Ridley Scott Originally Intended To Kill Off Ellen Ripley In Alien

Sigourney Weaver has performed in many iconic movies such as Avatar and Ghostbusters. However, none were as badass as Ellen Ripley from Alien. After her narrow escape in Alien, Weaver became a key player of the Alien franchise, going on to star in the franchise until Alien: Ressurection in 1997.

Alien was a career-defining moment for Weaver and was a huge hit with critics and audiences alike. The iconic tagline “in space, no one can hear you scream,” is surely one that both fans of the series and those who have yet to watch the film will have heard of.

With her journey through the Alien franchise, with her sacrifice in Alien 3 and resurrection as a half-alien clone in Resurrection. Ripley is undeniably one of, if not the, most badass female characters in cinematic history. However, that was almost not the case.

According to Screen Rant, Ridley Scott had originally intended to kill off the heroine, in what would have undoubtedly been a huge blow to fans who have just spent the past few hours being invested in her story.

As we all know, the canonical ending of Alien has Ripley escaping the Nostromo in a space shuttle, only to find an alien on board and proceeds to fight it, and ends up blasting the xenomorph out into space via an airlock.

However, as revealed by Scott himself, his original idea had the grappling gun the Ripley uses being ineffective against the alien. In the fight, the alien will manage to come forward, bust through Ripley’s helmet and rip her head clean off.

While studio executives are often given a bad rep for meddling too much with a movie’s plot, it turns out that it was the studio executives that decided to give the movie a more positive ending. They apparently even threatened to fire Scott if he refused to change the film’s ending.

Guess not all executive decisions are bad for movies.