Tag: Ridley Scott

I have a soft spot for trailer mash-ups — the “Toy Story” and “Star Trek” one was genius, and there was that great hybrid of “Up” and “Inception” — and Jay West just sent me a link to this new one. There’s an awful lot of clever energy and nimble imagination at work in these. What’s the best one you’ve seen? If you come up with a Top 5 ranking (with links, please) we’ll give the coolest collection a guest post and byline here on Hero Complex. – Geoff Boucher RECENT AND RELATED ‘Prometheus’: Ridley Scott returns to ‘Alien’ canvas Ridley Scott: ‘Magic comes  over the horizon’ ‘Prometheus’: The riddles of Ridley Scott Michael Fassbender on ‘Prometheus’ Ridley Scott seeks the ‘original DNA’ of ‘Alien’ Moebius: The last interview Ridley Scott: I came to science fiction by backdoor Rutger Hauer: Chris ...

Ridley Scott talks about creativity, photographic memory, “Prometheus,” painting and the possibilities of another “Blade Runner” film in this premiere episode of “Hero Complex: The Show” on the Nerdist Channel. After 30 years, the esteemed filmmaker is returning to science fiction on June 8 with “Prometheus,” a movie set in the ”same universe” as his classic “Alien” (1979). The movie stars Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron and Idris Elba as crew members aboard the Prometheus, a ship sent across the stars to find the secrets of humanity’s origins. Scott, at age 74, is on a search of his own as he returns to questions left unanswered in “Alien” (as he explained when he first spoke publicly about this project at the 2010 Hero Complex Film Festival). We spoke with him at the Los Angeles offices of his production company. I get the fun job of hosting “Hero Complex: ...

Ridley Scott studied painting at the Royal Academy of Art in the 1950s, but unlike classmate David Hockney, he decided that career would be a life of cruel dawns. “Staring at a big canvas every morning with a pack of cigarettes saying, ‘I hate what I just did yesterday.’ So it was a fight with yourself.” The filmmaker still paints for pleasure, but ruefully he points out that he “never truly finishes a canvas,” and perhaps that’s one reason that, with his new film “Prometheus,” Scott, 74, returns to the deep-space mythology of his 1979 film, “Alien,” to find empty corners and layers that can be thickened. Just two years after “Star Wars,” “Alien” may have been just as revolutionary with the universe it presented — a future where corporations calculated the profit between planets, toyed with the lives of ...

Ridley Scott, one of the true titans of contemporary cinema, will be the inaugural guest on Wednesday when “Hero Complex: The Show” with host Geoff Boucher premieres on the Nerdist Channel on You Tube. Scott, the director of “Blade Runner,” “Alien,” “Gladiator” and “Black Hawk Down,” returns to science fiction this summer with “Prometheus,” the Fox film set in the “Alien” universe and starring  Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba and Logan Marshall-Green. It was at  the Hero Complex Film Festival in 2010 that Scott first spoke at length publicly about the project, and now that comes full circle as he again sits down with Hero Complex creator and lead writer Geoff Boucher in this new forum. Leonard Nimoy and Daniel Clowes will be guests in the second and third episodes, respectively, which will be posted on the Nerdist Channel every other Wednesday. The Hero Complex launched ...

BAT FILMS OF THE FUTURE? The end is near — when the credits roll on “The Dark Knight Rises” this July, it will mark the close of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and the final adventure for Christian Bale as the caped crusader of Gotham City. Warner Bros. executives have made it clear they won’t leave the iconic property sitting on a shelf, however, and a new director and star tandem could be inhabiting Wayne Manor by 2014. But how on Earth will any filmmaker follow the work of Nolan and company? Working together, Hero Complex lead writer Geoff Boucher and graphic artist Sean Hartter came up with 15 imaginary Batman reboots — and, yes, they did it with tongue in cheek. Tim Burton’s “The Dark Knight Returns” Long before Christopher Nolan set foot in the Batcave, iconic director Tim Burton made Hollywood ...

