Cinema Experts

“When I first said I wanted to make a film about Rome and cast Russell Crowe, everyone had a good old snigger. I thought, `You wait.' They've done the same with Kingdom of Heaven and Orlando Bloom. I now say, 'Take a look at this.”
Scott grew up in an Army family, meaning that for most of his early life his father - an officer in the Royal Engineers - was absent. After the Second World War the Scott family moved back to their native north-east England, eventually settling in Teesside (whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner). Scott studied there at the West Hartlepool College of Art. He was to progress to an M.A. in graphic design at London's Royal College of Art from 1960 to 1962. There, he was to contribute to the college magazine, ARK, and help to establish its film department. For his final show he made a black and white short film, Boy and Bicycle, starring his younger brother, Tony Scott, and his father. The film's main visual elements would become features of Scott's later work. After graduation in 1963 he secured a traineeship as a set designer with the BBC, leading him to work on the popular television police series Z-Cars and the science fiction series Out of the Unknown. He was also assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realising the famous alien creatures. However, shortly before he was due to start work a schedule conflict meant that he was replaced on the serial by Raymond Cusick. At the BBC, Scott was placed into a directing training programme and, before he left the corporation, had directed episodes of Z-Cars, its spin-off, Softly, Softly, and adventure series Adam Adamant Lives!.
Scott quit the BBC in 1968 and established a production company, Ridley Scott Associates, working with Sir Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Hugh Johnson and employing his younger brother, Tony. Having cut his teeth on UK television commercials in the 1970s - most notably the 1974 Hovis advert, "Bike Round" (New World Symphony), which was filmed in Shaftesbury, Dorset - he graduated to Hollywood, where he produced and directed a number of top box office films. His first feature, The Duellists, was produced in Europe and won a jury medal at the Cannes Film Festival but made limited impact in the US.
Scott's disappointment with The Duellists was compounded by the success being enjoyed by Alan Parker with American-backed films - Scott admitted he was "ill for a week" with envy. Scott had originally planned to next adapt an opera, Tristan und Isolde, but after seeing Star Wars, he became convinced of the potential of large scale, effects-driven films. He therefore accepted the job of directing Alien, the ground-breaking 1979 horror/science fiction film that would give him international recognition. While Ridley Scott would not direct the three Alien sequels, the female action hero Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), introduced in the first film, would become a cinematic icon. Scott was involved in the 2003 restoration and re-release of the film including media interviews for its promotion. At this time Scott indicated that he had been in discussions to make the fifth and final film in the Alien franchise
After a year working on the film adaptation of Dune, Scott signed to direct the film version of Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, (which would be retitled as Blade Runner), following the sudden death of his brother Frank. Starring Harrison Ford and featuring an acclaimed soundtrack by Vangelis, Blade Runner was a flop when released to theatres in 1982, and was pulled shortly thereafter. However, it would eventually achieve cult status through re-issue on television and through home video. Scott's notes were used by Warner Brothers to create a rushed director's cut in 1991 which removed the voiceovers and modified the ending. Today Blade Runner is often ranked by critics one of the most important science fiction films of the 20th century and is usually discussed along with William Gibson's novel Neuromancer as initiating the cyberpunk genre.
In 1984, Apple Computer launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by a single broadcast of the now famous $1.5 million commercial, based on George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and directed by Ridley Scott (due to his work on Blade Runner).
The commercial was broadcast during the 1984 Super Bowl XVIII. Steve Jobs' intention with the ad was to equate Big Brother with the IBM PC and a nameless female action hero, portrayed by Anya Major, with the Macintosh. The commercial is frequently voted top in surveys of influential marketing campaigns. For example, Advertising Age named it the 1980s "Commercial of the Decade", and in 1999 the US TV Guide selected it as number one in their list of "50 Greatest Commercials of All Time".
The film resurfaced in the late 1990s when Apple made a QuickTime version of the commercial available for download from the Internet. It appeared numerous times on television commercial compilation specials, as well as on Nick-at-Nite during its "Retromercial" breaks. The making and presentation of this famous commercial formed the visual bookends for the docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley.
In 1985, Scott directed Legend, a fantasy film produced by Arnon Milchan. Having not tackled the fairy tale genre, Scott decided to create a "once upon a time" film set in a world of fairies, princesses, and goblins. Scott cast Tom Cruise as the film's hero, Jack, Mia Sara as Princess Lily, and Tim Curry as the Satan-like Lord of Darkness. But a series of problems with both principal photography and post-production (including heavy editing and substitution of Jerry Goldsmith's original score) hampered the film's release and as a result Legend received scathing reviews. It has since become a cult classic thanks to a DVD release that restores Scott's original, intended vision.
Hungry for a real box office hit and also for respect from the press who considered him as a commercial filmmaker devoted only to fantastic visuals without much substance, Scott decided to postpone further incursions into the science fiction and fantasy genre, in order to avoid being typecast, by focusing more in down to earth mature suspense thrillers. Among them came Someone to Watch Over Me, a romantic police drama starring Tom Berenger, Lorraine Bracco and Mimi Rogers in 1987, and Black Rain, a 1989 cop drama starring Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, shot partially in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. Both met with mild success at the box office.
Again, Scott was praised for their lavish visuals, but was still being criticised that his films were nothing more than an extended version of his glossy TV commercials, which he kept directing until that period, due to the more lucrative advertising business.
