Giger Alien Praying Hands tattoo
via chris black
Sketches for Ridley Scott by H.R. Giger for Prometheus
Sigh. What could have been
I think the squid baby with a face, as shown here, would have been far more menacing and creepy.
(Prometheus Spoilers)
Consider this a first rough draft of sorts for what I’d have put in the movie instead of a plain white squid. Obviously I’ve stolen one of Giger’s signature babies and some of his aesthetic. Fitting the plot point of a “Non-Traditional Fetus” and the eventual revelation of the thing as a facehugger, I’ve given it huggeroid fingers instead of tentacles and in keeping with the freudian tone of both the original Alien and Prometheus, put the ovipositor coming out of the cleft, malformed mouth (In retrospect the tube should be visible coming out of the chest where the throat should be, into the head under the jaw, then out the mouth). I imagine it coming out and slowly opening that swollen eye to look with disdain upon the mother who delivered it early. I think that would have made the films nastiest scene even nastier. Baby cries are also, in reality, far more horrible than any other sound ever.
The design could be streamlined into the films sleeker creature aesthetic, but honestly if they wanted a new aesthetic they shouldn’t have kept any of Giger’s to overshadow the new. Ideally, Giger’s original chestburster and facehugger designs that went unused for Alien would have been featured. This sketch is only a suggestion of how they might have better implemented and extended the original concepts better than a goddamn fucking SQUID. They did so successfully in the Engineer suits and ship and some of the walls, the choice not to do so for the creatures is a real pity to me.
I’ve not drawn an alternate pointy “Deacon” chestburster at all as the movie should have ended with the Engineer unconscious and Shaw taking flight. I maintain that even if you think this drawing is utter shit, even if you despise me for posting such filth and suggesting this might have been better than THE SQUID of the movie, I beg you to consider that at least it’s something horrible, something audacious and that audacity, that vulgarity is what made Alien work, not to mention this is the work of an amateur done in 30 minutes while the film had months or years of artists doing nothing else. And they made a white squid.
Spider baby, spider baby, does whatever a spider baby does.
YES. On one hand, this thing is hideous and I don’t like it at all. But on the other, more important hand, this is EXACTLY the kind of thing that Shaw should have given birth to instead of the g*ddamn squid. This reeks of Giger, horror, and biology gone wrong. (emphasis mine)
