Supercontext: an autopsy of media: Ridley Scott, Alien and Prometheus

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Hosted by Charlie Bennett and Christian Sager.

Apr 28, 2017

For our one-year anniversary, we look at Sir Ridley Scott's thematic threads with Alien, Prometheus and the upcoming Alien: Covenant. Is it all about commercial appeal? Or is Scott reflecting on old age, legacy and death?

Additional Resources:

Lodge, G. (2015). From Dystopia to Valhalla, Scott's Future Visions Endure. Variety, 329(17), 73-78.
Newman, K. (2012). PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. Sight & Sound, 22(7), 28-31.
Adams, T. (2016). RIDLEY ME THIS: SCOTT’S KEY ANSWERS. Variety, 333(14), 184.
Return of the 'Alien' Mind
Why Alien: Covenant Will Make You Reconsider Prometheus
He’s Not Done With Exploring the Universe ‘Prometheus’ Returns Ridley Scott to Outer Space

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2 Comments

seven and a half years ago

Tim

Compare O'Bannon and Shusett's original, with full names (the single name thing was a Hill innovation), large blocks of descriptive text and some very pulpy action.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/alien_early.html

With Walter Hill's script.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/alien_shooting.html

Completely different.
seven and a half years ago

Tim

How on earth did you guys do so much research on this, but completely miss out on talking about how Walter Hill did a total page-one re-write of the script before it went over to Ridley. His script is famous for being written pretty much like a haiku, with a ton of empty space on the page.

It wasn't because of O'Bannon that they had all that room to improvise, in fact the whole reason they did the rewrites was that O'Bannon's script was way too pulpy and over-descriptive for what Ridley wanted.

I honestly have no idea how you guys missed that.

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