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sebster wrote:Scott is one of a priviledged few directors that is given the time and money needed to make each of his projects exactly how he wants it. It shows in the incredible production values in each of his films.

But then it also shows that almost every film he has produced has been gak.

I'd proffer atbout 30 awesome 70 gak. But the awesome is Awesome Spider level awesome. Has he made a non industry changing sci fi movie yet?

Ridley Scott directing credits include: Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator etc. Producing credits include: GI Jane, Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood.

Which are the 30 awesome ones he has produced?

sorry 30% 70%

Evidently, based on the above he directs better than he produces.

Precisely, which is why I can't agree with Sebster. Or show the same amount of enthusiasm everyone else is about an Alien prequel.

Wow he's directed beaucoup films hasn't he. Unless I am missing one the sci fi ones have been game changers however:

In Production
2010s
2000s
1990s
1980s
1970s
1960s
The Kind One (2012) (in production)
Untitled Alien Prequel #2 (2012) (announced)
Untitled Alien Prequel #1 (2011) (announced)


Robin Hood (2010)


Body of Lies (2008)
... aka "World of Lies" - Japan (English title)
American Gangster (2007)
A Good Year (2006)
All the Invisible Children (2005) (segment "Jonathan")
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Matchstick Men (2003)
Cinema16: British Short Films (2003) (V)
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Hannibal (2001)
Gladiator (2000)


G.I. Jane (1997)
White Squall (1996)
1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Thelma & Louise (1991)


Black Rain (1989/I)
Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)
Legend (1985)
Blade Runner (1982)
... aka "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" - International (English title) (recut version)


Alien (1979)
... aka "Alien: The Director's Cut" - USA (director's cut)
The Duellists (1977)


"Mogul" (1 episode, 1969)
... aka "The Troubleshooters" - UK (original title)
- If He Hollers, Let Him Go (1969) TV episode
"The Informer" (2 episodes, 1967)
- Your Secrets Are Safe with Us, Mr Lambert (1967) TV episode
- No Further Questions (1967) TV episode
"Half Hour Story" (1 episode, 1967)
- Robert (1967) TV episode
"Adam Adamant Lives!" (3 episodes, 1966-1967)
- The Resurrectionists (1967) TV episode
- Death Begins at Seventy (1967) TV episode
- The League of Uncharitable Ladies (1966) TV episode
"Thirty-Minute Theatre" (1 episode, 1966)
- The Hard Word (1966) TV episode
"Z Cars" (1 episode, 1965)
- Error of Judgement (1965) TV episode
Boy and Bicycle (1965)

Hmm, I guess my favourite Ridley films would be...

Alien
Thelma and Louise
Gladiator
Black Hawk Down

The rest I can take or leave. I know people rave about Blade Runner but I could never get into it for some reason. Maybe it's all the different versions that were released. Too confusing!

Flashman wrote:Hmm, I guess my favourite Ridley films would be...

Alien
Thelma and Louise
Gladiator
Black Hawk Down

The rest I can take or leave. I know people rave about Blade Runner but I could never get into it for some reason. Maybe it's all the different versions that were released. Too confusing!

Thelma and Louise? Mancard, hand it over!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I liked Black Rain quite a bit.

You're just bitter because Thelma refuses to drive through Texas to get to Mexico.

Anyways, I completed an olympic distance triathlon in July (including a 1500m sea swim), my man card is all stamped up and verified for this year

I'm probably going to get shot down for this but (ironicaly, considering the original subject of this thread) I would actually prefer a James Cameron's Aliens style prequel to a Ridley Scott's Alien style one.

Pretty much after the alien came out of john hurt's stomach in Alien the film became your average horror villain picking the protagonists off one by one. Hell maybe that was new and ground breaking at the time but nowadays it's definitely been done to death. It wasn't as if Ridley Scott's direction actually added anything to that style either. It was the setting, the alien etc. which made the film.

