Ridley Scott is unsure of what his next project will be, but he’s absolutely sure it won’t be a superhero movie. For one, he thinks the vast majority of them suck. But he also says he’s already made a few of his own—one of them being his 1979 space-bound horror masterpiece, Alien.
“Why don’t the superhero movies have better stories?,” Scott asks rhetorically in a new interview with Deadline. “I mean, come on. They’re mostly saved by special effects, and that’s becoming boring for everyone who works with special effects, if you’ve got the money.”
“Their scripts are not any fucking good,” he continues. “I think I’ve done three great scripted superhero movies. One would be Alien with Sigourney Weaver. One would be fucking Gladiator, and one would be Harrison Ford [in Blade Runner].”
Of course, characterizing those three films as superhero stories is far from farfetched. Just as the Final Girl status of Weaver’s Ripley etches her character in the annals of horror history, so does her iconic spacesuit place her among the ranks of classically costumed comic heroes. In fact, the suit—created by costume designer John Mollo—fuses the aesthetic of ancient samurai warrior attire with the surrealistic flourishes of French comic book artist Moebius, who provided preliminary designs for Alien.
Still, for Scott, Ripley’s humanity is far more important than her mythological avatar. “Almost always, the best films are driven by the characters,” he explains.
Scott adds that in Blade Runner, Ford’s Rick Deckard is more memorable for his complexity than for his heroics. “Harrison Ford was one superhero. But everyone was confused because he got the shit beaten out of him at the end by the other superhero, who they thought was the bad guy, but turned out to be a good guy,” he says. “I think that’s pretty cool.”
So, if you must ask Scott about his interest in superheroes, he says you can go right ahead. Just don’t expect a diplomatic answer. “We’ll come to superheroes if you want, because I’ll crush it,” he warns. “I’ll fucking crush it. They’re fucking boring as shit.”