Bingowings said:
Exactly as I imagined it would have been.
A classic case of a good idea screwed by over thinking.
I'm sure gonna be interested to hear the *complete* commentaries eventually...
I see in the summary that we were originally going to see a 'Derelict'/'Juggernaut'-style design for the 'Primordial ship' at the beginning, but that Ridley ended up thinking it would be 'cooler' to have a different design. Fair enough, but I'm kinda disappointed that he didn't get H. R. Giger to come up with the concept for that, rather than give us a generic, run-of-the-mill 'saucer' design...as I'm sure he'd have come up with something less pedestrian.
Giger's wonderful 'Derelict'/'Juggernaut' design is a truly 'alien', 'organic'-looking creation, and I'd have loved to have seen what he'd have come up with for an equally 'otherworldly' variation along those lines to better tie-in with it's look. (Of course, I'd have also preferred that Giger had been commissioned to design the actual 'Deacon'/'Proto-alien' that came out of the 'Engineer' at the end too, but c'est la vie! unfortunately)
Anyway, I came across this unused 'Derelict/'Juggernaut'-influenced pre-production design recently, and while it's not a patch on what I'd imagine Giger could have come up with, it certainly hints at a different look to things in the movie, compared to the 'standard UFO'-shape we ended up with at the start -
