In my mind Ridley Scott's decision to include the voiceover in the film more or less disqualifies him from rendering a final judgement about this stuff.

Scott is an interesting filmmaker. Blade Runner and Alien are two of the best films ever made in my opinion. Everything else he's done is amateurish in comparison (also in my opinion), even the successful/fun stuff.

This makes me wonder whether there's something behind the greatness of those two films other than his direction. Maybe the writer/crew/cast/studio/producers had more power in his earlier films and used that power wisely?

There's an interesting passage on the wikipedia article for Alien:

> Scott had wanted the Alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea as they believed the Alien should die at the end of the film.

All that aside, it's not always clear who "owns" a film. The director tends to get a lot of credit, but film-making is collaborative, and who's to say that the screenwriter doesn't get to decide what the film is really about?