The final scene in “Alien,” in which Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley triumphantly defeats the alien, is, hands down, one of the film’s most iconic scenes. But it wasn’t always meant to end that way.
In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Ridley Scott revealed he initially had a very different ending in mind and it was gruesome.
“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,” he said.
Then, he said that he would have shown the alien’s hand pushing buttons on the space craft’s dashboard, and “it would mimic Captain Dallas [Skerritt] saying, ‘I’m signing off.’”
A Fox executive apparently wasn’t so fond of the idea of killing Ripley. In fact, he apparently threatened to fire Scott if he went through with his initial idea. Of course, he didn’t. And as we all know, Ripley went on to kick some serious alien butt in three “Alien” sequels and became a sci-fi-horror icon.