Ridley Scott Admits ‘Alien’ Would Not Have Been The “Same” Without H.R. Giger’s Designs
Alien (1979) gave film-goers a new dimension in horror by taking the monster movie and setting it in outer space. It was like Jaws in space. This successfully blending of the sci-fi and horror genres led to numerous imitators. As such, the film’s eponymous xenomorph became a prototype for Predator, Species, and a myriad of other movies about a predatory apex predator from another planet.
Much praise goes to director Ridley Scott, who wanted to take science-fiction in a fresh direction after the success of Star Wars: A New Hope two years earlier. But, as he admitted in an interview with Yahoo, Alien would not have been a success without H R Giger’s designs of the xenomorph and his unsettling fusion of biology with technology in the film’s production design.
“In my career, which has been pretty long, there’s only been, with the greatest respect for the people I’ve worked with, two real, real originals. Funnily enough, I came across a guy called HR Giger and if I hadn’t got that monster you would not have had that movie. I saw [Giger’s drawings] and I was so kind of taken [by them]… I flew to Switzerland where he lived because he didn’t want to get the plane as he was scared of flying. I met him in Zurich at his home and I persuaded him to travel by train to come to England and live at Shepperton studios for ten months. And he did.”
“It wouldn’t have been the same movie. Whilst the cast was wonderful, with Sigourney [Weaver] and Harry [Dean Stanton] and those people, but without that eighth passenger it wouldn’t have been the same film. What I’m trying to say is that there are rarities, there are those [ideas] that occur once in the while, not that often, but when they do grab them and hang on to them.”
Alien scribe, Dan O’Bannon agreed with Scott. “[H.R. Giger’s] paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster.”
Indeed, Giger’s Xenomorph spawned an entire movie universe, complete with a number of otherworldly, hideous, and dangerous creatures. Face huggers, The Engineers, and the various space insect-like creatures from the series all stemmed from HR Giger’s concept work, and remain some of the most arresting creature designs in cinema.
