If you have by some mistake missed it, I think it’s important to keep you informed that Ridley Scott has been on an absolute fucking tear in the past week. In doing press for his new film The Dog Stars (a film that has netted him some of the most negative reviews of his career), the iconic filmmaker has been sharing a veritable bevy of controversial and discourse-inciting comments. As a crucial bit of context here, I will also add that readers should remember that Scott is eighty-eight years old and has been a gruff dude his entire professional career, so it’s not exactly a surprise for him to come out swinging, but the sheer extent of this press run has been genuinely unexpected.
You don’t see his filmmaking peers, such as Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, throwing these kinds of haymakers anymore. They very much view themselves as "elder statesmen" within the filmmaking community and compose their opinions as such. Every now and then you’ll get a mild one, like Scorsese comparing Marvel movies to theme park attractions, but by and large, they keep their noses out of it. Scott is the exact opposite: a man who is more than happy to tell you how much he dislikes a given movie. The latest film to catch one such stray from the iconic director was none other than Alien: Resurrection, the fourth film in the iconic Alien franchise, which Scott originated.
In speaking about his role in the Alien franchise over the years, Scott said, “I did the best one by far. Full stop. End of the f--king story… Then they let it die. After Alien 4, they killed it. So I sat there thinking, ‘I’m going to bring it back.’”
Alien: Resurrection is not a hugely popular film. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet with a script written by Joss Whedon, Resurrection was a deliberate attempt to pivot the franchise back to more traditional blockbuster fare after the infamously troubled production and divisive reception of David Fincher’s Alien 3. Thus, Resurrection immediately undoes that film’s boldest stroke by reviving Ellen Ripley (played once again by Sigourney Weaver, who has since admitted she was enticed back by a “dump truck of money”), and attempts to return to the more audience-friendly territory of James Cameron’s Aliens.
There’s a bunch of dudes with guns, a younger female character who becomes something of a surrogate daughter to Ripley, and more Xenomorphs than you can shake a stick at. The film received middling reviews upon release in 1997 and ultimately led the franchise home-base studio, 20th Century Fox, to attempt to shake things up in the coming years by putting all their chips on Paul W.S. Anderson’s Alien vs. Predator.
Famously, that didn’t work out great, as that film performed well enough at the box office but got a very split reaction from fans of both franchises, leading to its sequel, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, outright flopping a few years later. Thus, the “bringing it back” that Scott is referring to is his own return to the franchise with Prometheus in 2012, which did bring the franchise back to record-setting box office returns.
So is what Scott said a bit mean-spirited? Yes. But is it true? Also yes. He did make the first film, which is an insane masterpiece (there are arguments to be made that Aliens is a better film, but I don’t think anyone is disputing the ingenuity of Scott’s original), Alien: Resurrection did kind of tank the series artistically and financially, and he did eventually bring it all back with Prometheus. Fair is fair.
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