Resurrection’s Newborn Xenomorph Was Originally WAY Worse

Alien: Resurrection's Newborn was saddled with an infamously bad creature design, but the Alien franchise villain almost looked much, much worse.

Fans of the Alien franchise were famously horrified by the design of Alien: Resurrection’s Newborn Xenomorph - and not in a good way - but the absurd villain was almost even sillier before the studio made a well-chosen edit to its appearance. The Alien movies have struggled to recapture the terrifying impact of their original villain, the titular Xenomorph, ever since the release of director Ridley Scott’s sci-fi horror masterpiece in 1979. Some fans felt that the bulkier, more imposing Alien Queen of Aliens was as scary as its lithe, smaller predecessor, but since that sequel, the series has proven incapable of designing a new, inventive spin on the classic monster.

While this is an issue in itself, the real problem is that the Alien movies won’t stop trying to reinvent the Xenomorph. Despite Prometheus’s new versions of the monster earning a muted reception, Alien: Covenant introduced even more Neomorphs which were largely disliked by much of the fanbase. Fortunately for the filmmakers, though, none of the villains introduced in Alien's prequels were as misguided as Alien: Resurrection’s infamous Newborn.

A bizarre melding of Ripley’s DNA and the Xenomorph’s original appearance, Alien: Resurrection’s biggest flaw was the much-hyped Newborn. The ungainly, ugly creature’s finished design was laughably un-scary and few franchise fans felt that the Newborn could hold a candle to the original Xenomorph or the Alien Queen. However, the Newborn’s design was originally much, much worse. The first version of the monster, which was used during filming, had huge visible genitals that were a mix of male and female sex organs. Luckily, in a rare case of executive meddling that helped a movie’s reputation, the studio insisted that the massive genitals be digitally removed.

Tragically, this was not enough to salvage the sequel’s reputation as a whole. Alien: Resurrection’s failure essentially killed any fan interest in another human/Xenomorph hybrid later in the franchise despite the potential of this premise, as most viewers wanted to avoid a retread of the sequel’s unintentionally hilarious antagonist. However, the fact that the Newborn was at least spared some colossal dangling alien genitals as its focal feature might mean that the idea could still be salvaged in a later franchise installment, something that would have been a lot less likely had Alien: Resurrection stuck with the movie’s original X-rated design.

However, this was not the last instance of the Alien franchise almost ruining a perfectly good villain with absurd choices. Although 2007’s much-derided sequel Alien Vs Predator: Requiem is often cited as the worst movie of the series, the crossover did at least avoid an inexplicable mistake included in its original script. After spending years hyping up the Predator/Alien hybrid the Predalien, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem originally killed off this monster in the opening scene in the misdirect to end all misdirects. Fortunately, like Alien: Resurrection’s Newborn and its strange genitals, the Alien franchise outing was reworked by the studio until something more marketable was agreed upon and the Predalien's screen-time was saved as a result.

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