorous lines while hunting for Jones in the landing claw chamber shortly before his death. Utliamtely these was cut for fear they would break the tension that was building at that point.

* Creator/NeillBlomkamp had been making conceptual art in his free time as a possible but unlikely film pitch since Fox didn't even know about his ideas. When the art was released on the internet, Fox surprisingly took interest and hired him for the project. However, the film was put on hold pending ''Alien: Covenant'', Blomkamp has moved on to other projects, and Ridley Scott has stated he intends to retain creative control of the franchise until he dies. Scott eventually stated that Blomkamp's film -- titled ''Alien: Awakening -- didn't develop beyond a basic outline and was ultimately scrapped by FOX.

* Originally, hen Ripley opened the hatch on the ''Narcissus'', she too was sucked out by the explosive decompression, ending up hanging in space attached to a safety cable with the Xenomorph clinging to the end. She uses a gun to shoot the creature in the head but with little effect, before she scrambles back aboard the shuttle, sealing the hatch behind her. The Alien, still alive, begins clawing at the hatch, so Ripley ignites the shuttle's engines and sets it alight, flinging it away into space where it explodes. This was cut due to a lack of budget.

* Before the script was altered to have Golic die when he frees the Dragon from captivity, he originally survived the incident, with the Xenomorph simply running past him when he opened the waste tank door. Following this, he spies on Ripley when she scans herself inside the wrecked EEV. When he sees the Chestburster she is carrying on the monitor, he grins.

* In the script, Bishop's manufacturer is said to be [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} Cyberdyne Systems. This was changed for filming to the less on-the-nose Hyperdyne Systems.

** Finally, Vincent Ward's spec script would have had Ripley crashland on a "wooden planet", populated by a group of monks who would see her as a temptress and the alien as an incarnation of the devil. She would find Newt's tattered clothing at one point in the film, and it would climax with the final surviving monk ''giving Ripley CPR in order to drive the chestburster out of her body and into his'', sacrificing himself in the process. There would also be a scene where some of the monks are using the communal toilets (which have no doors, so that they might talk to each other), and one of them would have been eaten by an alien who came out of the toilet. The whole thing was heavily inspired by the works of Hieronymus Bosch and, if the concept art seen in the special edition [=DVD=] is any indication, it would have been a perfect storm of terror.

* The script was written gender-neutrally, meaning any of the characters could be any gender. Given Ripley's feminist icon status, a male Ripley would have certainly altered the series quite a bit.

* The film was tentatively named ''Prometheus 2''. It was later changed to ''Aliens: Paradise Lost'' (a reference to the unused titled for ''Prometheus'', ''Paradise'') and then to ''Alien: Covenant''.
* Creator/RidleyScott and Damon Lindeloff originally intended the ''Prometheus'' series to distance itself even further from the ''Alien'' series, exploring Shaw's and David's adventures seeking the Engineer homeworld. Scott retracted this idea and sought to tie the sequel back into the ''Alien'' saga -- with his proposed prequel to ''Alien: Covenant'', ''Alien: Awakening'' being a direct prequel... but ''Covenant''[='=]s lacklustre reception has put the series' future in question.

* In an interview, Ridley Scott stated that [[spoiler:initially the Engineers ''were'' going to be the creators of the Xenomorphs, with David trying to reproduce their work by hybridizing different Neomorph strains -- which is retained in the novelization -- and the Xenomorphs that appeared were biomechanical. However, late in development he thought it would be more interesting if David was the sole creator of the species, and deliberately removed the biomechanical features from the film's Xenomorph]].

* Creator/DannyBoyle was Fox's first choice to direct. Boyle later said he thought Whedon's script was brilliant, but didn't trust the studio to give him creative freedom. He ultimately turned down the film in order to make ''Film/ALifeLessOrdinary''. Creator/PeterJackson was asked to direct, but declined as he could not get excited about an ''Alien'' film. Creator/DavidCronenberg was an early choice to direct but later passed. Creator/TerryGilliam and Creator/BryanSinger were also approached.

