The Xenomorph was not alien, but created by the Company
SuperAlien
MemberXenomorphApril 07, 2019I was not aware that in one of the early drafts of Alien, before Ridley Scott joined the team, the spores were not of alien origin, but only biological weapons created by the Company, thus making the crew of Nostromo nothing more than test subjects for the lethality of those weapons.
Fortunately the newly recruited director, Ridley Scott, decided to maintain the alien origin from Dan O'Bannon's script.
I found the excerpts of that early draft on Strange Shapes and I will quote it below.
Maybe it was discussed here before and I missed it, but that would explain the turn in Alien Covenant, to have David as the creator of the Xenomorph. Was Ridley Scott taking a road he refused to take 40 years ago, by making the Xenomorph a product of the Company, indirectly through David?
What are your thoughts on that?
Here is the early script I mentioned above:
"At one point in the film’s development, just prior to Ridley Scott’s recruitment as director, producers Walter Hill and David Giler presented a version of Alien without the pyramid or the alien derelict. “We believed,” Hill told Film International in 2004, “that if you got rid of a lot of the junk -they had pyramids and hieroglyphics in the planetoid, a lot of von Däniken crap- that what you would have left would be a very good, very primal space story.”
However, Hill and Giler did not merely remove the pyramids and hieroglyphics, but they replaced them as well. For this brief iteration of the script, the Alien spore was housed in a man-made construct known only as the ‘Cylinder’, and the derelict craft was a downed human ship, a “warmed over L-52,” according to Dallas. Inside the ship lies its human pilot, referred to by Dallas as “one dead space jockey,” (a slang term which stuck around to be bestowed upon the mysterious creature.)
Kane, Dallas and Lambert discover the derelict, which in this version of the script is a craft of human origin. “No signs of life,” continues Dallas, “no lights… no movement… “
A hatchway on the ship is open, and the trio venture inside…
Inside they find signs of a gunfight, and later, within the cockpit, they find an ‘urn’, along with the derelict ship’s dead pilot. Dallas spots the SOS beacon and turns it off. “One dead space jockey,” he concludes, “no sign of the other crew members; the old L-52’s generally went up with a compliment of seven…”
“They’re probably scattered out on this plain,” Lambert interjects.
Dallas can only offer a thoughtful “Maybe.”
Ash cuts in on the conversation, and tells them via radio that he can see something of an “irregular shape”. The three leave the derelict and venture out again into the storm, eventually stumbling across the mysterious object: a “red cylinder on the horizon. One hundred meters high.”
The Nostromo crew find the ‘Cylinder’, a man-made construct that houses the alien spore. As it turns out, the spore is in fact not alien, but instead is a biological weapon created by the Company. The crew have stumbled on a research facility, and are now its new test subjects, with all the slaughter to be observed and reported by Ash.
The Cylinder survives only in one piece of Ron Cobb’s conceptual art, which shows the short-lived construct looming behind the derelict “L-52”. In this version of the story, the Alien is a bioweapon engineered by the malevolent Company. The Nostromo crew are re-routed to be used as specimens to test the creature’s lethality. When Ron Shusett presented his and O’Bannon’s original script to the newly recruited Ridley Scott, Scott decided that they should go back to the original plan. Though the alien elements would go on to persist all the way to the final movie, the separate pyramid/silo, ultimately, would not."
"He survived, he’s now in Disneyland in Orlando, and no way am I going back there. How did he end up in Disneyland? I saw him in Disneyland, Jesus Christ!"
That is an interesting read how the concept evolved. I wonder if Giger used L-52 as a basic template for the Derelict.
It looks a bit like a nightmarish version.
Considering David Giler's past and uncharacteristic silence around Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, it would not surprise me if he was implicit in the new narrative direction of having the Xenomorph being a human (via David; named after Giler) creation.
Giler's past interference, in summary...
