Ridley Scott Owes His Sci-Fi Career to Star Wars

Sometimes, even other filmmakers are blown away by the sheer brilliance and commitment to the craft that their peers have. In the case of Alien director Ridley Scott, that's certainly how he felt about George Lucas after the release of the original Star Wars in 1977. Though Star Wars (also called Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope) had a profound impact on the film industry, and pop culture as a whole, in the 20th century, it also made a unique mark on Ridley Scott himself, who was inspired to make a science-fiction epic of his own. But while Lucas gave audiences hope through the story of the young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Scott aimed to terrify audiences everywhere with his own vision of what interstellar travel might entail.

Alien (1979)

In deep space, the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo is awakened from their cryo-sleep capsules halfway through their journey home to investigate a distress call from an alien vessel. The terror begins when the crew encounters a nest of eggs inside the alien ship. An organism from inside an egg leaps out and attaches itself to one of the crew, causing him to fall into a coma.

Release Date June 22, 1979

Runtime 117 minutes

Ridley Scott Wanted To Make 'Alien' After Watching 'Star Wars'

In an interview with Letterboxd at the Alien: Romulus premiere, producer Ridley Scott was asked what his four favorite films were. Instead of answering with his favorites, he mentioned two pictures that were "seminal" to his own filmmaking career. The first was Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the second he mentioned was Star Wars. "I'd finished my first film, it was The Duellists," he explained. "I was going to do Tristan & Isolde next." But upon seeing Star Wars on the big screen, Scott was completely taken by the galaxy far, far away that George Lucas had crafted for the screen. "I was depressed for three months," he concluded.

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Ridley Scott was so blown away by Lucas' sci-fi imaginations, that it sent him into creative turmoil, unsure if he would be able to replicate that success. "How could I be doing Tristan & Isolde when this guy does this?" he asked himself. With that revelation, Scott changed the entire trajectory of his career. He was soon offered Alien by accident, but decided to jump on the task. The rest, of course, is history. Scott's Alien would become the most impressive display of science-fiction horror to hit the big screen, and it launched a larger franchise that also helped filmmakers like James Cameron, David Fincher, and more get their own start in the movie business.

Other Science-Fiction Classics Helped Inspire Scott's Unique Vision for 'Alien'

Interestingly, the first film that Scott mentioned, 2001: A Space Odyssey, had just as much an impact on Alien as Star Wars did. While Star Wars was the creative force that drove Scott to explore the far reaches of outer space for himself, 2001 was thematically pivotal to the story the director came up with. The whole concept of 2001's HAL 9000, which put the mission's success over that of the human beings onboard, ended up being copied over to Alien through Ian Holm's android character, Ash. This would become a concept that would fascinate Scott throughout his career, and his later films Blade Runner and his Alien prequels would revisit it often.

As the latest film in the franchise, Alien: Romulus has received generally positive reviews, it seems as if the horror aspects of Alien have returned to the forefront. After years of sequels chasing the same highs as James Cameron's Aliens, Romulus feels more akin to the original 1979 picture. Whichever direction the series goes from here, either continuing the tradition of standalone Xenomorph stories or revisiting Scott's prequels following Alien: Covenant, we can rest assured knowing that the franchise isn't slowing down.

Alien is available to watch on Hulu in the U.S.

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