Ridley Me This: Can Ridley Scott Make Good?

Ridley and Rusty’s fifth collaboration.

Robin Hood could and should have changed it all. This was an established, well-loved character who hadn’t seen a serious day in quite some time. This was the Maximus of archery, primed to shoot Scott back into his rightful place atop the visionary podium. You probably know, however, this isn’t quite how the story played out. Despite the strong performances and presentation, Hood lacked the kind of focus necessary to pierce our minds the way films like Black Hawk Down did.

Now I’m not saying Scott should have gone back to the start, and pretended the slate was clear, simply because his early work was so much stronger than we were seeing at this point. A filmmaker should of course move forward and explore new territory. Scorsese does so with tremendous results. But there is value in delving into new areas of previously trodden territory. Casino Royale breathed new life into a tiring James Bond. The Phantom Menace…well it made a lot of money.

Scott’s venture into prequel-dom gave us Prometheus. And this is where we saw the first spark of the old Scott, clutching for oxygen, trying to turn spark into fire. The opening images were gorgeous. And in fact, the entire aesthetic was immaculately constructed. Any problem with this Alien semi-prequel were rooted deep in the story itself. So did this manage to equal or surpass its Alien origin? Not quite. But the spark was strong.

And then came The Counsellor to piss on that spark and throw up on our screens. And I can’t bring myself to blame Scott for this. ‘Blame’ in any sense is a strong and often pointless argument in regards to filmmaking. But what this misfire seems to have stemmed from is giving power to a writer (Cormac McCarthy) who can swim with an Olympian’s prowess in the sea of prose, but flails and drowns in the ocean of film. Now someone, please, grab a gigantic rug to sweep this under.

…and then the Xenomorph will enter over there.

Exodus: Gods and Kings. What can I say? Actually, very little, because I haven’t seen it (has anyone?). The lead up to this film was plagued in controversy – a dead horse I have no interest in beating. But while the masses focused on the sort-of-strange casting choices, no one seemed to be discussing the elephant in the colosseum. This (super expensive) film looked cheap, and tacky. Watching the slick trailer, filled with computer generated monuments and sexy eye makeup for all, it was like a polished off-spawn of Gladiator. But these kinds of stories, the ones Scott likes to tell, are ruined when injected with the sterility of such imagery.

Recounting the last decade of Scott’s work is…a little exhausting. The point of this article isn’t to bash his recent body of work, but to see if there is hope for the future. And I truly believe there is. Next year we’ll be seeing The Martian, and if you’ve read the book, you know it’s almost perfectly suited for a film adaptation. A superb cast has been reeled in, and I can’t wait to see what comes of this one. Though I do hope that Drew Goddard (the talented writer involved in Lost and The Cabin in the Woods) does something about the dialogue, as it was my only real grievance with the source material.

Metaphor.

Following this, we have the Blade Runner sequel, which is an almost certain hit. If I see anything playing against Scott here, it’s once again his recent reliance on modern CGI. The world he built in the original film was impeccable in its glumness, a realistic and dark vision of the future. That’s the world that needs to be recaptured. There is a real danger of leaning too heavily on the shiny mechanics of computerised visuals that gave us the latest Total Recall. That kind of look would ‘do the job’ but it wouldn’t feel like Blade Runner. Really, what gives me high hopes for this is the recent statement from Scott, in which he quotes Harrison Ford as saying the script is ‘the best thing {he’s} ever read.’ I’ve never had the impression that Ford is an entirely praising fellow, and definitely going by his critical (though laudable) notes on the Indiana Jones script, he wouldn’t rave about a undeserving screenplay.

So maybe revisiting trodden lands is the answer for Scott. Prometheus is my favourite of his post-2000 films, so I’d say there are roads within his universes still worth travelling. And if Blade Runner 2 pays off, we may finally see the infamous Gladiator 2 come about.

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