10 Alternate Scenes That Completely Change Famous Movies
9. Ripley's Death - Alien
Despite now having a whole host of movies, comics and video games, the original Alien wasn't conceived as the start of a franchise.
Since it was only intended to be a single film, a lot of the first planned endings to the film involved Ripley (who was also originally written as male) dying to match the bleak and violent tone of the the rest of the movie.
In the most famous alternate ending, she would have escaped the Alien in a scene similar to the final film and reached the escape pod. However, the alien would then have popped up behind Ripley and killed her. In a dark twist, it then would've shown the ability to mimic Ripley's voice and recorded a distress message as a trap to lure in another ship.
Eventually writers changed their mind on having such a dark ending and changed it to a more optimistic one where Ripley is able to kill the alien and escape the Nostromo (along with Jones the cat).
It was probably for the best since killing her off would have robbed the world of one of the greatest female heroes in all of science fiction.