Thelma & Louise was released in 1991 and stars Geena Davis as Thelma, Susan Sarandon as Louise, and Harvey Keitel as a sympathetic detective trying to solve crimes that the two women find easier and easier to commit. The movie proved to be a success and revived Scott's reputation as a film maker, earning his first Oscar nomination. Scott's next project was the independent movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise, a visually striking take on the story of Christopher Columbus, yet usually considered to be his most slowly paced movie.
In 1995 Scott, together with his brother Tony, formed the film and television production company Scott Free Productions in Los Angeles. All of his subsequent feature films, starting with White Squall and G.I. Jane, a female tabloid version of Full Metal Jacket starring Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen, have been produced under the Scott Free banner. Also in 1995, the two brothers purchased a controlling interest in Shepperton Studios that was later merged with Pinewood Studios. Scott and his brother are currently producing (since 2005) the CBS series Numb3rs. It is a crime drama focused on a mathematician who helps the FBI solve crimes using his genius ability in mathematics.
The huge success of Scott's film Gladiator (2000) has been credited with the revival of the nearly defunct genre of the "sword and sandal" historical epic. Scott then turned to "Hannibal", the sequel to Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. 2001 also saw the release of Scott's war film Black Hawk Down (2001), which further established Scott's position as both a critically and financially successful film maker and went on to earn two Oscars.
In 2005, the director made the internationally successful Kingdom of Heaven, a movie about the Crusades that consciously sought to connect history to current events. While on location in Morocco during filming, Scott reportedly received threats from extremists. The Moroccan government also sent the Moroccan cavalry as extras in the epic battle scenes.
Scott teamed up again with actor Russell Crowe, directing the movie A Good Year, which is based on the best-selling book. Scott is currently in post-production on American Gangster, working for the first time with Denzel Washington and again with Russell Crowe. He is the third director to attempt the project after Antoine Fuqua's attempt (under the working title Tru Blu) was shut down by the studio due to an escalating budget. Washington had been cast in that incarnation of the project (reuniting him with Fuqua who had directed him in his Best Actor Oscar-winning performance in Training Day) as well as Benicio del Toro, who were both paid salaries of $20m and $15m respectively without doing any production on the film. The project was then handed to the director of Hotel Rwanda, Terry George, who was rumoured to be working on a less harsh version of the script with Don Cheadle attached to Washington's role. Eventually George and Cheadle dropped out and Scott took over the project in early 2006.Scott is to direct an adaptation of Robin Hood called Nottingham. Russell Crowe will portray the Sheriff of Nottingham. Rumoured future projects include Shadow Divers and The Invisible World. He also has a historical epic called Tripoli planned, with Russell Crowe and Ben Kingsley attached, and a western in development, Blood Meridian, based on the book by Cormac McCarthy.

“It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does?”
This film is probably the most brilliant science-fiction film ever made and it works on many levels. The film is a view of a terrible society. The opening scene of Blade Runner is a brilliant vision of dystopia. Fireballs fly upwards from a bed of lights into a black sky, huge chimneys release pollution and neon lights light up huge advertisements. This oracle of the city of Los Angeles in 2019 appears more like hell than earth. It is a post-apocalyptic concept on excessive capitalism and the blunders of the technological age that reveals itself clearly in the representation of buildings as virulent growths. The street level is crowded, dirty, and congested and gives us a brilliant example of the often-questioned `cyberpunk' milieu. Punks, midgets and other weird and wonderful people wander the streets, a lot of them being Asian giving the impression of the technological Tokyo gone mad.
Blade Runner is a very philosophical film. Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer, leads a team of androids (or in the film's terms, replicants) who arrive in Los Angeles from the Off-World colonies in order to face the head of their manufacturer, the huge Tyrell Corporation. Replicants are limited to a four year life span and this group of them want to find a way to extend their intentionally restricted life-spans. Replicants are not allowed on earth under penalty of death. They are hunted by Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, who belongs to a special police unit known as Blade Runners that hunt down replicants. The many questions it asks are, `What does it mean to be human?' `What separates humans from technology?' and ultimately, `What is the meaning of life?'. The film asks these questions but doesn't answer them (because these are unanswerable questions) and leaves the viewer to decide for himself.
In my opinion, the director's cut is the superior film. The `original' film (the director's cut is the true original, it was the film that was meant to be until they decided to add a voice-over and happy ending) is a lot less poignant and it forces the viewers to make decisions but it is still an excellent commentary on society.
Blade Runner is a sophisticated and complex film, memorable both in style and substance. It has so many aspects that can be discussed that I haven't gone through here such as the religious imagery, the iconography, the representation of race and the technology. The cinematography is so brilliant, each shot is good enough to be made into a poster, the acting is top notch, the inspired story is brilliant and a huge talking point and the Vangelis score works very well. It is an important film in the development of cinema, too, because it is the first identifiable `cyberpunk' movie and it has developed a massive cult following.
If you are not someone who naturally enjoys contemplating such themes, the film's brilliance may be lost on you. The climax involves a soliloquy that brings many of the themes together in a simple yet wonderfully poetic way. Anyone who "gets" the film should be moved by this; others will sadly miss the point and may prefer watching some mindless action flick instead.A masterpiece that deserves recognition and long remembrance in film history... 10/10