How ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Jaws’ Led to ‘Alien’
Star Wars and Jaws defined the 1970s so much they directly paved the way for Alien. Alien was even pitched as a knock-off of one of those movies. Interestingly, Alien‘s impact on cinema was comparable to that of Star Wars.
‘Star Wars’ caused the director of ‘Alien’ to completely rethink his creative direction
It might be difficult for modern viewers to understand the impact of the original Star Wars. Prior to George Lucas’ magnum opus, big-budget Hollywood science fiction films like The War of the Worlds and 2001: A Space Odyssey were rare. Once Star Wars premiered in 1977, Hollywood became much more comfortable with science fiction. By 1979, several expensive space movies were blasting off into theaters including Alien.
During a 2024 interview with Wired, director Ridley Scott revealed what he thought when he saw Star Wars. “I was stunned,” he recalled. “Star Wars just turned my head about completely. So much so that when I walked out of the theater, I thought, ‘Why the hell am I doing [an adaptation of] Tristan and Isolde?!’ Things are changing! It’s time to get down to business!”
Everything changed for Scott. “Six weeks later, I was offered Alien,” he said. “I was the studio’s fifth choice.” After Alien, Scott went on to direct other popular films like Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, and Gladiator, as well as a bunch of historical epics nobody liked such as Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood, and Exodus: Gods and Kings.
Ridley Scott’s film was pitched as a ‘Jaws’ rip-off
The similarities between Alien and Jaws are obvious. Both movies feature a giant monster who stays off-screen for much of the picture but is very frightening when it shows its face. Some of the creatives behind Alien knew they were going over the same territory as Steven Spielberg’s breakout movie.
When screenwriters try to sell a movie to a studio, they often devise a quick pitch that could be explained during a short elevator ride, usually called “an elevator pitch.” The script for Alien inspired the most famous elevator pitch of all time.
According to The Saturday Evening Post, writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett pitched Alien as “Jaws in space.” Considering that Jaws was a blockbuster and Star Wars made science fiction fashionable again, the pitch was brilliant. It explained the movie consistently while making it appeal to the studio.
‘Alien’ inspired some of the same devotion as ‘Star Wars’
During his 2024 interview with Wired, Scott compared Alien to one of its forebearers. “I remember I was in a horrible office in Times Square, and I was staring down at this billboard that said, ‘Alien … In Space No One Can Hear You Scream,'” said Scott. “I could also see a queue going all the way around the block. I hadn’t seen that since Star Wars. So at that point, I kind of figured that we would be in good shape.”
In the same way that Star Wars opened the doors for more cinematic science fiction, Alien opened the doors for more science fiction horror. The 1980s gave us many popular entries in the subgenre, including The Fly, They Live, and Re-Animator. The 1980s also gave us John Carpenter’s The Thing, which stands alongside Alien as the most famous extraterrestrial-run-amok movie.
