RIDLEY SCOTT FILMS
Four Empire writers definitively put Sir Ridley Scott’s career in order
Chris: Let’s start off by talking about when we first got into Sir Ridders.
James: I saw Legend in the cinema. That was probably it. I remember I saw that in Swiss Cottage at the Odeon.
Dan: It was Alien but not all of it. That was the Holy Grail for me as a kid. I knew about the alien bursting out of the stomach. I plucked up the courage to watch it on VHS.
Chris: What age? Dan: I think about eight. I started watching it and then they’re all at the dinner table — and this is completely true — and a man came in and took the video player away.
James: A man your dad owed money to? Dan: Possibly. It was another six years before I got to see Alien.
Nick: So, did you think the movie just ended with a nice meal? Dan: I knew what was going to happen. Nick: For me, Alien was overshadowed by Aliens. I always thought Alien was a lesser thing. I’ve only recently come to see how brilliant it is. Chris: We saw it in 70mm recently. Nick: It was a bit purple and moved a lot. It was like an alien was in the projection booth. Seeing the first film on the big screen, that’s an ideal way to see it. It’s slow and has creeping dread.
Chris: It’s about 45 minutes into the movie before John Hurt needs some Rennies. Ridley’s had a slow burn approach to his movies all the way through his career.
Dan: It doesn’t apply to all his films. You see Hannibal quite early on in Hannibal.
Chris: The chestburster scene had infamy on its side. I was aware of that sequence before I saw it.
Nick: I think I might have seen
Spaceballs and its spoof of that scene before I saw the actual scene.
Dan: The thing with Ridley Scott is you can always guarantee it’ll be a visual feast. It’s always going to look good. But he’s got a tin ear when it comes to scripts.
James: He’s a very visual director. I interviewed him for The Martian and while he was talking to me he was doing an oil painting.
Nick: Thelma & Louise is one of the exceptions, where it’s not so much about the visuals perhaps and more about the story and the characters. Dan: I disagree. I think Thelma &
Louise is very visually powerful, using that classically Western landscape as the backdrop. It’s an intimate story but a huge film. I think that’s what makes it work.
Nick: And I guess the most iconic moment in that film is a visual moment. Chris: Driving off the cliff at the end? Nick: No, Brad Pitt with his shirt off.
Chris: Hannibal is a film that suffers in comparison to one of the greatest films of all time, but I really enjoyed it. Dan: What? Chris: It’s got a sense of fun. It’s got its tongue rammed into someone else’s cheek. James: It is in many ways the worst Hannibal film and I include young Hannibal in that. Nick: It’s Hanniballs. Chris: Well, if you liked that controversial opinion, I’ve got another one for you. Blade Runner ain’t all that. Nick: Oh, come on. Blade Runner is brilliant and you’re a berk. Chris: I stand corrected.
Nick: What don’t you like about it? Chris: It’s long, boring, dull, and doesn’t go anywhere. Nick: Time to die.
James: Chris, all your opinions will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Anyway — what are we saying is Ridders’ worst film? Where do we think is the bottom of the barrel? Dan: Alien: Covenant. James: Really? No. It’s not good, but it’s not the worst. Dan: Hate it.
Nick: Covenant, weirdly, almost made it onto my list. I liked the ending so much. I didn’t see how dark and nihilistic it was going to get.
Chris: You look at his films over the last few years. Prometheus and Alien:
Covenant are about disproving that God exists, for me. The Counsellor is a godless film. It’s about a universe in which bad shit will happen because there is no God.
Nick: There’s always been a running theme about the senselessness of violence, going back to The Duellists. Two guys just fighting for no reason. Which is what you get in Kingdom Of Heaven, which is two sides fighting and they’re driven by the extremists on either side and none of it makes any sense.
James: Kingdom Of Heaven is an interesting one because that’s a two-and-ahalf hour film. The director’s cut is nearly three hours 20, but it’s a substantially different film and a vastly superior one. It needed that breathing room.
Chris: I think it’s phenomenal. People lost their shit over Gladiator. For me,
Kingdom Of Heaven is… and I know this feels like ‘the band the Beatles could have been’, but it does feel like that to me. The film Gladiator could have been.
James: What is your beef with Gladiator? Chris: I don’t have a huge one. It’s in my list. But largely because it’s not White Squall. Nick: What Gladiator has in its favour, that Kingdom Of Heaven doesn’t, is a great central performance.
James: That’s what really established Russell Crowe as a charismatic leading man. Dan: Gladiator was ahead of the curve. It was the film that proved you could resurrect the past with CGI. At the time people were gob-smacked and rightly so. They hadn’t seen Ancient Rome presented in that way.
Chris: Right. Enough squabbling — let’s vote! All The Money In The World is out now on DVD, Blu-ray and Download