Ridley Scott's Alien Monster
1. Another stage of the alien creature
Ridley at an AFI Q&A spoke and about an intermediary stage of the alien, to give an idea about how in its life cycle, it would turn into something the size of the final alien creature. He described a black egg shaped form with legs that unfolds which he never quite got around to do.
2. The Alien as a folded up box
In the comic book version of the original Alien movie illustrated by Goodwin and Simonson, there is a scene where the Alien has squashed itself into a "organic box-like thing "near the end of the film and then suddenly unfolds. The Walt Simonson talked about how he saw this shot from the version of the film that they saw described . One wonders if it is connected with Ridley's idea for an intermediary stage.
1. Another stage of the alien creature
- Ridley: You've got the beast, and then, but then you've got to go back to the egg. Out of the egg comes what, what we call the facehugger, and then from the facehugger you move to the chest burster, and the chestburster I want, I've always wanted an intermediary stage, a rather obscure thing that we would see on internal cameras, like CDC cameras in the corridors seeing this funny thing, it's like a black egg wandering around, like on feet, and then see it unfold. We, we never got to do that because the bomb was breathing down my neck, and so you've got yer four evolutions. (Ridley Scott in an AFI Q & A)
2. The Alien as a folded up box
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| "organic box-like thing " |
- Note from Walter Simonson to alt.cult-movies.alien
Walter Simonson: "I'm always interested in Alien references to the old comic. A couple of quick notes... Archie and I had three different script revisions done over about five months to work from. At the time we were working on the comic book, the principal photography with the actors was essentially complete and the movie company was filming the model work. 20th Century left us alone (Charlie Lippencott, our liason with 20th Century and a great help, knew comic books and trusted us to do our own job well) and we essentially tried to produce the best comic we could using all the information we had, rather than try to produce an exact copy of a movie that was still in a major state of flux while we were working.
I (but not Archie) had a chance to see the rough cut of the film that was in the process of being edited in December,'78. However, a lot of major editing of the film was still going on and stuff was being put in and taken out like crazy. For example, the scene with Dallas in the coccoon was already out by the time we were working so although it had been in the earliest script we had, we never considered putting it in the comic book. The scene where Bret gets killed was much much longer in the rough cut than in the release version, and the 2 page sequence in the comic was my boiling down of the scene I saw in the rough cut. I think the alien tail snaking between Lambert's legs late in the film is actually snaking through Bret's legs; check the shoes. And the scene with the Alien in the corridor as a organic box-like thing between Ripley and the lifeboat was in the rough cut. I was told when I got to that page of the comic book that the decision had been made to leave that sequence in. So I drew it. Of course, when the movie came out, it was nowhere to be found.
But essentially as I said above, Archie and I had a lot of information about the film from scripts to stills to a 'preview' and were able to use most of it to try to create a good comic book. Still didn't have quite enough stills of the models so I got the vents wrong on the Nostromo in a shot or two butthat's the way the cookie crumbles .Best/Walter"
(original post found through Google Groups)
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