Late last month when details were announced for the upcoming Prometheus Blu-Ray, excitement mounted like a jockey to its horse about the mammoth amount of bonus materials to be included. One particular item which didn’t catch this writer’s eye though was Spaihts’ script, which way back in July was rumoured to be featured on the French Blu-Ray release. Unfortunately though, that was just a rumor and Spaihts confirmed that his draft probably won’t surface on the Blu-Ray release:
“I don’t believe my draft has been released into the world. There was talk for a while about my final draft being included in the Blu-ray release of the film. But I’ve recently heard that there are legal complications around that and it may not be happening. So I talk a bit on the Blu-ray about the creative process, but I’m not sure the draft is on there.”
Aside from feeling as if recovering from a kick in the gennies, the interview continues to reveal what he had in store, particularly the inclusion of sci-fi’s favourite grizzly: the facehugger.
“I did have facehuggers in my original draft. David, as he began to get fascinated by the science of the Engineers, doesn’t deliberately contaminate Holloway with a drop of black liquid. Instead, Holloway hubristically removes his helmet in the chamber, is knocked unconscious, facehugged and wakes up not knowing what had been done to him, and stumbles back into the ship. In my draft, he returns to his cabin, is embraced by Shaw, who is delighted to see him having feared that he had died, and the two of them make love. And it’s while they’re making love that he bursts and dies. So that lovemaking sequence echoed my original lovemaking sequence where he explodes! It was messy.”
What a ghastly vision. A sex scene combined with blood-spurting gore! A massive tip of the hat goes to eons of academia dedicated to comparing male characters in the Alien franchise who suffer impregnation, to being big girl’s blouses who’d die if they actually had to give birth.
This next original incantation would no doubt have proved more credible in the eyes of fans, many whom were bemused by Shaw’s ability to recover from an invasive surgery almost immediately:
“Our heroine would have a short time to get to the machine and extract the thing inside her. It was a very gory sequence and it plays out very much like the sequence in the film. The main difference is in choreography. At the end of the sequence as I first conceived it, the heroine manages to get the creature extracted from her and it is expelled from the pod and she’s sealed inside, whereas in the final film it goes the other way.
Then she lapses in and out of consciousness for a number of hours as the machine puts her back together. As she comes back to consciousness, she sees the thing growing in the cabin outside and even killing people. So by the time she emerges from the pod eight hours later, the thing is abroad in the ship and big enough to be a huge danger. That was the original conception of the medpod scene.”
Spaihts makes reference to five different drafts he penned along with Scott’s input across nine months. These marked a significant change in the Xenomorph’s biology, resulting in 8 differing versions of the alien spread across the various stages of its lifecycle:
“We imagined that there might be eight different variations on the xenomorphs – eight different kinds of Alien eggs you might stumble across, eight kinds of slightly different xenomorph creatures that could hatch from them. And maybe even a rapid process of evolution, still ongoing, in these Alien laboratories where these xenomorphs were developed. So Ridley and I were looking for ways to make the xenomorphs new.”
The fruits of Spaiht’s embellishments to the Alien mythology are to remain mere possibility. Empire’s interview hints at Spaiht’s contribution to the Blu-Ray, which while absent of his script, still features his testimony in regards to his original vision for Prometheus.
Perhaps the most intriguing nugget being that it was the studio who wished for the re-write and for the removal of the xenomorph. Yes, it was Fox who said no to another instalment in the Alien franchise, not Ridley Scott, onto whom blame has been pinned for this pre-sequel’s undoing.
Prometheus is no doubt going to continue to ruffle feathers, breed discontent in the hearts of true Alien fans and prompt ridicule for its inability to answer all unanswerable questions across TWO diegetic film worlds: the one in Alien and the one spawned in Prometheus. Whether you love it or hate it there is probably a little something to satisfy everyone in Spaiht’s script. If we ever get to read it.
So much to discuss! No extended cut? Come on Ridders, it’s your forte! And the prospect of having chest-bursters and face-huggers! Feel cheated? Or do you just fancy a read of that script? Please have your say about Prometheus in the comments below.
Source: Empire