* Early drafts of the ''Film/AlienResurrection'' script by Whedon included an extended sequence where the survivors drive a jeep through the Auriga's garden complex while being attacked on all sides by xenomorphs, as well as a very different ending where Ripley and Call would battle the Newborn (a four-legged, eyeless derivative of the Alien Queen with pincers on the sides of its head) on a snowy mountain using a farm machine called the "Harvester", that was salvaged from the spaceship. Additionally, the original drafts included several more characters, and the characters who made it to the final were originally very different. Christie in the final film is a (watered-down) composite of the original Christie (tall calm black warrior guy) and a character called St. Just (hedonistic Asian fancy gunslinger). Hillard was older and tougher, and effectively became the leader of the crew of the ''Betty'' after Elgyn's death. There was also a rookie character on the ''Betty'' called Rane, and another USM soldier taken hostage with [=DiStephano=]. Vriess was more congenial, Call was less vulnerable, General Perez was ''much'' more badass and less of a ditz, and mostly significantly Ripley actually [[CharacterDevelopment became more humanlike throughout the story]] to the point that she had ''no'' connection or sympathy toward the aliens by the end, unlike the finished film. Details can be found [[http://www.cc2k.us/component/content/1801?task=view here]]

* Jean-Pierre Jeunet originally wanted to cast a woman as the main villain, but the studio refused, seeing as the film already had two female leads.

* Perez was supposed to die by being sucked through a hole in the side of his ship. Jeunet felt this was too spectacular for such a minor character, and so that death was given to [[spoiler: the Newborn]] instead. Perez's actual death was almost cut, as the studio disliked it, but kept in after test audiences responded favourably to it.

* When Dallas, Kane and Lambert head for the source of the signal on the moon's surface, they were to pause and rest near a large rock formation. When they move on, Ash, watching from his science station aboard the ''Nostromo'', notices a strange formation in the rock that is revealed to be the dead Space Jockey, fossilized inside the rock. The sequence was devised as a means to ensure that the Space Jockey still made an appearance in the film when 20th Century Fox executives complained that the interior derelict set would be too expensive and needed to be cut. However, when the studio relented and allowed the interiors to be built, the scene became superfluous and was dropped.

* A brief additional scene found in early drafts of the script has Burke attempting to reassure Ripley as they walk to the hearing aboard Gateway. After pointing out that there are going to be powerful people present, Burke tells her the most important thing is for her to simply stay cool While the scene was dropped, Burke's dialogue about the company heavyweights at the meeting was combined with the earlier scene where Ripley learns of her daughter's fate.

** Dillon was originally going to be killed early into the third act after [[spoiler: Golic lets the Alien out]], the prisoners discover that the Alien had transformed either the Assembly Hall, the Cone of Silence, or the abattoir into a new nest, with a barely alive Andrews and Golic cocooned. Dillon would mercy kill them, only for the Alien to show up and drag him away. A head mould of Charles S. Dutton was made for this scene, as well as set pieces for cocoons and the Alien's secreted 'improvements' to the set, but David Fincher felt that Dillon was too important to kill at this point, so the scene was scrapped early on. His other death was to be killed by the Alien at the end of a version the bait and chase sequence in which Aaron actually took part in, but failed. His death that almost made it into the film and was in the novelization and comic adaptation was to escape the lead mould with Ripley and watch as the Alien is drowned in lead, the company arrives and Ripley demands him to kill her, but he can't bring himself to do it, only for the Alien to jump out of the mould and kill him.

** Golic originally lived much longer, essentially serving as the Renfield to the Alien's Dracula. In an early draft, after the company kills Aaron, they run into him and he agrees to take them to 'the Dragon', after asking them for something to eat. He was originally going to kill Weyland by slamming Dillon's fire axe into his head, after which he would be shot to death by the troopers. Another death, which got farther along, was that Golic would attempt to murder Gregor, William, and Eric (who decided to take their chances outside in suits), but fails and is dragged away by the Alien. They later find him cocooned up, apologizing for everything he's done before Dillon {{mercy kill}}s him.

* Noted sci-fi author [[Literature/SplinterOfTheMindsEye Alan Dean Foster]], who was hired to write the novelization (and had done the novelizations of the previous two films), disliked the killing Newt off and tried to turn his adaptation into a FixFic where she survives, albeit in a coma for the entire story. After Fox pushed back and told him to keep the story consistent with the movie, he declined to write any more novelizations for the franchise, and author A.C. Crispin wrote the novelization for ''Film/AlienResurrection'' instead.

* When Dallas, Kane and Lambert head for the source of the signal on the moon's surface, they were to pause and rest near a large rock formation. When they move on, Ash, watching from his science station aboard the ''Nostromo'', notices a strange formation in the rock that is revealed to be the dead Space Jockey, fossilized inside the rock. The sequence was devised as a means to ensure that the Space Jockey still made an appearance in the film when 20th Century Fox executives complained that the interior derelict set would be too expensive and needed to be cut. However, when the studio relented and allowed the interiors to be built, the scene became superfluous and was dropped.