‘Alien’ 4K Blu-ray Hatching in April, Plus: ‘Alien: Covenant’ Originally Had a Bigger Part for Noomi Rapace

Alien has been released on Blu-ray approximately 400 times, but here comes a new one anyway! To mark the 40th anniversary of Ridley Scott‘s horror/sci-fi classic, an Alien 4K Blu-ray will find its way to shelves in April. Even if you already own one of the many previous releases, it might be worth upgrading for the new 4K transfer.

And that’s not all the Alien related news we have! Thanks to creature designer Carlos Huantes, we now know that Noomi Rapace‘s character had a much bigger part in early drafts of Alien: Covenant.

Alien 4K Blu-ray

It’s been 40 years since Alien first terrified audiences, and to celebrate, a new 4K Blu-ray is on the way. The Alien 4K Blu-ray will arrive on April 23, featuring a restoration supervised by director Ridley Scott. I don’t need to tell you what Alien is about, do I? You’ve seen Alien, right? In the event that you haven’t seen this classic, here’s the run-down: a group of working-class folks in space run afoul of a grotesque alien life form that incubates within a human’s chest cavity before bursting forth. Once born, the creature grows to massive size, and begins picking our unlucky heroes off one by one. Even after 40 years, it still has the power to scare the shit out of you.

Sadly, there won’t be any new special features on this release. But the 4K upgrade is a special feature unto itself. Here’s what’s included.

ALIEN 40 Anniversary Bonus Features:

• 1979 Theatrical Version
• 2003 Director’s Cut
• 2003 Audio Commentary by Ridley Scott and the Cast & Crew
• 1999 Audio Commentary by Ridley Scott (1979 Theatrical Version Only)
• Final Theatrical Isolated Score – Dolby Digital 5.1 (1979 Theatrical Version Only)
• Composer’s Original Isolated Score – Dolby Digital 5.1 (1979 Theatrical Version Only)
• Deleted Scenes

Dr. Shaw in Alien: Covenant

Spoilers for Alien: Covenant follow.

Dr. Elizabeth Shaw, the character played by Noomi Rapace in Prometheus, met an unfortunate end before the events of Alien: Covenant took place. We learn her character is dead early in the movie, and later, we also learn that David, the evil android played by Michael Fassbender, murdered her as part of his twisted science experiments. But things could’ve been much different.

Creature designer Carlos Huantes spoke with HN Entertainment recently about very early drafts of the film, and how they gave Dr. Shaw a lot more to do:

“In the first version of what was called Paradise/Prometheus 2, Shaw was alive. They find her and she’s been hiding from David the whole time and she helps them escape. I told Ridley [that] my wife and mother-in-law, who are strong characters themselves, they loved the Shaw character and the actress (Noomi Rapace) more than any other characters in the film and they’re not science fiction people, but they liked the film because of Noomi. I think it was a studio call as to why she didn’t return. What a shame.”

Huantes added that earlier drafts build up the relationship between Shaw and David. At first, Shaw doesn’t trust David at all, but she grows to appreciate his company. David, in turn, grows to care about her as well, but in his own diabolical way:

“So they end up going to the city and…David looks at her and [says] ‘Do you trust me, do you trust that I love you and everything I’m going to do from this point on is because of you and that’s all to protect you’…she looks at him and says ‘Okay, yes I do’ so then he turns around and kills all the Engineers on the planet. It’s his own twisted way of vengeance for her; he kills the planet. She is like ‘Hey, I wanted to talk to these people’ but too late the whole planet is polluted now and everyone on the planet dies.”

Elements of this would make it into Covenant. In a flashback scene, we see David wiping out the Engineers – but Shaw is no where to be found during the scene. I suppose if you were a big fan of Shaw as a character, you might have been disappointed that she got bumped off before Covenant started. I was never that enamored with Shaw (not because of Rapace’s performance; I just found the character boring as written). And while I know this is a controversial opinion, I’m actually a fan of Covenant, and am happy with how it turned out. So I can’t say I’m sad we didn’t get this alternate version of the movie.

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