In the latest episode of The Substandard—literally the only podcast you, or anyone else, should be listening to—JVL, Vic, and I discussed Alien: Covenant and the career of Ridley Scott. You can download the show here (and also leave a review, if you feel like it) or listen below. Below the podcast, I want to briefly explain why Ridley Scott is almost inarguably one of the 10 best directors of the last 40 or so years.
As I noted on the show, Scott is a bit like Stanley Kubrick insofar as he is able to jump in and out of different genres with the greatest of ease. They're obviously very different directors—most notably, perhaps, in the simple size of their bodies of work; Kubrick took years between projects, whereas Scott has banged out a flick every year or two for the last 40 years—but they share the distinction of having created all-time classics in a number of genres during their years behind the camera.
There simply aren't many directors like Scott who have made four-star, stone-cold classic sci-fi (Blade Runner), horror (Alien), sword-and-sandal (Gladiator), and war (Black Hawk Down) flicks. Kubrick, as I've mentioned. Maybe Coppola, whose run in the 1970s included a brilliant gangster film (two, actually), a paranoid thriller, and a legendary war movie (two, actually). Nolan, perhaps? But the list is short. Scott's not as consistent as some—the delta between those movies and, say, 1492, Legend, A Good Year, or Exodus is rather large—but even his less impressive films still look gorgeous, are still hyper-competently shot. And, as I've noted elsewhere, he's done a decent job of bending the studio obsession with tentpole franchise type movies to his creative will; say what you will about Alien: Covenant and Prometheus, but they're movies stuffed with ideas and storytelling ambition.
Anyway, it's a shame Scott doesn't get more attention when we think of the great directors working today. He doesn't have a signature style or aesthetic like a Tarantino or an Anderson (Paul Thomas or Wes, take your pick) or the Coens. But he's rather consistently put out great work in rather disparate genres for a rather long period of time. Let's show Sir Ridley some love, shall we?