Carmen Ejogo, Amy Seimetz, and Benjamin Rigby in Alien: Covenant (2017)Image via 20th Century Fox
It has been nearly a decade since Ridley Scott last made a sci-fi movie. He’s returning to the genre this year — in August, in fact — with The Dog Stars, which features Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin. Scott has stayed away from sci-fi longer than Steven Spielberg did before Spielberg returned to the genre this year with Disclosure Day. Spielberg’s last sci-fi film was Ready Player One, which debuted theatrically in 2018, a year after Scott’s last sci-fi movie. Scott has since focused almost exclusively on period films of various kinds. However, a string of recent underperformances at the box office could have prompted him to shift gears. Not that he can be slowed down; Scott famously juggles multiple projects at the same time, pivoting to whichever seems most likely to get produced sooner.
In the 2010s, he was on a sci-fi spree that began with Prometheus, his divisive Alien prequel that defied mixed reviews to gross more than $400 million worldwide. The streak continued with the widely acclaimed The Martian, which received a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars in addition to emerging as Scott’s highest-grossing film ever. Two years later, the filmmaker released what would become his final sci-fi movie for nine years. The movie in question received mostly positive reviews, but underperformed commercially and forced the studio to retool future plans for the franchise it belonged to. Now, the movie is streaming domestically on HBO Max, but it isn’t going to stick around for much longer.
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like? Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky
Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🏜️Paul Atreides
🖖Capt. Kirk
✊Princess Leia
🔦Ellen Ripley
🔥Max Rockatansky
01
How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher? The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.
02
What is your greatest strength in a crisis? The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.
03
What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for? Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.
04
How do you relate to the people around you? Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.
05
You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do? How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.
06
What has your heroism cost you personally? Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.
07
How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in? Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?
08
When everything is on the line, what keeps you going? The answer is the most honest thing about you.
Your Hero Has Been Identified Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.
Arrakis · Dune
Paul Atreides
You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
USS Enterprise · Star Trek
Captain Kirk
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
The Rebellion · Star Wars
Princess Leia
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
The Nostromo · Alien
Ellen Ripley
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
The Wasteland · Mad Max
Max Rockatansky
You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.
You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
Ridley Scott’s Existential Sci-Fi Movie Is Flying Off HBO Max
We’re talking, of course, about Alien: Covenant. The film served as a sequel to Prometheus, but avoided the backlash that film was met with; it now holds a 65% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Alien: Covenant delivers another satisfying round of close-quarters deep-space terror, even if it doesn’t take the saga in any new directions.” Produced on a reported budget of $110 million — roughly the same as The Martian — the movie grossed around $240 million worldwide. The fact that it made about half of Prometheus’ global haul was a concern. The Alien franchise, which Scott created back in the 1970s, would be revived years later with Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus, which made $350 million worldwide against a reported budget of $80 million.
You can watch Alien: Covenant on HBO Max until August 1; The Dog Stars will be released theatrically later that month.
