It certainly sounds like the cast and crew of The Predator had fun coming up with insane alternative endings for the film. What they originally wanted to do was conclude with the return of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch Schaefer. But when Arnie wouldn’t play ball, they seem to have let their imaginations go wild.
Two days ago, we reported that the ending in which a Predator Killer suit was revealed could have actually featured a mysterious figure wearing a facehugger-style breathing mask (see the gallery below for an idea of how that would’ve looked), which would turn out to be Sigourney Weaver’s iconic hero Ellen Ripley. And if that wasn’t exciting enough for you, now we’ve got wind of another bonkers twist on the ending. This time, though, the person inside the suit wouldn’t have been Ripley but rather, Newt from Aliens.
Artist Yuri Everson talked us through the scene on Instagram, explaining that:
“We shot 3 different endings for The Predator, all variations of a “Predator Killer”. This unused ending was Predator Killer Newt aka Rebecca Jordan wearing the breather mask we created for the film,” Everson explains over on Instagram. “You can see her name there on the monitors. Breanna Watkins played Newt. The moving “fingers” and “tail” on the mask were deemed too facehugger-like on the day and were cut and removed by someone… Sorry @jon_k_miller who headed up making the breather mask for us @thestudioadi with @saratheterra, @ape5150, Zach Teller and Lord Garth but they made me do it! Michael Diner and his amazing Vancouver crew made the pod. All in no time flat.”
Okay, so where do we start about how none of this makes a goddamn lick of sense? I mean, Aliens takes place in 2179 and The Predator takes place in 2018, so right off the bat, you’re dragging time travel into a franchise that’s overstuffed enough after the head-scratching mysticism of Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Then there’s the fact that both Ripley and Newt are as dead as dead can be within the narrative, with Newt being killed while in hyper-sleep before Alien³ begins and Ripley having plunged into molten metal at the end of that film (I’ll leave aside the half-alien clone Ripley from Alien: Resurrection for the moment).
It honestly just sounds like they were desperate for some kind of shocking ending that would have set fans talking, regardless of whether it actually made sense of not. And frankly, Ripley, Newt and Dutch Schaefer don’t deserve to be dragged into a film as disappointing as The Predator ultimately was.
With the current tangled status of the franchise and its imminent sale to Disney, perhaps it’s time to reboot the Alien mythos and head back to basics? Just a thought.
