Alien Director Ridley Scott Pissed About Aliens

Ridley Scott hated Aliens. When the director of Alien, Gladiator, and Blade Runner first learned James Cameron was helming a sequel to Scott’s 1979 sci-fi classic, he was “pissed”.

“I wouldn’t tell that to Jim,” Scott said in an interview with Deadline, “but I think I was hurt. I knew I’d done something very special, a one-off really. I was hurt, deeply hurt, actually because at that moment, I think I was damaged goods because I was trying to recover from Blade Runner.”

It was a low moment in Scott’s life. Not only was Hollywood, as he saw it, bastardizing his most cherished film, but critics were giving him a kicking over Blade Runner. Scott’s solution? “A lot of pushups, play tennis, thrash the sh*t out of a tennis ball and look at the next movie.”

That movie was Legend, which starred Tom Cruise, with Tim Curry playing the Lord of Darkness with red skin and huge prosthetic horns.

Related: That's A Wrap! Alien 7 Finishes Filming

Looking back on the Aliens saga, Scott bears no ill will towards Camera. “When Jim called me up and said, listen … he was very nice but he said, this is tough, your beast is so unique. It’s hard to make him as frightening again, now familiar ground. So he said, I’m going in a more action, army kind of way. I said, okay. And that’s the first time I actually thought, welcome to Hollywood.”

At least he's more positive about the next one. Ridley Scott has already seen Alien 7 (and he likes it).