82-Year-Old Ridley Scott Shares Some Secrets About 'Alien' (yahoo.com) 49
Ridley Scott was the fifth choice to direct the 1979 film Alien, remembers the Los Angeles Times, "meaning that no one was expecting the film to become as important and influential as it now is."
This week they chronicled some more remembrances about the film from 82-year-old Ridley Scott: The central role of Ellen Ripley — also portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in three subsequent sequels — was originally written as a man... "I think it was Alan Ladd [then president of 20th Century Fox] who said, 'Why can't Ripley be a woman?' And there was a long pause, that at that moment I never thought about it. I thought, why not, it's a fresh direction, the ways I thought about that. And away we went... I found Sigourney by word of mouth. Somebody had been told that Siourney was on an off-Broadway stage doing something, that I should meet. And I did," Scott said. "And there it was, she was perfect. In terms of scale, size, intelligence, her acting is just fantastic. And so it was made for her, really."
The film's notorious chest-burster scene, in which an alien creature emerges from within actor John Hurt's chest, is now among the classic scenes in modern horror cinema. It was shot with multiple cameras because Scott could only really perform the full effect once, "because once I blew blood all over that set, there was no cleaning it up... I kept it very much from the actors and I kept the actual little creature, whatever that would be, from the actors. I never wanted them to see it," Scott said. "Remember there was no digital effects in those days at all. I'm going to somehow bring that creature out of his chest...."
Scott recalled the influence that Star Wars had on him at the time, noting, "It opened the gate for me feeling comfortable that science fiction was no longer silly fantasy but actually had a reality to it... So I was blown away... My hat still comes off to George," Scott said of Lucas for the first Star Wars. "Without question his was by far the best, still."
Scott directed the 2017 film Alien: Covenant, the Times notes, "And he may not be done yet.
"What I always thought when I was making it, the first one, why would a creature like this be made and why was it traveling in what I always thought was a kind of war-craft, which was carrying a cargo of these eggs. What was the purpose of the vehicle and what was the purpose of the eggs? That's the thing to question — who, why, and for what purpose is the next idea, I think."
This week they chronicled some more remembrances about the film from 82-year-old Ridley Scott: The central role of Ellen Ripley — also portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in three subsequent sequels — was originally written as a man... "I think it was Alan Ladd [then president of 20th Century Fox] who said, 'Why can't Ripley be a woman?' And there was a long pause, that at that moment I never thought about it. I thought, why not, it's a fresh direction, the ways I thought about that. And away we went... I found Sigourney by word of mouth. Somebody had been told that Siourney was on an off-Broadway stage doing something, that I should meet. And I did," Scott said. "And there it was, she was perfect. In terms of scale, size, intelligence, her acting is just fantastic. And so it was made for her, really."
The film's notorious chest-burster scene, in which an alien creature emerges from within actor John Hurt's chest, is now among the classic scenes in modern horror cinema. It was shot with multiple cameras because Scott could only really perform the full effect once, "because once I blew blood all over that set, there was no cleaning it up... I kept it very much from the actors and I kept the actual little creature, whatever that would be, from the actors. I never wanted them to see it," Scott said. "Remember there was no digital effects in those days at all. I'm going to somehow bring that creature out of his chest...."
Scott recalled the influence that Star Wars had on him at the time, noting, "It opened the gate for me feeling comfortable that science fiction was no longer silly fantasy but actually had a reality to it... So I was blown away... My hat still comes off to George," Scott said of Lucas for the first Star Wars. "Without question his was by far the best, still."
Scott directed the 2017 film Alien: Covenant, the Times notes, "And he may not be done yet.
"What I always thought when I was making it, the first one, why would a creature like this be made and why was it traveling in what I always thought was a kind of war-craft, which was carrying a cargo of these eggs. What was the purpose of the vehicle and what was the purpose of the eggs? That's the thing to question — who, why, and for what purpose is the next idea, I think."
A mess (Score:2, Funny)
" What was the purpose of the vehicle and what was the purpose of the eggs? That's the thing to question — who, why, and for what purpose is the next idea, I think"
I'll never understand why these people don't sketch out an entire plot line. Shouldn't you have thought about all that stuff before you wrote Covenant? Making it up as you go never works well. I actually liked Covenant and Prometheus but they really made little sense.
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Re:A mess (Score:5, Informative)
I can't speak to the final trilogy, but the foreward for the novelization of "Star Wars" that I got back in 1977 talks about how the Senate lost its hold on the Old Republic, and how Senator Palpatine (mentioned by name) became the Emperor. I also have an ancient Starlog magazine from '77 or '78 that had some quotes from Lucas where he talked about a duel between Obi-Wan and Vader (who had formerly been a Jedi), that Vader fell into a volcano as a result, and was mechanized into the Vader that we saw in "Star Wars".
So, at the very least those plot elements were in place before "The Empire Strikes Back" was even filmed. I have no difficulty believing that Lucas had more of the story fleshed out at the beginning.
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If the script is based on a novel or other content, then that may be done. But that was not the case for Alien. Those closest thing would of course be the novelization by Allen Dean Foster which does cover some of those things but it is considered non-canon.
