How Ridley Scott Built His Alien World
Alien. Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
1979’s Alien. The film that started it all. Ridley Scott put his name out there with his debut film, The Duellists, which I have actually never seen but is apparently worth tracking down. Such was its reputation, that Fox gave him the keys to a somewhat unusual horror/sci-fi film set in space that was being developed, as the story goes, to capitalize on the success of Star Wars. Of course, we all know how successful the movie ended up being. But at the time, it was a bit out there. It’s a brilliant story for its sparseness - the crew of a deep space vessel gets sidetracked on a strange planet, brings a deadly alien back on board and it kills them over the course of the movie. At its heart, it’s just a good ol’ creature feature really.
But it’s set in space. And the lead is a woman, who is ultimately tougher than all the beefcakes around her. And there are hardly any people. And it involved some wildly inventive (and deeply disturbing) alien face-hugging and chest-bursting action. If you were a studio exec at Fox in the 1970s, you might have looked at this script and had some doubts. If you’re going to do a creature feature, why not set it somewhere less exotic, requiring a smaller effects budget? An alien can stalk people in a warehouse just as effectively as on a space ship owned by a shadowy intergalactic conglomerate, no?
Well, no. And thankfully that’s not what happened. Because the world-building in Alien is everything. The visual feel created by the film is extraordinary. It has powered decades of sequels and sustained a franchise far beyond what many would have thought was reasonable, possible or perhaps desirable. It wisely, and maybe this was for financial reasons, gave tantalizing hints of this vast, bizarre mythology and world outside the narrow, claustrophobic confines of the Nostromo. This made it feel like the events of the film were part of a large, more developed world - and we were just seeing a glimpse of some deeper mystery. It is steeped in such a unique and horrifying aesthetic that it has reverberated through the decades.
This is, of course, the true genius of Alien. There are a million movies about a monster chasing and killing people. And Sigourney Weaver is great. But what set this one apart was the production design, the look and the feel of the thing, the way it immersed viewers in this techno-futurist vision of space that was somehow kind of awe-inspiring but also kind of weighted with dread. This vision of the future was terrifying because it was stalked by a murderous alien, but also because it made you wonder, is that really what’s in store for humanity? James Mangold did the same thing with Logan. It’s subtle, but it’s brilliant and almost imperceptible when done right. People watch, and they feel uneasy, but they aren’t sure why.
The design of the ships, the aliens, the world the movie lives and breathes and chokes in. It is so fully realized and so strange and so disturbing that subsequent films and studios and directors and audiences keep coming back to it, to explore it and to flesh it out and to feel a sense of dread that lingers on the tongue. It’s a great movie, a genre mash-up that balances out like a fine math equation. But it’s also a fully realized and dark world, deploying the full force of what Hollywood was capable of to create a vision with such power that we are still wrapping out minds around it today. And in his next film and what I consider his true masterpiece, Ridley Scott would take this and elevate it even further.
