Ridley Scott is officially done with the Alien franchise.
The legendary director, who first shocked the world with his atmospheric 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece, has decided to step away for good. At 87 years old, Scott has made it clear that he’s “done enough” with the series, even after breathing new life into it with Prometheus in 2012 and Alien: Covenant in 2017.
Speaking to Screen Rant, Scott said, “A number of years after Alien, I said, ‘I’m going to resurrect this’, [and wrote] Prometheus from scratch, a blank sheet of paper. Damon Lindelof and I sat and hammered out Prometheus.” He added that the film was welcomed warmly and proved audiences still wanted more from the Alien universe.
“No one was coming for it,” Scott continued. “And I went once again [and made] Alien: Covenant, and it worked too. Where it’s going now, I think I’ve done enough, and I just hope it goes further.”
After Scott directed the original Alien, the franchise shifted hands. James Cameron took the reins for Aliens in 1986, delivering an action-packed sequel that also became a classic. Then came David Fincher’s darker Alien 3 in 1992, followed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection in 1997.
The franchise even got tangled up with Predator in the mid-2000s with Alien vs Predator (2004) and AVPR: Aliens vs Predator-Requiem (2007). But Scott was not impressed with where things went after Cameron’s entry.
“It is spreading like wildfire, and not really,” he admitted. “I think I felt it was deadened after 4. I think mine was pretty damn good, and I think Jim’s was good, and I have to say the rest were not very good.”
He wasn’t shy about his feelings, saying, “F***, that’s the end of a franchise which should be as important as bloody Star Trek or Star Wars.” He praised George Lucas’s original Star Wars, calling it as seminal as 2001: A Space Odyssey in terms of shaping film language.
Scott also reflected on how he got the original directing job. Turns out, he wasn’t the studio’s first pick, not even close. “I was the fifth f****** choice,” he revealed. “Why you offered Robert Altman Alien, God only knows. Altman said, ‘Are you kidding? I’m not going to do this,’ and I went, ‘Are you kidding? I have to do this,’ because it borders and verges on heavy metal.”
Scott, inspired by the work of French comic artist Moebius, brought a distinct visual style and tone to Alien that redefined sci-fi horror. And now, with a full-circle legacy, he steps away, satisfied, and hoping the series finds new life with the next generation.
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I think Scott should not stop what he started with the prequel being Prometheus and then alien covenant which I like about as good as Prometheus and I’m kind of surprised that it didn’t do better in the box office but I think it’s done well afterwards in streaming platforms and on Blu-ray. I completely agree with Scott however on how after James Cameron’s aliens, the alien movies kind of went to crap I did not like alien 3 or 4 especially alien 4 was really bad and it’s not the director’s fault I just don’t think the storyline went the direction it should have gone. I remember hearing Ridley Scott saying in an interview years and years and years ago that he had wanted to explore what the big dead thing was that they found was in the stromo went to find where the signal source was coming from that made them land on that planet in the first place but I guess it was a moon or planetoid I don’t exactly remember even though I’ve seen the alien film like a hundred times at least I love it so much and I love Ridley Scott as a director everything he’s done I’ve like.
I think he at least needs to do a film after covenant to let us know what the hell happened. The engineers have to have had other bases even on that same planet and if he’s been there 10 years and no other engineer showed up from somewhere else in the universe to see why they’re homeworld or at least the world they had an outpost on stop communicating all of a sudden then I want to hear why why wasn’t there like troops brought in to see why one of their shit came in and crashed and released all that toxin shit on the planet. Or maybe they just determined that planet was no longer livable in by anybody so they just abandon it. But you would have thought the loss of communication would have at least sent in a team of engineers or I guess they’re humans but just big to come and figure out what the hell happened. And I would think they would try to chase David down at no expense spared to do so. So anyway, just that’s my two cents and I don’t know if really Scott will ever read this but I love the man he’s done wonderful work but I really would like to see alien covenant get sequel that he’d already envisioned what it was going to be and it was going to show and tie in to the first alien film so I really think you should do that for the fans if no other reason and then bow out of the alien series or franchise. Or at the least take the steps needed to get a director involved and the people involved to produce the film that follows covenant under his advisement to the making of the covenant sequel so that it comes in to the story of the first alien film and how that ship got there full of the eggs. And if David made the aliens in the eggs and that life cycle from experimenting for the 10 years he was on that planet alone then why would the engineers have a cargo hold full of those eggs unless they also had come to that ability on their own sort of divergently course that brought to the same conclusion as far as creating a biomechanically engineered species being the xenomorph or alien itself in the same way David did. Anyway I hope really Scott reads this and takes it to heart thanks for letting me share