None of the movies after Alien are consistent with the first film anyway. Take a very close look at where the eggs are, or actually are not, in the ship. Their placement is consistent with the earlier story by Dan O'Bannon.
Should have mentioned Blade Runner: Black Lotus (Score:4, Interesting)
The animated series set 17 years before BR 2049.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9... [imdb.com]
I really like Scott's Directing and Producing body of work, Numb3rs, Alien, Blade Runner...
One of my favorite Scott produced movies is A Good Year, not Science Fiction, but Marion Cotillard is pretty hot in it.
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Nice, nice, somebody give this man a mod up.
On the original topic: I found the comments about Star Wars to be very cool. Alien was such an incredible thing itself... still one of my all time favorites (along with Star Wars).
Alien Covenant (Score:2, Troll)
I really hope that Ridley Scott is done. Because Alien Covenant sucked donkey balls. The sheer amount of stupidity of both the plot and the characters was unbearable.
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Aliens is my most favourite movie of all time.
He should have stopped at 3.
No franchise survives killing off all its main characters. Alien -> Aliens was bad enough, Alien 3 was passable, and then it just got stupid.
You could have easily had Newt, Bishop and/or Hicks in Alien 3 too, it would barely have made a difference - Hicks being her protector against the inmates with no fancy weapons and just his leadership would have made for a nice lot of confrontation.
I literally gave up after seeing just glimps
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I admit that I was holding out hope for Prometheus when I first saw some previews... but when I walked in... I couldn't wait to walk back out. I don't understand how the script passed the smell test? I mean... it invented the "Prometheus School of Running Away" meme for shits sake!
But yea, I agree with you... "Aliens" was the best... I don't think they will ever come close again.
I don't think the Aliens 3 script is easily salvageable... it needs to be retconned or something... There is plenty of materia
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Theres a series of books written after Aliens but released as Alien 3 came out that features a soldier and a girl who was rescued by and depends on the soldier, and then later on Ripley comes in - they were supposed to be a continuation of the story, but Alien 3 killed off Hicks and Newt so they had to change the names. The books are pretty good, better than the dross that came afterward filmwise.
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Killing off the little girl, when saving her was the central theme of the previous movie, puts your film at a terrible disadvantage from the start.
If it was an issue of "she's grown now", which is inconsistent with hypersleep, just have her having woken up because her chamber broke, and she lived on rations for years. 10 seconds of dialog and done.
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"This is one of Scott’s best-directed movies and one of his most entertaining overall, partly because he’s working in a genre, the science fiction spectacle, that he does better than anyone since Stanley Kubrick, but also because he seems to be approaching it almost entirely in terms of visceral impact and emotion—as symphony of fire and blood, poetry and schlock. The best
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...but also because he seems to be approaching it almost entirely in terms of visceral impact and emotion—as symphony of fire and blood, poetry and schlock.
So to Roger Ebert, schlock is now praiseworthy? Really? This is the best we can do? Any asshole can do schlock, and often does. Our celebrated, venerated, elder statesmen directors are supposed to be capable of more than schlock that's about "visceral impact and emotion" and nothing else. Character and plot used to matter. Now all we get is post-Modernist horseshit for audiences so illiterate they aren't even listening to the words being said. All they hear is the tone of voice. I guess it's art, b
John Hurt (Score:1)
Re: John Hurt (Score:1)
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You're way off topic, that's true, but what you're attempting to discuss is valuable and thought-provoking. I'd love it if you'd include a link to a place where this post is being actively discussed. Instead, here in the midst of a completely different topic, this post blows out into an empty void and gets lost in the vastness ... like the Xenomorph from the first Alien movie.
Ridley Shat the Bed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Alien and Aliens was great Aliens 3... meh and Alien resurrection was a joke. Prometheus and Covenant were "Fuck You" letters to the fans...
AvP is a different beast like a spin off or marriage that was someones on again off again relationship. Could have worked out, maybe still could work out... but we will never know because of the current shit state of hollywood and its fucked up landscape today.
Just look at what it takes to get a movie like Deadpool made... the execs just do not have a pulse on what viewers want... heck they might just not have a pulse at all!
Ellen Ripley was the shit! Sigourney played the character very well and showed everyone how you can make a heroine without using a good looking female and then turn them into a man with tits.
"Get Away From Her, You Bitch!"
~You know WHO!
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Covenant absolutely ruined it for me, because it shifted the alien from “unexplained entity from the stars, out to kill and utterly unknowable” to “humanity screws itself again” by making the alien a product of humanities evil offspring. Once again, humanity is at fault. Seems to be the common theme these days in a lot of scifi - cant be an external entity, humanity must be the ones at fault, hurting itself.
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It's ok to reference things and maybe flesh it out a bit, but dropping it in as nostalgia then wrenching it around in ways that step all over the awesome is not how to do it.
It was utterly silly to make the giants be the creators, rather than it be some impossibly ancient plague on the universe. That shrinks the whole situation. Having a human robot make further changes shrinks it even more.
I suppose the Borg were created by a time traveling augmented future human whose stuff got out of control.
