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Ridley Scott hops on Martin Scorcese's superhero hate train

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GeneticBlueprint

GeneticBlueprint

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Ridley Scott Won’t Let Age Or Pandemic Slow A Storytelling Appetite That Brought ‘House of Gucci’ & ‘The Last Duel;’ Napoleon & More ‘Gladiator’ Up Next

DEADLINE.COM
Read an exclusive Q&A with Ridley Scott about 'House of Gucci,' 'The Last Duel,' his Napoleon epic, 'Gladiator' sequel and more.

 

Really, the interview is about the movie he's making right now but there are some fun quotes that are sure to make many froth at the mouth. I couldn't find the original thread where people were cheering or hating Scorcese for making similar comments or I would've just included this there. 

 

Quote

DEADLINE: Your main gripe about superhero movies?

 

SCOTT: Their scripts are not any fucking good. I think I’ve done three great scripted superhero movies. One would be Alien with Sigourney Weaver. One would be fucking Gladiator, and one would be Harrison Ford…

 

DEADLINE: Blade Runner…

 

SCOTT: They’re superhero movies. So, why don’t the superhero movies have better stories? Sorry. I got off the rail, but I mean, c’mon. They’re mostly saved by special effects, and that’s becoming boring for everyone who works with special effects, if you’ve got the money.

 

I'd certainly agree with that for most of the Marvel or DC offerings from the past ten years.

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  • GeneticBlueprint changed the title to Ridley Scott hops on Martin Scorcese's superhero hate train
skillzdadirecta

skillzdadirecta

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59 minutes ago, Mercury33 said:

I mean, he’s 100% correct. 

Alien and Blade Runner are superhero movies??? Gladiator I can see. and one could argue that ALIENS  is a superhero movie... but not Alien. Alien is scifi horror and Blade Runner is sci-fi-noir.

 

That said, i love Ridely Scott and he's made some great movies. Whether you agree with him or not it does come across as sour grapes to me that these older directors are pissed because they can't get the budgets to make the movies they want to make anymore and they see the current wave of superhero movies as the problem. Who is he really pissed at? The studios? His fellow filmmakers who are making these movies? Or the audiences who continue to flock to them? From where I'm sitting these guys better be happy that folks still want to even GO to the movies to see these films because what other genre, besides the animated family children's movie, is driving audiences to the theaters.

 

And one last thing about his point about characters... people go see these movies BECAUSE of the characters. Superman is almost 100 years old and has been about as much as any other character in literature. I want to see anyone tell me with a straight face that Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark isn't a unique character. Or Tom Holland's Spiderman. Or Josh Brolin's Thanos. Guardians of tha Galaxy has a talking Racoon as a character that people love.

 

It's extremely poor form for these guys to shit on the fimmakers that make these movies but like @SuperSpreader said, there's a lot of ego and sour grapes at play here. Again, I LOVE Ridley Scott and Scorcese, but these guys are coming across as bitter old men. That's my two cents anyway... I'm STILL waiting on this "superhero fad" to go away. Been 10 plus years at this point with the Marvel movies, longer than that if you go back before Iron Man in 2008.  Scott has two movies out or coming out and the Gucci movie actually looks really good. How about he let audiences decide and leave the biterness at home... it's not a good look.

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SimpleG

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Ehhhhhh .. I am huge fan of Alien and Bladerunner ( as in I ve seen both several hundred times) and I am not sure I would qualify either as "superhero" films. And a huge draw for both of those films is special effects. The Nostromo has such a lived feel that I cant say has ever been replicated and I love Ripley but she isnt a super heroine in this film shes "the final girl". Deckard isnt super hero , hell hes barely a hero. Hes a schmuck low life just getting by. And again the film lives by the world created by the SPECIAL EFFECTS team.

5 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

They’re superhero movies. So, why don’t the superhero movies have better stories?

 

Dan fucking O Bannon wrote Alien and Bladerunner was based off of a story by Phillip K Dick neither were written by Scott . I know what hes getting at but for fucks sake here lets not shit on folks.

