British director Ridley Scott is undoubtedly one of those personalities of world cinema who deserves the label of “living legend”. At 85 he still continues to make films with huge budgets and big ambitions. Scott’s career as a director was extremely varied for some 50 years, but the best known part of him, of course, was made by films that can safely be described as “blockbusters”. Film researchers consider the visual expressiveness of his films and his ability to create genre films with a very direct social and political message within the studio system as the most characteristic features of Scott’s work. “I like to create worlds. If you look at my first four films, they are all unique worlds,” the film director himself said about him.
It’s not that Ridley Scott is only capable of creating big-budget “blockbusters” – he’s occasionally dabbled in smaller ones as well. However, Scott’s talent as a master of drama has so far been most brilliantly revealed in the ambitious blockbusters in which he was able to instill truly human emotion and character revelations – such as “Alien”, “Gladiator”, “Black Hawk Down” or “American Gangster”. Meanwhile, only “Thelma and Louise” became a real hit from chamber dramas, while her only romantic comedy – “The Good Year” with Russell Crowe – became the subject of burning ridicule from admirers of the director and is considered his worst film and a frivolous hodgepodge.
However, even Scott’s critics cannot deny that, aside from his excellent visual storytelling skills, he has done an amazing job of making women shine as brilliant leading ladies in Hollywood’s masculinist machine. Today, feminist theorists may quibble about how successful or, conversely, clichéd, unnecessarily masculinized and still over-sexualized characters in Scott’s films are, but their influence is undeniable. Sigourney Weaver’s spaceship pilot Ellen Ripley has become an icon today, without which the “Alien” franchise is unimaginable – and she proved to Hollywood studios that even a woman in the lead role in a high-profile blockbuster budget can become a success story.
Film researcher Brian Robb describes Ridley Scott as a Briton who worked in the film industry in the style of “old Hollywood” – being a director himself, he is also a true film mogul who owns several studios and shares others. “He IS a director and at the same time a skilled businessman,” writes the researcher. Ridley Scott, in his opinion, embodies the idea of u200bu200bthe director as an architect, creator of worlds, and this applies both to individual films and to Scott’s private mini-cinema empire.