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I do agree with your sentiment... yeah. When there is a mystery to it, the Alien was just that much more cool.
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showed everyone how you can make a heroine without using a good looking female
You must be joking, right, when you say that Sigourney Weaver was not a good looking female ?
Re: Ridley Shat the Bed... (Score:2)
She's hot in Ghostbusters. (Runs away)
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Her charms stick our of her chest. Three feet out of her chest!
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Oh, you have the wrong the genre on Covenant. After all, it's slapstick comedy. The events make no sense otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridley Scott was the fifth choice to direct the 1979 film Alien, remembers the Los Angeles Times, "meaning that no one was expecting the film to become as important and influential as it now is.
I'm betting there's a bunch of other random late 70's early 80's SF films that no one remembers. One of the reasons Alien became what it was is probably his direction.
The central role of Ellen Ripley — also portrayed by Sigourney Weaver in three subsequent sequels — was originally written as a man... "I think it was Alan Ladd [then president of 20th Century Fox] who said, 'Why can't Ripley be a woman?' And there was a long pause, that at that moment I never thought about it. I thought, why not, it's a fresh direction, the ways I thought about that.
That might be the other thing that made the film so good.
Cast a man as the lead and you're almost guaranteed to have a "wrestle with the Alien" moment because the male protagonist needs to test/prove his strength.
Casting a women means the audience knows that physical contest is off the table, and that's what actually makes the Alien get accepted as the threat that it is.
Not only that, but she's the protagonist without having superpowers or super training of some kind. There's a disappointing trope in modern films where in order for a woman to be considered badass she needs to be able to beat up a guy. It's seems to defeat the purpose when women can only be considered empowered by excelling in the one area where men have a massive biological advantage.
I actually can't think of any female protagonists like this outside of the Aliens and Terminator franchises.
Re:Causation (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually can't think of any female protagonists like this outside of the Aliens and Terminator franchises.
Try Arrival [imdb.com]. It's not an action flick but it's solid sci-fi with a very good female lead.
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Not only that, but she's the protagonist without having superpowers or super training of some kind. There's a disappointing trope in modern films where in order for a woman to be considered badass she needs to be able to beat up a guy. It's seems to defeat the purpose when women can only be considered empowered by excelling in the one area where men have a massive biological advantage.
I actually can't think of any female protagonists like this outside of the Aliens and Terminator franchises.
Even the Terminator movies seem to have either screaming terrified women or ass-kicking warrior ones. Ripley kicked the Alien's ass in her underwear, using nothing but her brains. That was one of the more impressive scenes in Sci-Fi movie history.
If only... (Score:2)
And he may not be done yet.
Oh please God no...
"What I always thought when I was making it, the first one, why would a creature like this be made and why was it traveling in what I always thought was a kind of war-craft, which was carrying a cargo of these eggs. What was the purpose of the vehicle and what was the purpose of the eggs? That's the thing to question — who, why, and for what purpose is the next idea, I think."
Gee, if only you'd been given the green light on two unlimited-budget Alien-universe movies where you could have explored these vital, plot-heavy elements fans have been wanting for decades.
Nah, let's have two logic-free, suspense-free, poorly-paced, overly-pretentious prequels instead. That's sure to satisfy.
Only known as "Ridiculously Scott" around here... (Score:1)
As the opposite of "Great Scott!"
Since that Prometheus disaster where he went basically nuts.
Poor guy should be in a nursing home by now, sipping on a sippy cup. But we can forgive an old man for going crazy. As long as he enjoys it ... and I won't ever fall for paying money for anything linked to his name anymore.
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I can only surmise he wanted a few extra million for his kids to inherit. It surely can't be an unresolved artistic itch he wanted to polish off before he croaked.
Open palm, cover face ... (Score:4, Informative)
For an interview transcript from the LA Times, EditorDavid chooses to link to a Yahoo News copy of the story?
Is Verizon paying you to inflate their hit rates, or are you just completely oblivious to the principle of linking to original sources [latimes.com] ... ?
These are "secrets"? (Score:2)
It seems to me that Ridley just told them the same stories he told Starlog magazine in the 1970's. Hardly secrets.
Send my check to General Delivery (Score:3)
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I would likely be willing to read this fanfic.
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The aliens were once a protocivilized race, taken up by the Engineers and had their natural evolved defenses modified into weapons. The crashed ship in the first movie happened when a shipment of an alien queen went wrong. In the new movie, an Engineer team tests an alien upgrade against a captured human colony, but the upgrade is faulty. The aliens regain some of the empathy the Engineers tried to breed out. The humans figure out the history between the two races and team up with the aliens to fight the Engineers.
This is what gets me about modern Hollywood. How are their writers so incredibly BAD when you can turn around on the Internet and accidentally bump into someone better any day of the week?
"I see bad writers."
"In your dreams?"
"No."
"While you're awake?"
"Yes"
"Bad writers like, in coffeehouses, in art museums?"
"No. Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they wanna see. They don't know they're bad."
"How often do you see them?"
"All the time. They're everywhere."
Wit
No pardon for Alien: Covenant (Score:2)