Ridley Scott Says He Originally Wanted Alien to End With a Much Darker Twist

Warning: The post contains spoilers for the movie Alien.

The original 1979 Alien movie is one of the all-time classic thrillers, but if director Ridley Scott had his way, the final scene would have played out a bit differently.

During a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly to promote his upcoming franchise reboot Alien: Covenant, Scott revealed that instead of harpooning the creature and sending it careening into space, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) was originally going to lose the battle — and her life.

“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,” Scott said, explaining that the scene would then cut to the alien using the ship’s controls. “It would mimic Captain Dallas [Tom Skerritt] saying, ‘I’m signing off.'”

However, the folks over at 20th Century Fox — the studio that produced the film — weren’t big fans of that idea. “The first executive from Fox arrived on set within 14 hours, threatening to fire me on the spot,” Scott said. “So we didn’t do that.”

Watch the ending that did make the cut below.