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Ridley Scott wants what you have
"Macho? Tony's very macho. He'll still climb bloody El Capitan; I tell him he's a fucking idiot. But I prefer the tennis court. I've got a knee replacement because of the tennis." Naturally, Scott's friends are rivals, too, and it was a visit to the set of Cameron's Avatar that convinced him to shoot Prometheus in 3D. "I said to Jim: 'You've gone and raised the fucking bar again! I've got to do something about this...'." — Ridley Scott in The Independent
Ineresting. I don't think "competitive" is the word for this. I've long thought Scott to be the most covetous filmmaker working. It's an extension of his ad background, but everything in his movies is stuff you want, or which he wants, or he wants you to want. His films are eaten up with envy, be it for the rich (Someone to Watch Over Me), for cool hardware (Alien), for great architecture (Blade Runner), for rich food (Hannibal), for French real estate (A Good Year) for high shutter speed shots of dirt raining down on scenes of combat (Gladiator) and now for 3-D. He covets.
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Ridley Scott covets the glories of the past. How else to explain his plans for a Blade Runner sequel...30 years after the fact.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time that Scott should have become, in his own words, "the John Ford of science fiction".
Films like Someone To Watch Over Me and Thelma And Louise are worthy films, to be sure, but they could have been directed by any number of people.
GI Jane and American Gangster are honorable mediocraties. And that's the problem with Scott's career.
Scott walked away from sci-fi at the exact
moment he was creating masterpieces of the genre.
Am l disappointed? You bet I am. I would rather live in a dimension that has a dozen Scott sci-films than the one which contains Gladiator.
John Ford was a model of consistency within a genre and produced defining films. Ridley has been away from sci-fi for 30 years and the movie universe has suffered as a result.
And, lets face it, so has Ridley. Because in the long run, Alien and Blade Runner are the movies that will continue to astonish.
What was it that the old Russian ballet director told his cast and crew?..."Astonish me."
Prometheus better astonish. Anything less is unacceptable.