10 Alternative Opening Movie Scenes You Never Saw

The opening scene to Ridley Scott's Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant is a flashback to the earlier "life" of malevolent android David (Michael Fassbender), who receives his namesake from his creator Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) before the pair discuss the origins of humanity and David points out Weyland's mortality.

As much as this quite rightly frames the movie around David, the original plans for the Prometheus sequel, back when it was still called "Paradise", were very different.

The film was initially written to open with an extensive prologue which picked up shortly after the events of the previous film, with sole human survivor Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) travelling through space with the remains of David, who was of course "decapitated" by an Engineer at the end of Prometheus.

Despite Shaw's suspicions of David's motives, he convinces her to re-assemble him because his power begins to fail without his head being connected to his body. The two bond over the time that follows, with Shaw letting her guard down as the two finally approach the Engineer homeworld.

But at this moment, David snaps Shaw's neck, killing her instantly, and as witnessed via flashback in the final film, he drops the black goo onto the surface of the planet, wiping out the Engineers in the process.

Elements of this original opening were ultimately adapted into a prologue short film "The Crossing," though Shaw's death wasn't depicted in either the short or Covenant itself.

Instead, viewers got a brief glimpse of Shaw's mutilated corpse in David's lab in the movie, and that was it. Considering how eager fans were to see Shaw's story picked up in Covenant, the original opening would've been so much better than what we got.