Ridley Scott is back in the arena with ‘Gladiator II’ Premium

Ridley Scott's iconic films, from Alien to Gladiator II, showcase his immersive worlds, high-octane action, and compelling characters.

Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) was just his second feature film but what an impact it has had on the public consciousness. A haunted house movie in space, Alien with its beautifully unsettling visuals of the spaceship, Nostromo, the slow burn climaxing in the alien bursting out of Kane’s (John Hurt) chest, and a thousand other details big and small, richly deserves its iconic status.

Though Scott, by his own admission, got into directing feature films late, at 40, at a time when his peers including Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucas had critically acclaimed and commercially successful films under their belt, Scott made up for lost time with a prodigious output.

Scott has had two releases in a year, three times — Hannibal and Black Hawk Down in 2001, Alien: Covenant and All the Money in the World in 2017, and most recently, The Last Duel and House of Gucci in 2021.

Alien was followed by another game-changer, Blade Runner (1982). Based on Philip K Dick’s meditative 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,’ the film starred Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a policeman hunting for rebellious ‘replicants’. Blade Runner set the template and palate for neo-noir and steampunk. The dystopian, rain-drenched, futuristic, and decayed Los Angeles of 2019, with neon bright billboards and cars flying silently by, was as immersive as it was disquieting.

In 1991 came Thelma & Louise, cementing Scott’s reputation as a “stealth feminist”, in the words of Los Angeles Times film editor Joshua Rothkopf. The film about two friends Thelma and Louise, played by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, taking a weekend road trip to escape their horrendously boring middle-class lives, ends in the very definition of a cliffhanger.

The historical epic 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) about Columbus’ journey to the New World, starring Gérard Depardieu, Armand Assante, and Sigourney Weaver, could well have been a dry run for 2000’s Gladiator. Based on Daniel P Mannix’s 1958 novel, ‘Those About to Die’ (yes, like Roland Emmerich’s execrable eponymous show), Gladiator told the story of an honest, upright general, Maximus (an Oscar-winning turn from Russell Crowe).

Wicked, incestuous, patricidal Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix) has Maximus’ wife and eight-year-old son crucified and burnt while ordering Maximus’ death. The Praetorian Guards are no match for the battle-hardened Maximus who escapes after killing his captors. He winds up with a gladiator trainer where his superior prowess makes him a crowd favourite. When Commodus, as emperor, announces 150 days of games to honour his father, Marcus Aurelius, Maximus comes to Rome to exact his vengeance on all who wronged him.