It’s hard to overstate the profound impact of Ridley Scott on modern visual media. His style and techniques permeate genres and mediums beyond quantification. They’re backed into the identity of popular culture. In his near 60-year tenure directing cinema, he’s created classics including Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and many, many more. Perhaps most influential of them all — in contention with Blade Runner — is his 1979 sci-fi film, Alien. Everything about the movie is iconic, including the title card. Despite art direction in part by Leslie Dilley, one of the art directors who worked on Star Wars just a few years before, it was the antithesis of the melodramatic space opera. The contemporary cinematic presentation, inspired special effects, and stellar cast made a movie in a class of its own. H.R. Geiger’s xenomorph endured alongside the film itself against the progress of visual effects thanks to its eerie, chitinous body and excellent facial animatronics. Sigourney Weaver’s role of Ripley, a miner aboard a corporate interstellar shipping vessel, would unlock a franchise she’d lead for nearly 20 years.