Whereas Aliens is the film mainly responsible for ingraining the alien franchise into pop culture (including the tyranids in 40k). Don't get me wrong Alien is a great film. But Aliens was what made it a franchise. In large part because it didn't stick with being a horror flic and took a different route.

If the prequels are going to go down the same route of Alien and be a suspense horror film then it needs something else. Ridley Scott is not the man to give it that IMO, and he definitely shouldn't be producing it let alone writing it.

+ if you ask me he gets far too much credit for why Blade Runner is so good also. The guy churns out far too much gak to be the genius everyone makes him out to be.

The best way to put it from the way I see it is that Ridley Scott is a decent director. But he's only as good as the script he's been given to work with. EDIT: or maybe: he's always as good as the script but never better?

sebster wrote:
He's taken the time to do it right with all his movies. Scott is one of a priviledged few directors that is given the time and money needed to make each of his projects exactly how he wants it. It shows in the incredible production values in each of his films. Unfortunately, something has happened and the stories he's told in the last decade or so have been pretty mediocre, and rather annoyingly message heavy.

This could be good, but there is a lot to suggest it could also be very crap. Even ignoring Scott's fairly poor record since Black Hawk Down, prequels have a fairly average record.

I remember being extremely disappointed his movie "Gladiator", since it turned out to be a retelling of a mid 60's movie, "The Fall of the Roman Empire", with a lot of the same plot points lifted from that movie, right down to the death match at the end between the Emperor and the General.

Don't laugh at me for this, but there is another 60's movie called "The Planet of the Vampires" that a lot of people say Scott got his inspiration for the Space Jockey from. The setting is cut from the same cloth, a space ship follows a signal to a seemingly uninhabited planet where an alien spacecraft is discovered, along with the giant bones of it's crew, and no real clue as to what happened to them.

Relapse wrote:

sebster wrote:
He's taken the time to do it right with all his movies. Scott is one of a priviledged few directors that is given the time and money needed to make each of his projects exactly how he wants it. It shows in the incredible production values in each of his films. Unfortunately, something has happened and the stories he's told in the last decade or so have been pretty mediocre, and rather annoyingly message heavy.

This could be good, but there is a lot to suggest it could also be very crap. Even ignoring Scott's fairly poor record since Black Hawk Down, prequels have a fairly average record.

I remember being extremely disappointed his movie "Gladiator", since it turned out to be a retelling of a mid 60's movie, "The Fall of the Roman Empire", with a lot of the same plot points lifted from that movie, right down to the death match at the end between the Emperor and the General.

Don't laugh at me for this, but there is another 60's movie called "The Planet of the Vampires" that a lot of people say Scott got his inspiration for the Space Jockey from.

Ridley Scott did not write, nor produce Alien. He directed it. I would assume (i may be wrong) he didn't come up with the Space Jockey. Nor did he write or produce gladiator for that matter.

That could be true, but I liked the statement Sebster made about the stories he's been given to tell. Gladiator had a very happy ending compared to the movie Fall of the Roman Empire. I'd say the movie Gladiator borrowed from had the more realistic ending.

Relapse wrote:That could be true, but I liked the statement Sebster made about the stories he's been given to tell. Gladiator had a very happy ending compared to the movie Fall of the Roman Empire. I'd say the movie Gladiator borrowed from had the more realistic ending.

While directors can and often do make changes in the plot I think something as big as lifting an entire plot from another move should be credited/blamed on the writers as aposed to the director.

Relapse wrote:Don't laugh at me for this, but there is another 60's movie called "The Planet of the Vampires" that a lot of people say Scott got his inspiration for the Space Jockey from. The setting is cut from the same cloth, a space ship follows a signal to a seemingly uninhabited planet where an alien spacecraft is discovered, along with the giant bones of it's crew, and no real clue as to what happened to them.

A quote from Dan O'Bannon who wrote Alien.... "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!"

Gotta respect O'Bannon for that statement! Alien reminded me of a good mix between Planet of the Vampires and It, the Terror from Beyond Space.

