As Alien: Romulus has been released in most parts of the world for a few weeks now, we’ve started to get more and more interviews, behind the scenes art and videos. Today we’re getting a detailed breakdown of the differences between the early rough cut of the film compared to the theatrical release that’s in cinemas right now courtesy of Mike from the YouTube channel Mike’s Monster’s.
As we’ve previously mentioned, Mikey is a professional photographer and videographer who’s had regular access to behind the scenes material for many film productions. They’re one of the original founders of the Alien vs. Predator Galaxy Podcast, and they’ve brought us multiple first hand reliable information regarding Alien: Romulus and the canceled Alien film from Neil Blomkamp. As expected, beware – spoilers are freely mentioned in the video and the rest of this post.
Be sure to watch the video for the full details, but in summary – the biggest changes were in regards to the design of the Offspring, a few short alternative scenes and an alternative title amongst other things. Unlike Prometheus and some of the previous films, Alien: Romulus doesn’t seem to have numerous deleted scenes that we know of for now.
Thank you to Mike again for sharing all of the details so far.
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The Offspring looked exactly the same as it does in film, just had body parts elongating and transformed into Xenomorph-familiar shapes. The xeno that came out after the flesh ripped away was just a standard, dark color scheme on the xeno. Not white or lighter toned or anything. Exact color scheme Scorched was.
Thanks for confirming Mike. I agree she is 100pc dead, I just felt like there might have been a bit of trimming at the end when I watched the film.
The first time I watched it I said to my mate there is no way I'd be going in a cryo tube without putting her body out an airlock first.
Or further back to the original ALIEN.
Never seen in the finished film, but the Alien heads either had - or originally were planned to have - the face move horizontally or vertically (from Cinefantastique Vol 9 Number 1):
Spoiler
https://i.postimg.cc/cL12PP3X/Screenshot-2024-09-06-at-2-29-52-PM.jpg
A great pity the additional movements were never utilised onscreen.
https://i.imgur.com/16Fk8yp.png
In the cut that you saw was Kay's death and interaction with the offspring exactly the same? I.e. she dies off screen and offspring looks like it's chomping on her neck?
Got the feeling with the whole Romulus theme there might have been a more obvious breastfeeding scene.
Also any sign of Kay's body in that cut?
Thanks man.
Ditto. But it gives me hope for an alt cut.
Aye, same. I'm looking forward to some BTS stuff of the adult Aliens in general.
Reminds me a lot of the Unpublished Alien3 script where the Xeno/hybrid transformation.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/avp/images/8/8e/The_Change.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20200128160440
To answer a few questions/inquiries:
It was designed that way to allow for some new movement for the front of the face, but wasn't implemented as much as I expected after I was shown the puppet at Legacy Effects. Here's a little bit more elaboration on it from a previous post I've made:
As for The Offspring losing its skin and revealing a xenomorph underneath. It was just a standard xeno, not any different color or anything, but just a regular old Xenomorph. Basically looked like Scorched without the scar. And it wasn't much of a showdown at that point either. It was basically the camera panning over, we see the skin fall off with the face falling away last to show the Xenomorph do some roaring/hissing, maybe an extended jaw moment, but it never got back up in Rain's face at all. She had it blasted away right after the reveal. So there may have been more too it, but it was all the rough animatic CGI in that scene, and I feel like that was all they were going to do with it. The theatrical cut was more climactic with The Offspring coming back at Rain again after being blast out into space, attacking her helmet and all.
I personally did kind of dig the slow transformation The Offspring was going through, but the moment the skin ripped off revealing the standard Xenomorph, I was personally not into that. I totally get the intrigue about it and the desire to see it do the transformation though, but like I said, it wasn't for me.
The Offspring also didn't look really any different than what we saw in the theatrical version. There wasn't any long hair like that recent piece of concept art. It still retained the main look, which is why I think I missed the visual physical transformations on my first watch. It wasn't until the second viewing of the early cut that I caught the head getting longer and body shifting into the new shapes. It wasn't made extremely clear. So with the skin ripping away to reveal the Xenomorph, it made my first viewing very, very confusing on why that even happened. The head got very long, but not nearly as long as a standard Xenomorph until the skin ripped off. It had the general shape of a Xeno, with it still looking like The Offspring before the full transformation.
Again, thanks for watching the video! I'll try to answer any more questions as soon as I can!
https://s11.gifyu.com/images/S1LWx.gif
You people drive me NUTS!!!
The Offspring more closely resembles the version of the Newborn from the Resurrection novelization, which features a tail and a retractable tongue that aren't seen in the film. With that in mind, I see it as something that's been done before.
It's the face that really separates the two, though - that unnervingly Engineer-like face. I'm a bit torn on the hair, though. Would it be creepier, or just look odd?
The Offspring's death, on the other hand, is overly derivative. And the moments leading up to that death, with Rain suiting up in the spacesuit (though I'm not as opposed to the suitup throwback), could hit that definition as well. But, to me at least, the creature itself feels thematically of a piece with what the prequels were doing in a way that feels less callbacky and more like a natural extension/building upon pieces we've had in play, which I quite like.
And the Offspring is derivative enough already.
That's more or less what we already got in Alien: Resurrection with the Newborn and Ripley 8.