Ridley Scott pioneered the Alien franchise. However, he was not much a fan of others helming the sequels of the series after his, except for James Cameron.
During an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Gladiator director said the Avatar filmmaker told him he couldn’t get the fright of the original part, so he opted for the action.
“Nah. Jim said to me, ‘I’ve watched ******* Alien 19 times. I can never be as frightening. The cat’s out of the bag, we’ve seen the shark. So I’m going to go more military,’” he said.
“And that’s what he did. But it was sweet that he said that. [Aliens] was fun. And then three and four just evaporated. And ironically, with that evaporation, they had the “help” of digital. Alien had no digital at all. It was just a guy in a rubber suit,” the director added.
Ridley previously admitted his mistake of giving up on the Alien franchise’s potential.
His 2012 Prometheus proved him wrong, the filmmaker told Total Film. “I think, wrongly, on Alien I thought the old beast had worn out.”
“Because when we did the first [set of films], it was me, Jim [Cameron], David [Fincher], and the French guy [Jean-Pierre Jeunet] – there were four. They wore out. The beast wore out.”
“And, in a funny kind of way, I found the beast partly by accident. Without that alien, you wouldn’t have ever had this film. With all the great casting in the world,” he continued.
