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…
3. Gladiator (2000)
Sometimes, Gladiator is dismissed as some sort of Spartacus ripoff, but Scott’s only Best Picture winner has stood the test of time. It is a ferocious epic, and the most complete realization of Ancient Rome ever captured on celluloid. For whatever shortcomings the film may have for some, there are set pieces and moments of earned emotional catharsis that push past any general criticisms.
Russell Crowe would win Best Actor (his second nomination in a three-year run, sandwiched in between The Insider and A Beautiful Mind) playing the fallen warrior Maximus, and he is pitch perfect here. But, as Alfred Hitchcock once said in so many words, a film is only as good as its villain; and Joaquin Phoenix creates a character audiences can’t wait to hate. His Commodus is a scheming, sniveling ass with a creepy lust for his sister, and his character works well as basically the exact opposite of our hero in just about every way.
Gladiator showcases Ridley Scott’s biggest strength, his world building. The scenery, a mixture of CGI and sets, is something he has tried so many times before and since, but nothing has come close to the texture and weight of this once-great kingdom on display here.
