Spielberg's Favorite Sci-Fi Horror Movie Is A '70s Classic

Steven Spielberg loves few things as much as he loves aliens, having made numerous films on the topic, from "E.T." to "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" to his latest, the 2026 blockbuster "Disclosure Day." While arguably having never made a true horror movie, he has often dabbled in the genre, be it the monster movie trappings of "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" or the more macabre elements of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." With all that laid out, it's not be too surprising to hear that the esteemed director has particular love for Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 film "Alien."

Back in 2005, when Spielberg was promoting another of his alien movies — his big-screen adaptation of " War of the Worlds" — he discussed his love for "Alien" in an interview with Cinematic Happenings Under Development. When asked why he decided to make a movie where the aliens are more of a threat, rather than the more innocent portrayal of his other films, he said making a "scary alien movie" was something that had been on his radar for a long time.

"I thought well why can't I try my hand at the kind of film that Ridley Scott made when he did the first 'Alien,' which was my favorite scary science fiction movies of all time," Spielberg said. "It was just something that I had always wanted to do."

"Scary science fiction," as Spielberg referred to "Alien" back in 2005, is a genre the director knows well. "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World" fit that descriptor to a tee while maintaining the grandeur and sense of adventure that permeate Spielberg's films. "Close Encounters" and "War of the Worlds" are both pretty unsettling, albeit in different ways, while "E.T." and "Disclosure Day" portray their aliens with much more optimism.

Sci-fi in general has been one of the primary spaces Spielberg has returned to time and again throughout his career. In the same 2005 interview with Cinematic Happenings Under Development, he called the genre "a vacation away from all the rules of narrative logic" and "the great escape for moviemakers."

Of course, the most direct similarities between "Alien" and Spielberg's filmography is how the monster is presented  — or not. The xenomorph's habit of hiding in the vents of the Nostromo, kept just out of sight, is very similar to the way the shark is treated in "Jaws," and you can a similar approach with the velociraptors in Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" films.

Before Ridley Scott was attached to direct "Alien," the film was just a script being shopped around by screenwriter Dan O'Bannon. And indirectly, Spielberg played a role in the film getting some attention. O'Bannon used the shorthand "'Jaws' in space" while pitching the movie — then called "Star Beast" — to studios. And after "Star Wars" became the biggest movie of 1977, 20th Century-Fox became keen to keep the space train chugging.

Of course, "Star Wars" itself also had some Spielberg influence, as he and George Lucas were close friends when the latter was working on his epic space opera. Spielberg famously introduced Lucas to John Williams after working with the composer on "Jaws," thereby laying the groundwork for one of the most iconic soundscapes in cinema history.

"Star Wars," in turn, became a massive influence on Ridley Scott and one of the primary reasons he chose to direct "Alien" when the opportunity reached him. "It literally stopped me in my tracks," Scott told The Hollywood Reporter in 2019 regarding his first time seeing Lucas' masterpiece in a theater. "I was depressed for three months — that's my highest form of accolade — to get very depressed first, then get very competitive."