Three sci-fi masterpieces from The Martian director Ridley Scott
While veteran British director Ridley Scott has made just a handful of science fiction features - technically four, including - over his four-decade career, he has managed to turn out two seminal classics and one major critical hit.
(1979)
The sci-fi film that launched Scott's career, made Sigourney Weaver an action heroine, and spawned an entire horror-in-outer-space tradition, this atmospheric classic begins with a spaceship crew picking up a lifeform and escalates to some hysterically intense moments, including that chest-bursting scene.
(1982)
A world-weary detective (Harrison Ford) comes out of retirement to hunt down murderous humanoids known as "replicants" (led by Rutger Hauer) in this dystopian neo-noir based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel and produced by Hong Kong tycoon Run Run Shaw.
(2012)
It started life as a much-anticipated prequel to but ends up a visually stunning 3D spectacle that hints at the cosmic history of humanity. Scott has since promised two or three more films, the last of which would link up to . Edmund Lee
