RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Historical epics, dystopian futures, crime thrillers, a few androids and so many Russell Crowe accents. Travel from the distant past to the 'Alien' future as we rank the legendary director’s films.
If Ridley Scott retired 46 years ago, he would still be one of the most influential filmmakers ever. Now The Dog Stars is his 30th movie. And he was already a veteran director before he came to features. Is it true that he made a thousand TV advertisements, or was it two thousand? Ads paid well, and the fast pace suited him. (He has never liked relaxing.) Half a century later, some Brits still remember his bread commercial. And then, on the big screen, he invented a new world. Smoke, steam, neon shadowlight on cybermorphic grime. Big Tech vast as nation-states. Humanity going obsolescent. Dead machines who’ve seen things that we people cannot believe. And sex and violence, of course. You’ve got to win the crowd.
Today his family business, Scott Free, is multigenerational and multinational. He cracks on, tireless, already prepping his next blockbuster . Maybe it’s how he was raised, in the north before the war. Keep calm, carry on, pull yourself together, get on with it. Always drawing when he isn’t filming, leaving a trail of Ridleygrams for his crew. Did his output suffer from relentless productivity? Or is variety the spice of life? You can slice his filmography into so many pieces: The rousing histories filmed in Morocco, the dark futures built on a soundstage, glossy crime tales, six films about the French, six about Italians. Hits and misses, to be sure, though four flops turn spectacular when you watch the correct cuts. But retirement might as well be execution — just ask a Nexus 6. Best get this ranking started quick, before Sir Ridley runs off to make it longer.
A couple weeks ago, at a 100-year-old theme park in Pennsylvania, I met a nice bulldog. The owner explained how his paws were big when he was just a puppy. So the dog was named Maximus. Gladiator echoes in eternity — it’s why so many guys my age think so much about Rome — but the phenomenon was the man. This sequel tries to grave-rob its grandeur, splitting the persona of Russell Crowe’s absent warrior between Paul Mescal’s rebel aristocrat and Pedro Pascal’s weary commander, two bores adrift in dodgy digital effects, overlit sets and plot beats repeated wholesale from the first film. Sometimes Scott just lets his biggest stars do whatever the hell they want, so at least Denzel Washington has fun as the impresario with violent plans for politics — or, to quote his most lysergic line reading, “politicssssssss- sah !”
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