Ridley Scott reveals the biggest regret of his career: “Someone was careless”
Creating a timeless classic is a double-edged sword. It might make its creator the toast of Hollywood, but it also runs the risk of becoming the target of blood-sucking studio executives who want to mine it for sequels, prequels, and remakes. Ridley Scott knows more about this than most filmmakers. When he released his seminal science fiction horror movie Alien in 1979, he became one of the industry’s most promising young directors, but he also learned the hard way that nothing is sacred.
The follow-up to Alien, 1986’s Aliens, actually got things off to a pretty stellar start. Directed by James Cameron, the film transitioned the genre from suspenseful sci-fi to pure, grimy action. After that, however, things took a turn for the artistically catastrophic. Seven films followed, often created by a who’s-who of Hollywood’s blockbuster makers. Joss Whedon scripted some of the worst, though Greg and Colin Strause’s Alien vs. Predator: Requiem takes the cake as the rock bottom of the franchise.
The problem, as Scott sees it, is that he didn’t secure control of the sequels when he made the first film. Instead, he had to watch the franchise he created get reinvented, and brought to its knees, torn apart, and dumbed down until he wrestled back control of future sequels several decades later.
“I should have locked them up, as [Steven] Spielberg did with Jurassic, and everything he does, and James Cameron has done with what he has,” Scott told The Hollywood Reporter in 2024. “I resurrected a dead Alien [franchise] with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and we should have rejoined the ownership right then, and we didn’t, because someone was careless.”
It’s debatable whether or not the creator of the first film in a franchise is always the best creator of the sequels. The Alien series itself is an excellent example, considering that Cameron’s auteur approach to the second film is by far the second best film in the series. Scott’s own additions to the franchise have been rockier. Alien: Covenant was a high-concept, angsty prequel that divided critics and audiences and lacked the taut simplicity of the first. As a second prequel after Prometheus, it also felt somewhat redundant.
As for Spielberg’s control of the Jurassic Park franchise, it’s tough to see how it helped make the films any better than they would have been if he hadn’t been involved. The rebooted series, beginning with Jurassic World in 2015, is Hollywood at its most shamelessly derivative. Focusing on special effects over character or story, each film is soulless compared to Spielberg’s 1993 original, and a prime example of how creative control does not always equal artistic success.
If the Alien and Jurassic Park sequels tell us anything, it’s that some movies are so fully realised that they don’t need to be expanded upon, even if the creators behind them can’t resist. In some cases, it would be better if they didn’t have creative control just so that someone could tell them to move on and let the original speak for itself.
