Director Ridley Scott‘s been on a tear lately in regards to interviews he’s conducted to promote his latest film “All The Money In The World.” His I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude has been refreshing, to say the least. Of all the many, interesting things he’s said these last few weeks, the 80-year-old writer-director went on to criticize Denis Villeneuve‘s “Blade Runner 2049,” for being “too fucking long,” adding that, “It’s slow. It’s slow. Long. Too long. I would have taken out half an hour.”
After all of that, you’d think Scott would be done with the “Blade Runner” world, just as he’s, more or less, decided to move on from the “Alien” franchise (at least in some respects), but no. Speaking to Digital Spy, Scott says he hopes there’s more to come and that he even has a new story to tackle when it comes to that Dystopian world. “I hope so, I think there is another story.” he said. “I’ve got another one ready to evolve and be developed, so there is certainly one to be done for sure.”
So, there you have it, the legendary helmer is not hanging it up anytime soon, he has a ton of projects lined up and has stolen James Brown‘s title as “the hardest working man in show-business.” I tend to agree with Scott that “Blade Runner 2049” was a half hour cut away from being a classic, but it nevertheless had an abundance of brilliant moments, thanks to Roger Deakins‘ masterful visual, Villeneuve’s risk-taking narrative approach, and the potential to further expand that rich world still feels viable. There should be more movies like “Blade Runner 2049” in Hollywood, but there aren’t. Risk-taking is all but dead in the studio system, unless you’re Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino and, yes, now Denis Villeneuve. The lack of box office success for ‘BR2049’ will be a tough sell to convince WB to make a sequel, but film fans everywhere will surely be open to the idea. Start your petition now.
No, Ridley please stop making films. P.S. There was nothing wrong about BR2049. This modern film criticism would have savaged Lawrence of Arabia just because it was 3 hours and a half. A film is not boring and dull just because is long. Period.
Ridley Scott is a stable genius.
Scott wrote the screenplay for his first film, the 1965 short, Boy and Bicycle, and hasn’t done any (credited) script work since. That hardly qualifies him as a “writer-director.”
“No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” – Roger Ebert