When the enigmatic television series “Lost” came to a close two years ago, show co-creator Damon Lindelof thought he was done working on scripts with shadowy plot lines. Then he got an offer to write “Prometheus,” a Ridley Scott-directed science-fiction film whose story has been kept tightly under wraps since its inception. “Coming out of ‘Lost,’ I was like, ‘What a relief it’ll be to leave mystery and secretiveness behind,’” recalled the 38-year-old, who also was one of the writers who penned last year’s “Cowboys & Aliens.” “Then I found myself in the same situation, and I thought, ‘Here we go again.’” Months before the film’s June release, little is still known in Hollywood about the 3-D “Prometheus,” whose ensemble cast includes Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron and Idris Elba. The movie was initially billed as a prequel to ...

What exactly is Ridley Scott building in outer space? That’s the great riddle of 2012 for the film fans eagerly awaiting “Prometheus,” Scott’s first sci-fi film since 1982′s ”Blade Runner.” Back in 2010, Scott sat on stage at our very own Hero Complex Film Festival and announced his intended return to the universe of “Alien” with a prequel (or two) that would further explore mysteries presented in that 1979 masterpiece of deep-space horror. That ambition took Scott in ”a completely different direction” than he anticipated, he would say later, but the result — which is called “Prometheus” and hits theaters in June — still possesses “the original DNA” of “Alien.” What does that mean exactly? Good question, but don’t expect any definitive answers from the new trailer that arrived Thursday; it has plenty of fascinating images (some of them familar to “Alien” fans) but no real clarity about the nature ...

GUEST ESSAY Ridley Scott just presented “Prometheus” to Hall H fans at Comic-Con, and that has Finland’s Juhani Nurmi, a journalist and devoted fan of “Alien,” looking back in horror – and appreciation.  “In space, no one can hear you scream.” That’s the best movie slogan I know, and in my book, nothing else comes even close. Ditto for the poster (designed by legendary graphic artist Bill Gold), which is sinister yet elegant in its minimalism. It depicts a luminescent egg floating in a dark void, above a grate. Obviously, we’re talking about Ridley Scott’s “Alien.” This year marks the movie’s 32nd anniversary and more than that, the movie is back in the pop culture conversation with new urgency as Ridley Scott toils in Iceland on “Prometheus,” the 2012 release that began life as a straight prequel but  has now reportedly morphed into something ...

Ridley Scott knows how to make an entrance even when he doesn’t show up. To tell Comic-Con International fans about his upcoming movie “Prometheus,” the filmmaker appeared via satellite Tuesday from Iceland, standing in front of a waterfall with his leading lady, “Girl With a Dragon Tattoo’s” Noomi Rapace, who was wrapped in a puffy coat and confessed to a little disorientation at addressing the expo’s Hall H audience of 6,500-plus in the midst of shooting. “I just came back from space,” Rapace said. “It feels really weird to come back to Earth again.” “Lost” co-creator Damon Lindelof, who wrote the screenplay for “Prometheus,” moderated the conversation, with another of the film’s stars, Charlize Theron, on stage. “I realized that there was something in the original ‘Alien’ that no one has asked a question about,” Scott said, explaining what sparked ...

No one plays their cards closer to the vest than J.J. Abrams, and that’s why “Super 8,” which arrives in theaters June 10, is still a bit of a mystery to most moviegoers even in this age of relentless ramp-up hype and show-everything movie trailers. The director of “Star Trek” and co-creator of “Lost” has only talked a bit about the film, but we know it’s a small-town coming-of-age story told against the backdrop of an alien-on-the-loose adventure and involves the spectacular wreck of a secret government train in 1979. The filmmaker winces watching the marketing saturation of contemporary summer movies that may accomplish the job of filling theaters but also saps the magic revelation of movies — he misses the days when audiences bought a ticket and sat down in the dark both literally and figuratively: “To me, all people need to know ...