Cool, ALIEN going back to its roots will be friggin awesome. The first movie was pretty damn good, so making the aliens creepy and such as they were, instead of tacky (I mean, the AVP movies, you could totally see where the STRINGS held their tails up, seriously? WTF?!?!)

Boy I want to be excited, but been getting burned waaaay too much lately on all the classic sci-fi they keep trying to resurrect. I have a theory that they rely too much on all the fancy new whiz-bang technology they can employ for special effects and miss the stuff that made them good in the first place.

I'm trying to come up with a prequel for anything that hasn't sucked, but I'm coming up empty. Not saying it doesn't exist, but I can't recall a single one after sitting here thinking about it for a few minutes.

Yikes, Ridley Scott's 72?!

Interesting that he's filming the two 3d prequels back to back but its going to be weird without Sigourney Weaver. Here's hoping for the best but I was much more of a fan of Cameron's take on the franchise...GAME OVER MAN! Nuke 'em from orbit! etc.

More scifi blockbusters the better, please be good!

whatwhat wrote:But then it also shows that almost every film he has produced has been gak.

But in all those cases the level of production has been exceptional. Films like Robin Hood and Kingdom of Heaven, for their many, many failings, look sensational.

I think the correlation between Scott's bad movies and his producer credit is more to do with him making poorer movies in the latter part of his career, and simultaneously gaining more power as a senior director (and therefore gaining the producer credit).

whatwhat wrote:
A quote from Dan O'Bannon who wrote Alien.... "I didn't steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody!"

Shame that he won't be 'homaging' any more material, being as he's dead and all now.

Dan O'Bannon was one of the more prolific and important SF directing/writing/producing people in the industry.
For 4 decades.

He worked on some of the more seminal SF masterpieces, and was brilliant - and a little mad, too.

whatwhat wrote:I'm probably going to get shot down for this but (ironicaly, considering the original subject of this thread) I would actually prefer a James Cameron's Aliens style prequel to a Ridley Scott's Alien style one.

Pretty much after the alien came out of john hurt's stomach in Alien the film became your average horror villain picking the protagonists off one by one. Hell maybe that was new and ground breaking at the time but nowadays it's definitely been done to death. It wasn't as if Ridley Scott's direction actually added anything to that style either. It was the setting, the alien etc. which made the film.

Whereas Aliens is the film mainly responsible for ingraining the alien franchise into pop culture (including the tyranids in 40k). Don't get me wrong Alien is a great film. But Aliens was what made it a franchise. In large part because it didn't stick with being a horror flic and took a different route.

If the prequels are going to go down the same route of Alien and be a suspense horror film then it needs something else. Ridley Scott is not the man to give it that IMO, and he definitely shouldn't be producing it let alone writing it.

+ if you ask me he gets far too much credit for why Blade Runner is so good also. The guy churns out far too much gak to be the genius everyone makes him out to be.

The best way to put it from the way I see it is that Ridley Scott is a decent director. But he's only as good as the script he's been given to work with. EDIT: or maybe: he's always as good as the script but never better?

You have missed the point, sir. Alien set up an implied mythos, that Aliens totally changed and took in a direction I don't really like. Don't get me wrong, I kinda like the movie itself and the whole colonial marine aesthetic (and gameplay ) but as far as the Linguafoeda Archeronsis mythos goes, I prefer the alien simply already being seeded around the galaxy for us to find, (go and read Aliens: Apocalypse; The Destroying Angels. Do it. Seriously, it rocks.) to James Cameron's Star Ship Troopers inspired addition, where "bugs" throw themselves at guns (tyranids - as you say) to whittle down ammo and get spawned by an insectoid (termite) style queen (when there was enough eggs on the derelict to infect the whole colony anyway).

/fanboy

sebster wrote:

whatwhat wrote:But then it also shows that almost every film he has produced has been gak.

But in all those cases the level of production has been exceptional. Films like Robin Hood and Kingdom of Heaven, for their many, many failings, look sensational.

There is far more to production than cinematography.