The first trailer for Ridley Scott’s new film Prometheus shows just how closely the story relates to the first Alien film

Rodney Twelftree takes a look back at the work of Ridley Scott highlighting the British director’s best films past and present.

Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood steers clear of the legend audiences know and love but in presenting the beginnings of the myth the film is an original take on the story.

Aliens is one of my favourite films. It arrived at a time – during the middle 1980s – when science-fiction was a huge box office attraction. Lucas had kicked it all off with “Star Wars”, with Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” continuing the trend. “Aliens” was the perfect follow-up to “Alien” – bigger, more expansive, and equally as scary, it also benefitted from a fast-moving action-movie aesthetic that wryly mocked the war credentials of America’s military in Vietnam. Here was a crowd-pleaser and blockbusting spectacle that had depth, character, and intelligence.

The following essay is an accompanying piece to the following Top 10 Films Lists that feature Ridley Scott’s Alien: Science-Fiction Horror, Scariest Movie Scenes, Gory Film scenes, and Films beginning with ‘A’. Please also read my review of the film HERE
A critical study closely examining Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) as a re-evaluation of feminist culture in cinema

Looking at feminist writer Laura Mulvey’s analysis of the classical Hollywood film it is interesting how Alien (Scott, 1979) defies her claims about scopophilia, in that the film both subverts her ideas about voyeuristic …

At first, compiling a list of favourite films that begin with the letter A appears to be a superfluous exercise – given some thought though it serves to highlight some classic movies, ones that deserve to be watched again and again!

10. Armageddon (Michael Bay)
Epic, loud and full of heroic bravado – would a Michael Bay movie be anything else? Harry Stamper’s (Bruce Willis) band of oil-riggers are the last hope to save Earth from total annihilation. Pure blockbuster entertainment that keeps the excitement at fever pitch once the mission reaches …

Directed by: Ridley Scott
Written by: Dan O’Bannon / Ronald Shusett
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto
Released: 1979 / Genre: Science-fiction Horror / Country: USA / IMDB
Buy on DVD from Amazon.co.uk:
Buy Alien Quadrilogy (9 Disc Complete Box Set) on DVD from Amazon.co.uk
See also our Top 10 Science-Fiction Horror Films
My introduction to Ridley Scott’s space opus came sometime after being bowled over by James Cameron’s sequel. I guess it must have been around 1990, before David Fincher released the third instalment of the …

Science-fiction and horror seem to go hand in hand. Sci-fi usually involves futuristic foreboding or fear of the unknown, and this works well with the frightening realisation of the darkest depths of the human mind that define the horror genre. Science-fiction horror is also notable for producing some of the best examples of science-fiction regardless of sub-context, as well as some of the worst. And yet, when films such as Norman J. Warren’s awful “Inseminoid”, or the Alien/Aliens clones “Split Second” and “The Dark Side Of The Moon” hit our …