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SimpleG

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17 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

there's a lot of ego and sour grapes at play here. Again, I LOVE Ridley Scott and Scorcese, but these guys are coming across as bitter old men

The Last Dual

 

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Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

 

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Bitter and a bit Jealous  

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Mercury33

Mercury33

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31 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Alien and Blade Runner are superhero movies??? Gladiator I can see. and one could argue that ALIENS  is a superhero movie... but not Alien. Alien is scifi horror and Blade Runner is sci-fi-noir.


No not that part. Although I could do some mental gymnastics where you could insert Batman into the Blade Runner world and it would be pretty damn cool and still work. 
 

I mean the part where he says that the majority of Superhero movies are shit covered in glittery exploding paint 

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skillzdadirecta

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1 hour ago, SimpleG said:

Ehhhhhh .. I am huge fan of Alien and Bladerunner ( as in I ve seen both several hundred times) and I am not sure I would qualify either as "superhero" films. And a huge draw for both of those films is special effects. The Nostromo has such a lived feel that I cant say has ever been replicated and I love Ripley but she isnt a super heroine in this film shes "the final girl". Deckard isnt super hero , hell hes barely a hero. Hes a schmuck low life just getting by. And again the film lives by the world created by the SPECIAL EFFECTS team.

 

Dan fucking O Bannon wrote Alien and Bladerunner was based off of a story by Phillip K Dick neither were written by Scott . I know what hes getting at but for fucks sake here lets not shit on folks.

Yeah Ripley doesn't even come close to being a "Super heroic" character until Aliens and that was James Cameron. She LITERALLY gets Superpowers in that Alien Movie that Winona Ryder was in... what was that, the fourth movie? I forgot who directed that one but Ripley's evolution as a heroic character occured after he was involved with the character and like you pointed out, Dan O'Bannon wrote Alien AND Blade Runner if I'm not mistaken. Scott is an amazing filmmaker and I've LOVED a ton of his movies... just watched Black Rain the other night. But he can make his films without shitting on the work and tastes of others.

 

1 hour ago, SimpleG said:

The Last Dual

 

DOMESTIC (40.7%)
$10,697,009
INTERNATIONAL (59.3%)
$15,608,449
WORLDWIDE
$26,305,458

 

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

 

DOMESTIC (52.1%)
$224,382,449
INTERNATIONAL (47.9%)
$206,081,680
WORLDWIDE
$430,464,129

 

Bitter and a bit Jealous  

But I guess with numbers like these you can see why he would be salty. I had no idea Last Duel tanked so bad... I want to see it but not in theaters. I don't think it opened that widely though.

 

53 minutes ago, Komusha said:


This is how I feel basically. I don’t need artists I follow it be into everything I am. I like my artists to have strong opinions and defined tastes.

So do I but I also like for them to not be pretentious assholes too. and I'm not really sure Scott is necessarily pissed with the directors of these films. He's pissed with the audiences for making them so popular and profitable.

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SimpleG

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12 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

But he can make his films without shitting on the work and tastes of others.

This is really my only issue with any of this "XXXX hates this genre of...." 

 

Him and Scorsese are prolific enough they will be remembered for many years after they have long been passed, why do they feel the need to get their taints all twisted over something like superhero films and shit all over it. 

And incase Ridley forgets because history repeats itself

 

In her 1980 essay “Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers,” Kael argued that Alien’s success proved “that audiences have been so corrupted by television and have become so jaded that all they want are noisy thrills and dumb jokes and images that move along in an undemanding way, so they can sit and react at the simplest motor level And there’s plenty of evidence, such as the success of Alien. This was a haunted-house-with-gorilla picture set in outer space. It reached out, grabbed you, and squeezed your stomach; it was more gripping than entertaining, but a lot of people didn’t mind. They thought it was terrific, because at least they’d felt something: they’d been brutalized. It was like an entertainment contrived in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World by the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering.”

 

“An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the disco-inspired art direction and some handsome, if gimmicky, cinematography.”

 

"Just another bloodthirsty shocker, albeit with a classier production than most, and with an army of interesting special effects.”

