As we all know by now, PROMETHEUS star Noomi Rapace aka Elizabeth Shaw was little more than a corpse in the film's sequel ALIEN: COVENANT. This was perhaps the worst insult to fans of a character since… well since ALIEN 3 killed off Newt in the opening moments. But as we all know, Shaw was set to have a bigger part in COVENANT, and today we have a better idea of what that meant – and why it didn't happen.
The story below is a bit on the longer side but the gest of it is that in the first version of PROMETHEUS 2, Shaw was alive and hiding from David in the catacombs under the city. She helps the new cast escape and we find out along the way that on her trip to the homeworld, she had David hanging outside the ship, but got lonely and fixed him. They got to Engineer city and David killed all the Engineers in his own twisted way of vengeance for her.
Sounds about right. But why did they get rid of Shaw once all was said and done? Well, evidently, everyone wanted Shaw to return for COVENANT, but it was the studio that didn't want her back. Weak. You can read the full story below.
ALIEN: COVENANT creature designer Carlos Huantes:
Prior to the black goo genocide, I know that in the script I had, the early script, there was the story between Shaw and David, and how and why David got reassembled. That story happens at the beginning of the film but they kind of bypassed all of that which makes it a little more horrific in a way. Because it shows how screwed up of a sociopath the character [of David] is, I mean the character is a sociopath from the get-go. He has intelligence and he knows the rules but he has absolutely no feeling at all.
In the first version of what was called Paradise/Prometheus 2, Shaw was alive. They find her and she’s been hiding from David the whole time and she helps them escape. I told Ridley my wife and mother-in-law, who are strong characters themselves, they loved the Shaw character and the actress (Noomi Rapace) more than any other characters in the film and they’re not science fiction people, but they liked the film because of Noomi. I think it was a studio call as to why she didn’t return. What a shame.
So in the first version of Covenant called Paradise, she was hiding in the catacombs from David under the city and the story was that on her trip to the homeworld she got lonely and she had David hanging outside the ship, she didn’t want anything to do with him. But she still had to talk to him. Eventually, she ends up bringing his body in and reattaching him as they become friends during this trip. He ends up having affection for her in a friendship way.
So they end up going to the city and that’s when David looks at her and tells that story ‘Do you trust me, do you trust that I love you and everything I’m going to do from this point on is because of you and that’s all to protect you’…she looks at him and says ‘Okay, yes I do’ so then he turns around and kills all the Engineers on the planet. It’s his own twisted way of vengeance for her, he kills the planet. She is like ‘Hey, I wanted to talk to these people’ but too late the whole planet is polluted now and everyone on the planet dies.
There's a lot of cool pics and extra info over on HN Network and I suggest checking it all out when you have the chance. One of the stranger things is about David's army of Meerkats. Sounds like ROTLD's "rabid weasels." But seriously, here's what Huantes had to say about those things:
David, in the old script, had an army of Meerkats that were super violent. They were not normal. They would open their mouths to reveal that all their teeth were individually attached to a finger so they had this sort of hand of teeth inside of their mouth.
Check a pic out of that design HERE. How upset were you that Shaw (basically) wasn't in ALIEN: COVENANT? Let us know below!
