Alien: Ridley Scott Reveals His Biggest Fear While Making Original Movie

Director Ridley Scott terrified a generation with his 1979 sci-fi horror movie Alien, but he had to contend with fears of his own on set. The director just took a look back at his career highlights in an interview with GQ, including how he got the job on Alien and his process while filming it. He admitted that he was afraid at the time that the movie wouldn’t have “enough scares and creepy things in the corridor.” His solution was to add in an equally horrifying element — betrayal among the isolated crew, courtesy of the android science officer, Ash (Ian Holm).

“Don’t forget, we had no digital effects in those days,” Scott explained. “Nothing. And so backdrops have to be painted, and I have to find a very tall, thin man to squeeze into a rubber suit. And therefore, when you do that, you can shoot very little, show as little as possible, because it doesn’t really hold up. And so, by being subliminal and minimal, it works very well. I think the creature was unique, and you have to believe. It doesn’t matter how good my cast was — cast was fantastic — but without that beast, it wouldn’t have been the same.”

Still, Scott was concerned that the threat of the xenomorph would be too repetitive, especially as it rarely emerged fully on screen. He compensated by leaning on the big scuffle between crew members, which revealed that Ash was an android and that he was programmed to prioritize the employer’s interests over the lives of the crew.

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“I was worried that we might run out of scares and creepy things in the corridor, so the new thing would suddenly come in, Ash would object to something, and then would actually have a bad turn as an AI,” he said. “And Yaphet Kotto had to take the fire extinguisher and knock him around the head, probably knocked his head off, so now we see wires and metal and organic… He is an AI.”

Ridley went on to explain why he and the audience were predisposed to fear Ash at the time — because of the AI character HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The twist here was to hide the android among him, then unmask him as the ultimate avatar of corporate greed.

“The first time was Stanley Kubrick when he invented HAL,” he said. “HAL emerged as a computer — which, no one knew what a computer was in those days. The computer knows from the corporation that the journey’s success is more important than the crew. So we borrowed that and made that into Ash where he was the ‘company man.’ Of course, if you’re going to make a company man, you don’t want a black box. You want somebody who’s going to consort, meet, chat, drink coffee and be with people. They will not know he’s a company man, because he’s kind of more human than human.”

Scott reflected on other work in that interview, including the recent sequel Gladiator II. However, he didn’t touch on any of the other Alien movies, or his plans for future installments. While the next three sequels were made by other writers and directors, Scott returned to this franchise in 2012 for the prequel Prometheus, then again in 2017 for Alien: Covenant, which is a sequel to Prometheus but still takes place before Alien. Scott has said that he intends to direct another movie in the franchise, but since 2020 he has indicated that it won’t be a direct sequel to Covenant.

Alien is streaming on Peacock at the time of this writing, but only until the end of January. It is also available to rent or purchase digitally on PVOD platforms. The latest movie in the franchise, Alien: Romulus, is streaming now on Hulu. A new spinoff series called Alien: Earth premieres this summer on Hulu.