Duncan Jones' Five Sci-fi Movies You Have To See Alien (1979)
"The thing I loved about sci-fi movies from this era is the focus on characters: the set-up was secondary to how these generally working-class people deal with these bizarre or horrifying or High Noon-type set-ups. Alien is obviously a fantastic, scary horror film, but for me it's the visuals that set it apart. Before you get to the horror section of Alien, Ridley Scott is giving you a really strong sense of what it would be like to work on the Nostromo. The set design was a huge influence for Moon. We went off in a slightly different direction because of time and money, but we were always looking for ways to reference the look of Alien. By coincidence, when we went down to see Moon's soundstage at Shepperton, our set designer told us it was the one Alien had been shot on. Ridley Scott was due to be filming Nottingham on the next door soundstage and we were desperately hoping to get our set built in time so would get him to come down and have a look at it, but Nottingham folded for a while due to the writers' strike and we ended up being one of the only shoots on the lot."
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Your Comments
1
Outland And Alien
Posted on Monday July 27, 2009, 13:47 by Gold Digger
Great to see a young director respect such overlooked movies like Outland. I adore Alien and Outland and adore Jerry Goldsmith's fantastic scores for both who really set the tone. The good old days when they had living breathing sets that looked realistic. The time and effort that went into them really showed. Read More
2
RE: Alien
Posted on Friday July 17, 2009, 17:59 by wdron
Absolutely right. Alien is my favourite film of all time. I love this list and everything on it - can't fault the man - but Alien tops it in my view. Alien is a stand-out film and absolutely looks as authentic today as it did on release, which Scott somehow also achieves with Blade Runner before CGI allowed people to create future worlds much more easily. The characters are fantastic and there's tension between them before they even land on LV426. Read More
3
RE:
Posted on Thursday July 16, 2009, 22:49 by Drone
Outland is such an overlooked film; every word a true one. So brilliant and atmospheric... like he says, it's a plausible, living, breathing world on screen Read More
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