This month’s Alien: Covenant marks Ridley Scott’s 24th feature film in what has been a long, influential, albeit uneven and sometimes flat out maddening career. From the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, Ridley Scott’s oeuvre is as inconsistent in quality as his late brother Tony’s was consistent in aesthetics and tone. He has his strengths – world building and managing epic scope – and his weaknesses – creating three-dimensional characters. These aspects aren’t always true, but they are more consistent than anything in his career.
Digging through Scott’s entire filmography, spanning epic classics and replacement-level thriller dreck, it was tough to try and rank some of the lesser works above the each other. But with careful viewing I began to disseminate just how much effort Scott was putting into his craft from movie to movie. It helped shape a list top heavy with older films and, unfortunately, a heap of Scott’s most recent work filling out the bottom of this list.
Here we go…
5. Blade Runner (1982)
Depending on which of the dozen or so cuts of Ridley Scott’s epic neo noir you see, you could get a film ranging from detached and uninspiring to majestic, involving, and beautiful. The original theatrical version was saddled with an intentionally flat voiceover from Harrison Ford’s Blade Runner, Rick Deckard, as he hunts down rogue Replicants. It’s Scott’s final director’s cut where the magic happens.
Blade Runner is easily the most divisive entry into the Ridley Scott filmography. Some would put it number one, others near the bottom. It’s the film in his career most accounting for personal taste. For me, Blade Runner fine, visually unforgettable but lacking in the character department. It’s all of Scott’s strengths and weaknesses on display, and has become shorthand for a futuristic, dystopian landscape over the years. For that it should be appreciated.
And yet, something never quite comes together in the end, at least for me. Blade Runner is about 70/30 style to substance, but that style is undeniable.