 

"[An] empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery can not disguise imaginative poverty.”

 

Still, it is depressing to watch an expensive, crafty movie that never soars beyond its cold desire to score the big bucks. Unlike Jaws, Alien does not use stylistic cunning to excite the audience; it just shovels on the mayhem. Unlike Star Wars, Alien has no affection for past movies of its genre; it just rips them off. Stripped of its futuristic setting and pretensions, this film is an oldtime B monster picture. Alien might just as well be about a huge scorpion loose in a haunted house, circa 1953. While the murder sequences are executed with all the realism money can currently buy, the innocence that ignited vintage horror  films is missing. Alien‘s steely, literal-minded approach to violence more often recalls last summer’s joyless Jaws 2.

 

 

Alien is an extremely small, rather decent movie of its modest kind, set inside a large, extremely fancy physical production. Don’t race to it expecting the wit of Star Wars or the metaphysical pretentions of 2001 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At its best it recalls The Thing, though the Howard Hawks film was both more imaginatively and more economically dramatized.

 

 

 

 

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skillzdadirecta

skillzdadirecta

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43 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

This is really my only issue with any of this "XXXX hates this genre of...." 

 

Him and Scorsese are prolific enough they will be remembered for many years after they have long been passed, why do they feel the need to get their taints all twisted over something like superhero films and shit all over it. 

And incase Ridley forgets because history repeats itself

 

In her 1980 essay “Why Are Movies So Bad? Or, The Numbers,” Kael argued that Alien’s success proved “that audiences have been so corrupted by television and have become so jaded that all they want are noisy thrills and dumb jokes and images that move along in an undemanding way, so they can sit and react at the simplest motor level And there’s plenty of evidence, such as the success of Alien. This was a haunted-house-with-gorilla picture set in outer space. It reached out, grabbed you, and squeezed your stomach; it was more gripping than entertaining, but a lot of people didn’t mind. They thought it was terrific, because at least they’d felt something: they’d been brutalized. It was like an entertainment contrived in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World by the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering.”

 

“An empty-headed horror movie with nothing to recommend it beyond the disco-inspired art direction and some handsome, if gimmicky, cinematography.”

 

"Just another bloodthirsty shocker, albeit with a classier production than most, and with an army of interesting special effects.”

 

"[An] empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery can not disguise imaginative poverty.”

 

Still, it is depressing to watch an expensive, crafty movie that never soars beyond its cold desire to score the big bucks. Unlike Jaws, Alien does not use stylistic cunning to excite the audience; it just shovels on the mayhem. Unlike Star Wars, Alien has no affection for past movies of its genre; it just rips them off. Stripped of its futuristic setting and pretensions, this film is an oldtime B monster picture. Alien might just as well be about a huge scorpion loose in a haunted house, circa 1953. While the murder sequences are executed with all the realism money can currently buy, the innocence that ignited vintage horror  films is missing. Alien‘s steely, literal-minded approach to violence more often recalls last summer’s joyless Jaws 2.

 

 

Alien is an extremely small, rather decent movie of its modest kind, set inside a large, extremely fancy physical production. Don’t race to it expecting the wit of Star Wars or the metaphysical pretentions of 2001 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At its best it recalls The Thing, though the Howard Hawks film was both more imaginatively and more economically dramatized.

 

 

 

 

I'm often reminded of a time when Scorsece and Scott were the upstart young directors getting shat on by the elders of their time. So funny to see them doing the same thing in their old age. The funny thing is, nothing Pauline Kael wrote in that review is necessarily wrong. Her critques are all valid. I think the conclusion she draws is debatable. THAT is an actual critque right there whether I personally agree with it or not.

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4 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

Alien and Blade Runner are superhero movies??? Gladiator I can see. and one could argue that ALIENS  is a superhero movie... but not Alien. Alien is scifi horror and Blade Runner is sci-fi-noir.

