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…
15. G.I. Jane (1997)
This is one of the lines of demarcation in Ridley Scott’s career, where the films from here on out are noticeably better. G.I. Jane was a film built on an easy sociopolitical premise, marketed pretty much through Demi Moore’s shaved head; but then Scott somehow manages to turn this gimmicky story into a compelling drama.
Moore is at her peak 90s Moore-ness as Jordan O’Neill, a Navy Lieutenant who willingly becomes a test-subject for integrating the grueling Navy S.E.A.L. program. Of course, everyone thinks she will fail, especially the Master Chief, played by a gleefully sadistic Viggo Mortensen. And of course she doesn’t fail, and along the way in a show of gender neutrality Moore shaves her head and the film could have hung its hat on this image. Scott doesn’t allow this, and he does some great work to keep the story pulsating. If only Scott would lighten up the scenery from time to time.
