Alien. Blade Runner. Gladiator.
There will be a number of people who agree with that selection, and inevitably some who have issues with one or all of them, but lets go by IMDb/Rotten Tomatoes consensus here, roughly 8.4 and 85% ratings respectively, so I'm willing to speculate that my opinion of them spreads fairly wide. The next part of my thought process was, what's he done since that's been really good?
Turns out that there's more than springs to my mind immediately.
And in my case I think that's because the things that spring to mind immediately are the past 5 years of meh-fests. In reverse order I think it's Exodus: Gods & Kings, The Counselor, Prometheus, Robin Hood. Now there might be stuff missing from that there list (it would've taken about 10 seconds to google, but then again why not make up facts?), but all in all as far as recent history goes, my opinion is that I don't really feel like there's anything to properly shout about. Prometheus is possibly the most divisive film out of those 4 in terms of public opinion I'd say, but I still enjoy the quote which describes it as 'the most beautiful film I've ever wanted to punch in the face'. (Watch the opening 10 minutes or so, the rest is take it or leave it)
So is a bad run enough to tarnish a Director? I mean it's 5 years of not having much on the way of critical acclaim or mass public adoration, the first thing I think of is 'he's kinda lost it a bit hasn't he?' And upon further reflection, and a bit of a google, that's rather unfair.
Since 2000s Gladiator there was a 10 year span which included Black Hawk Down and American Gangster, which are only a slight step down from the 3 you remember first off, and then Kingdom of Heaven & Body of Lies, which although arguably are not as good as the other two, are still rather enjoyable.
It was Body of Lies that alerted me to this, having completely blanked out when trying to recall between Gladiator (2000) and Robin Hood (2010) I saw it in HMV and recognised it. I remembered bits and pieces of it, the genre, the people involved, and that I really enjoyed it when I first saw it, but apparently not enough to clock it when thinking through Scott films. Did Prometheus really tarnish his list of work enough to do that for me?
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| Body of Lies |
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| Zero Dark Thirty |
For those who havn't seen it, Body of Lies is from 2008...ish, and runs in the same kind of vein as Homeland. Leo Di Caprio is a CIA intelligence agent, running operations on the ground for the US from the drone eyes of an overweight and heavily accented Russel Crowe back in his comfortable family lifestyle. Obviously being contained in a single feature length run time means that it lacks the kinds of intrigue, spread of interests and development that Homeland gets afforded each season, but it's still a decent piece of cinema. Might do a proper piece on it at some point actually but that's another story. It's very much a story of the times, and I'd imagine it would have been a fairly big hit in the states simply due to the subject nature? I don't know that for a fact, but a reasonable assumption I'd say given other successes. Terrorism and counter terrorism are now part of everyday news reports, and this film feels like the start of the Homeland, Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty style of film making, without really reaching those heights. But you got to enjoy a bit of drone death cam though am I right? Classic international sniper vision.
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| Body of Lies |
Kingdom of Heaven strays closer to the topics he seems to enjoy more overtly these days, quite obviously in the case of Exodus, but then also there are ridiculously heavy religious themes running through Prometheous (which add nothing, yeah, nothing is definitely the right word). In a sense Kingdom of Heaven, a story about a blacksmith's journey to the 'holy land' of Jerusalem, is slightly less religious than Prometheus, which is future people traveling to another planet in order to discover the meaning of cave paintings. There is a little bit of logic, kinda. There's less in the way of philosophical religion in the religious war epic, it's merely locations of supposed importance to people, and it's the basis of the war, there is little in the 3 hours (I'm going off the director's cut here) about what the religion means to people, why, how it affect's their reasoning. It's mostly just Orlando Bloom going, 'nope, don't feel any godly presence' over and over again. Prometheus on the other hand is awash with wanting to find out about a creator, referring to the higher beings as gods, questioning faith blah blah... Yeah I'm not against all this sort of thing, but in a place where it has a bit of gravitas, the sci-fi hybrid really doesn't work for me at all. I certainly don't remember it cropping up in Alien, and that's the film people remember. Religious rant over, Kingdom of Heaven is a fair effort at telling a historical narrative, with enough time allowed to properly expand on the lead's life, follow along with both the sides at war and understand the politics surrounding it.
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| Kingdom of Heaven |
Yet not in the same league of... I can't really think of an example right now... Alexander? ...noooo, Troy? I kind of like this more than Troy though, King Arthur? ...nope, I'm just going to hope that you've seen it and deal without having any comparisons ready and waiting.
So there you have it, it took me about two evenings* to write but there's a couple extra Ridley films that may have completely passed you by. Should you ever feel short of something to watch, there's a couple of suggestions that might entertain you for a couple of hours. MIGHT.
(*I fell asleep on evening one, probably should have taken that hint on my writing skills, chances are you didn't get this far anyway, so screw it)
Hang on, there's a bigger gap between Blade Runner and Gladiator than Gladiator and Robin Hood? Yeah I'm not going into that. There'll be another review of another not new film in a little while, probably on my next BluRay binge.
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