Dan O' Bannons original alien concept... looking familiar?

Wow, Mvmnt is on fire. that first picture may be right on.

@Sky Does it? Where?

I do hope the creature does have a face of sorts rather than being a clump of tentacles. I was expecting a creature to eventually turn up with having squid/octopus limbs as they are one of the basic shapes of lifeforms. They've done spider (facehugger) and snake (chestburster, cobra-hugger) so having a squid thing was only logical in the end.

I vote for the great late Dan O'Bannon's sketch. This movie is also in part a homage to him (I believe), his sketch above is truly creepy (unlike the Cobb version), and it looks different enough from everything we've seen that it just might work very well indeed. Dan is the man! Thank you, spirit of Dan!

Second picture has reference with paintings on the wall.

Is it just me or is the second pic have the xenomorph's body back to front? Just noticed its arms and head are facing forward but where its chest should be is showing its spine ridges which are on its back.

@Wirrn You may have something, there.

"O’Bannon envisioned the alien as a leftover of a bygone race, a creature that, despite having two sexes of its own, required a third organism to reproduce. Birth would require sacrifice, the act undertaken at a pyramid structure. The newborn creature is overcome by blood lust, but eventually becomes cultured and intelligent. Thousands of years after the extinction of this race (likely due to their own self-destruction and reaping of their home world) a team of astronauts land on the desolate planetoid after responding to a distress call." "With Giger, the alien, aesthetically, truly became the Alien; O’Bannon’s adaptive organism, a parasitical, sexual being which kills at birth and takes traits such as anthropomorphism (or quadrupedalism) from its host. This, combined with Giger’s sexual aesthetics, resulted in an eight foot tall beast in the shape of a man with a blood lust straight from the Id." ‘If it came out the size of a cat, it could keep changing and growing – and avoid the one bad feature of most great monsters movies: they eventually become repetitive. With this built-in device, it could keep changing shapes and sizes.’ Ron Shusset.

[img]http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/movie_scripts/script7.jpg[/img] [img]http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/movie_scripts/script8.jpg[/img] [img]http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/movie_scripts/alien3.jpg[/img]

From Dan's original script... The whole thing is here...[url=http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/alien_early.html]Dan'sOriginalAlienScript[/url] INTERIOR - TOMB - LATE AFTERNOON Face bare, Broussard approaches the center of the room, which is dominated by a large, broad pedestal. On the pedestal are ROWS OF LEATHERY URNS OR JARS, EXACTLY LIKE THE ONE BROUSSARD STUMBLED ACROSS IN THE ALIEN SHIP -- EXCEPT THESE ARE ALL SEALED. He walks around the urns, studying them. They all have sealed lids. He shines his light on one of them; then he lays his gloved hand on it. He lifts his mask radio to his lips. BROUSSARD I don't know if you can hear me, but the place is full of large bottles or jars, just like the one we found on the other ship -- except these are all sealed. Also they're soft to the touch. He peers more closely at the leathery object. BROUSSARD (CONT'D) Another funny thing -- I just put my hand on it, and now there are these raised areas appearing where my fingertips were. EXTERIOR - BASE OF PYRAMID - DAY THE SUN DROPS BELOW THE HORIZON, throwing the landscape into gloom. Standard and Melkonis switch on their lights. STANDARD Let's go. He attaches his chest unit to the wire and starts up. INTERIOR - TOMB - NIGHT Broussard is moving his light along the rows of heiroglyphs on the wall. They depict stylized drawings of strange monsters. He pauses to quickly change the film clip in his datastick; then he turns back to the "urn" he was examining -- BUT NOW THERE IS A HOLE IN THE TOP OF IT. He shines his light on the floor at the base of the "urn." There lies the "lid" -- the stopper that had filled the hole. He picks it up and studies it. It appears more organic than artificial; the inside surface is spongy and irregular. Then he turns the light to the now-open "urn." He bends over the mouth of the "urn" shining the light in, AND WITH SHOCKING VIOLENCE, A SMALL, OCTOPUS-LIKE THING LEAPS OUT AND ATTACHES ITSELF TO HIS FACE, WRAPPING ITS TENTACLES AROUND HIS HEAD. With a MUFFLED SCREAM, he launches himself backward, tearing at the thing with his hands.

That's the one

I LOVE Ron Cobb, but a creature designer he should not be... The only thing about tentacles is that they are REALLY HARD to do realistically. Octopi are so cool (and smart) that I think there's a lot of potential there, but getting puppet tentacles (in foam or whatnot) to relieve me of my disbelief would be very challenging. And, I find the puppets OH so much more frightening in general. A slimy, strangulating puppet could actually get on me. It could touch me. (Yuck) CGI, not so much. Of course, if they can [u]fool[/u] me into believing that it's NOT CGI, well then...

in Alien you just got to see the speed and the deadly force of the killing machine. the complete creature was shown at the end. i think that was one of the things that made it so succesfull

Dan O'Bannon's script sucked hard. David Giler and Walter Hill really made it work when they rewrote most of the thing. If you liked the dialogue and the whole plot element with Ash being an android, you can thank them, not the loser Orville Redenbacher look-a-like O'Bannon. Giler and Hill wrote the script, Scott directed, Giger designed the creature, Ron Shusett came up with the idea of screwing Kane in the face, and Dan O'Bannon was asked to leave the set because he didn't like what was happening with the movie.

That's what Giler and Hiil said but it seems more today like they both RAPED O'Bannon ! fact is, if not for Dan, none of us are even here today!

and you missed the point I think, the point is, a lot of the stuff they took & left out Ridley has now put back in !!! It's undeniable.

If you're talking about the above storyboard image, that's just the alien with its torso rotated around. The design elements for Alien are all there, just disoriented. I haven't seen anything else from Alien that was cut out that's being put in Prometheus. The only part that Dan O'Bannon is really responsible that's in the end product is the idea of an alien on a ship and the title. If you read the script, it really is bad.

How about we start with the Pyramids first? {and I'm purposely being very reserved right now cause it's my belief there is a TON of stuff I can post, but I want us to go easy here !} I read the script and it is in fact the exact BASE for the first film dialogue or no, this whole thing was his original idea they re wrote dialogue for to suit their own changes they made, but the BASE of the story is completely in tact and there are way way more things than just the Pyramid! Seems to me you have mistakenly bought into Giller's and Hill's campaign to discredit O'Bannon which I know many many people here would have a lot to say about if they were awake...and with all due respect. IF the script was so bad why did they use 90% of it for starters?

what is also hysterical to me is we posted a news clipping recently in which just a few weeks after the release of the film Giller LACES INTO O''BANNON WITH SOME EVIL SOUNDING TIRADE THAT REEKS OF JEALOUSY FOR THE FACT THAT O'BANNON WROTE THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT FOR THE FILM.

AND HERE IT IS...MY GIFT TO YOU...I BET YOU JUST LOVE IT !!! [url=http://www.littlegiger.com/articles/files/Cinefantastique_09_01.pdf]GilerOrO'Bannon's Alien?[/url]