 

That said, i love Ridely Scott and he's made some great movies. Whether you agree with him or not it does come across as sour grapes to me that these older directors are pissed because they can't get the budgets to make the movies they want to make anymore and they see the current wave of superhero movies as the problem. Who is he really pissed at? The studios? His fellow filmmakers who are making these movies? Or the audiences who continue to flock to them? From where I'm sitting these guys better be happy that folks still want to even GO to the movies to see these films because what other genre, besides the animated family children's movie, is driving audiences to the theaters.

 

And one last thing about his point about characters... people go see these movies BECAUSE of the characters. Superman is almost 100 years old and has been about as much as any other character in literature. I want to see anyone tell me with a straight face that Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark isn't a unique character. Or Tom Holland's Spiderman. Or Josh Brolin's Thanos. Guardians of tha Galaxy has a talking Racoon as a character that people love.

 

It's extremely poor form for these guys to shit on the fimmakers that make these movies but like @SuperSpreader said, there's a lot of ego and sour grapes at play here. Again, I LOVE Ridley Scott and Scorcese, but these guys are coming across as bitter old men. That's my two cents anyway... I'm STILL waiting on this "superhero fad" to go away. Been 10 plus years at this point with the Marvel movies, longer than that if you go back before Iron Man in 2008.  Scott has two movies out or coming out and the Gucci movie actually looks really good. How about he let audiences decide and leave the biterness at home... it's not a good look.

 

THANK YOU! 

 

You said everything I wanted to say. Like if these guys don't like superhero movies, that's fine, but this constant need to call them trash comes off as bitter because their movies don't get greenlit as fast, and bomb at the box office even when they're critical darlings. 

 

Plus he made Prometheus and Alien Covenant, so sit down when talking about shit stories, Sir Ridley. 

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skillzdadirecta

skillzdadirecta

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5 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

Name names 

Pretty sure he meant me, you and a few others. It's cool.

 

6 minutes ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

It's like starting a thread about the Last Jedi.

 

Also, for the record, I don't know what he's talking about when he says Alien and Blade Runner are super hero movies. But I 100% agree with his take on what super hero cinema amounts to these days.

He's entitled to his opinion about these movies, it's just ironic when he's been accused of the SAME EXACT THING. and the nasty way he did it makes him sound like a cranky old granpa...

Grampa Simpson Meme GIF by MOODMAN

 

@SimpleG already posted Pauline Kael's review of Alien at the time of release, Here's Roger Ebert's review of Blade Runner

 

thumb_reviews-banner.jpg

Blade Runner movie review & film summary (1982) | Roger Ebert

WWW.ROGEREBERT.COM
The strangest thing about the future is that this is now the future we once foretold. Twenty years ago, we thought of "now" as "the year 1982," and we wondered what life would be like. Little could we have guessed that there would be no world government, that the cars would look like boxes instead of rocket ships, and that there would still be rock 'n' roll on the radio.

 

Ebert LITERALLY calls out Scott for doing what he accuses the Superhero filmmakers of doing

 

Quote

Ford says he originally signed on for "Blade Runner" because he found such questions intriguing. For director Ridley Scott, however the greater challenge seemed to be creating that future world. Scott is a master of production design, of imagining other worlds of the future ("Alien") and the past ("The Duellists").He seems more concerned with creating his film worlds than populating them with plausible characters, and that's the trouble this time. "Blade Runner" is a stunningly interesting visual achievement, but a failure as a story.

 

I mean that's essentially what Scott is saying about the genre he despises and I think both takes are wrong. I think just as Ebert was to high minded for Blade Runner and Kael was too high minded for Alien, Scott is too high minded for these films. The difference with him is that some of his rancor may be rooted in straight up bitterness because he may feel like the industry and audience has passed him by. I mean, Gladiator 2? Really? Have you guys ever heard his pitch for Gladiator 2 involving Maximus becoming basically Kratos from God of War and ping ponging through history??? Again I love Scott (was a bigger fan of his brother Tony tbh) but at least Scorcese has more of a leg to stand on in calling out these films because he's almost never done a popcorn flick unlike Scott. Again, my two cents.

 

and believe me, most of my friends HATE the current superhero trend. I'm not too sure I know too many people in the industry who genuinely like them because they can't get their projects made especially for the big screen.

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