With Alien Giler claimed he rewrote Dan O'Bannon's, script when all he did was ad Ash, change the character names and, as mentioned above remove the alien from Alien. Although he was able to claim ownership of the script he was successful in acquiring the production rights to the script and its characters. He then tried to keep O'Bannon off the movies set, despite that in addition to the script O'Bannon was key in bringing onboard Ron Cobb, Jean Giraud, Chris Foss, and H. R. Giger, as well as being key in the finished puppet used for the Facehugger. Rumors also suggest that Giler attempted rewrites to the script during production, infuriating Ridley Scott and the cast, and enraging O'Bannon.
With Aliens James Cameron wrote and directed the movie, filming it in London, England. Giler accepted Cameron's script before approaching either Fox, whereas O'Bannon was rumored to have never been told of Cameron's script until the movie was in production. The relaxed British work ethic and Giler's attempts to "amend" the script ignited Camerons' infamous short fuse creating much tension between Cameron and Giler.
With Alien 3 Giler wrote a script which was rejected by Fox. Giler then approached a plethora of writers and directors, in turn rejecting each of their ideas until Fox demanded production begin. With the release date fast approaching Giler essentially merged all of the script ideas he had rejected together and hired David Fincher to direct the movie. Fincher was then pushed to breaking point with constant rewrites by Giler, a dwindling budget and the pressure of following Alien and Aliens. Inevitably Giler's incompetence drove Fincher to abandon, and later disown the movie.
With Alien: Resurrection Joss Whedon wrote a script centered around Newt, but was forced to rewrite it when Giler thought it prudent for Sigourney Weaver to return as Ripley. Whedon has repeatedly stated he hated the rewrite and preferred his original concept. After the movies release and the mixed response it garnered from fans Giler distanced himself from the movie claimed the first three movies where "our" movies and that Resurrection was the studios' movie.
With the AvP movies Giler mostly remained quiet, but after AvP: Requiem's negative reviews he claimed he had nothing to do with the movies. However, being the owner of the production rights AvP and AvP: Requiem could not have been made without Giler (and Gordon Carroll and Walter Hill) allowing Fox the use of the Alien character.
@ setaverde and daliens,
Sorry but Ridley has less of a claim to the Alien franchise than Giler does. While Giler (and Hill, Carroll passed in 2005) holds the production rights to the characters courtesy of his alleged "rewrites", Giler has proved both within and without the Alien franchise to be one of the worst creative minds in Hollywood. But considering the fortune he has amassed from the movies and licensing rights (for games, comics, toys, models, etc.), I suspect he couldn't care less.
As for Ridley - yes he persuaded Fox to use Giger's designs, but it was O'Bannon who brought Giger to the table, having worked with Giger previously on Alejandro Jodorowsky's ill-fated Dune (this is also where O'Bannon met Giraud and Foss, he met Cobb on Star Wars).
Alien was Scott's second movie, and a million miles away from his debut The Duellists. reports at the time (that seems to no longer be mentioned) claimed that Ridley was shy and lacked authority on set, while it has also been widely reported that contributions to the script by Scott were shot rightfully shot down, such as the infamous twist he proposed whereby we hear Ripley's message being spoken by the Alien. Furthermore, Scott was far from Fox's first choice for directing the movie; all previous directors they had approached turned the movie down.
Next look at Scott's filmography. Admittedly he knows how to frame a shot, especially ones with expansive landscapes and interiors but time and again it has been shown that his creative ideas are met with a mixed response from fans - Hannibals ending, Prometheus' over ambiguous creationism, Alien: Covenants retcon of the Aliens creation, etc. Ridley has also shown a tendency to favour visuals over character development and narrative logic, with many of his movies featuring "faux pas" any other director would have corrected in reshoots or left on the editing room floor - the difference of scale in the space jockey room, a character in Noah cursing "Jesus, the numerous edits of Blade Runner" etc.
If he can bring together the fandom and retain the mystery and threat Alien gave us then I would say let Ridley return one last time. But, considering how bloated he made Prometheus with its ambiguity and needless grandeur, and then his evident bowing to social media and studio pressure with Alien: Covenant, together with his need to make Michael Fassbender the new supervillain of the Alien franchise, I would actually prefer it if he handed the reins to someone else while remaining on board as an executive producer.
