17 Awesome Movie Concepts That Were Totally Botched

13. Alien: Covenant

The Pitch: The crew of the colony ship Covenant stumbles across the Engineer homeworld and follows Elizabeth Shaw's (Noomi Rapace) trail to a horrifying discovery.

What Happened?: Though it was made clear early on that Shaw wouldn't be starring in this kinda-sequel to Prometheus, few fans could've anticipated just how egregiously her role would be scaled down.

Ultimately, Shaw only physically appears in viral marketing for the movie, before Covenant's third act serves her corpse up on a slab, completely flushing all of the audience investment from Prometheus down the toilet.

Oh, and the Engineers? Yeah, they're quickly wiped out by David (Michael Fassbender) in a flashback and don't matter now either. It's all about the Xenomorphs once again, which make an over-familiar return in act three that, yes, once again concludes with one being blown out into space. Yawn.

Fassbender in particular does his best to keep things watchable, but after Ridley Scott promised that Covenant would follow Prometheus' lead while feeling more like a traditional Alien movie, the end result did neither in a particularly satisfying way.