James Gunn Quotes

I just watch movies I like over and over. It seems to be a lot of sci-fi stuff. My favorites are probably - besides the first two 'Alien' films, I watch '2001', I watch 'Star Wars', the first ones, because those actually had a huge effect on me as well, 'Empire Strikes Back' especially.

I started watching 'Star Trek' as a kid.

The main stuff I like is from the late '60s to the early '90s. That's the stuff I love. It's the James Cameron's and the Paul Verhoven stuff. I guess when I was younger, 'Star Wars' had an influence.

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

I believe that I'm an actor to this day because of 'Star Wars.' I saw 'Star Wars' as a child, and I was completely enamored by it.

If you look at the most meaningful science fiction, it didn't come from watching other films. We seem to be in a place now where filmmakers make films based on other films because that's where the stimuli and influence comes from.

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

I think Star Trek has been very double-edged for all of us - as actors, writers, directors.

'Alien' is a great movie. So is 'Close Encounters.' But I'm not the guy who goes out to the science-fiction festival. '2001's good.

You go through at least the first two years of Star Trek and you find some amazing stuff. Everything that was going on Gene put into the series. He just put strange costumes on the actors and painted them funny colours and left the same situation in.

Most modern science fiction went to school on 'Dune.' Even 'Harry Potter' with its 'boy protagonist who has not yet grown into his destiny' shares a common theme. When I read it for the first time, I felt like I had learned another language, mastered a new culture, adopted a new religion.

If you go back and watch 'The French Connection,' it's been cannibalized so many times. There are certain movies like that, where you see the original and think, 'This isn't so great.' And the reason it isn't so great is because everyone has copied it.

I am playing in a playground that's already been played in. I am always aware that a lot of the furniture in science fiction is second hand.

'Doctor Who' is the most original science-fiction television series ever made. It is also one of the longest-running television shows of all time.

When I saw 'Blade Runner,' my understanding was that 'Blade Runner' and 'Alien' were sequels to each other - or they were related. They were set in the same world.

When I was a teenager, I got into SF, quite heavily, and that too has had a major impact on my writing.

The great thing I like about the sci-fi genre is there's a lot of different latitude for a lot of different kinds of behavior. You can be a very larger-than-life villain, or a very naturalistic villain, and all of it seems to fit.

For every SF reader of that period, Robert A. Heinlein was also a touchstone.

'Star Trek' was inspiring to me.

I have so many favourite science fiction films. I would say 'Alien' and 'Aliens' are two of my favourite sci-fi films. Also 'Children of Men' would be one of my favourite science fiction films. I love the original 'Solaris' and the remake. And even though it wasn't a film, the series 'Battlestar Galactica' was one of my favourite TV shows.

I'm coming from a small town in Quebec where, at that time, there was no Internet, and the way to be in contact with movies were those American fan magazines like 'Fantastic Films' and 'Starlog,' and I still remember the shock, the impact of seeing the first frames, the first pictures coming out of 'Blade Runner.'

'Doctor Who' is part of my science fictional DNA. You could take it out of me, and I'd probably still have ended up being a writer, but almost certainly not the same one.

Movies like 'Westworld' used ideas I'd thought of a long time ago.

I love sci-fi. Growing up, I was a big fan of the 'Alien' series, 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,' etcetera. Plus, anything apocalyptic - 'I Am Legend,' '1984,' 'Battlestar Galactica.'

I was a huge fan of 'Blade Runner.' That was a pretty formative film for me growing up. It really got my sci-fi juices flowing, as it were.