We Have No Idea What Ridley Scott is Talking About
Posted by Dr. Cole Abaius (cole.abaius@filmschoolrejects.com) on June 4, 2008
When Ridley Scott presses his eye up to the lens, he’s a genius. He leaves audiences speechless whether from the irrational fear of alien attack or the hauntingly beautiful imagery of a wheat field in a memory. When he opens his mouth for an interview, he leaves us at a loss for words for a different reason.
Of course, I mean that rhetorically. If I were really at a loss for words, the news brief would end here.
But it doesn’t.
The master director gave an interview to Eclipse Magazine in which he discusses his current “Andromeda Strain” project, how the Ebola Virus probably came from Mars, and why he might incur the wrath of God by driving a Prius.
“Today ‘The Andromeda Strain’ seems just as potent because there is a combination of things – what we have done to our planet and global warming.” Scott says in response to how the project got off the ground. When pushed further on the prescience of the topic, Scott agreed that it was “entirely” possible that something like the massive outbreak of a government-made virus could wipe out an entire town. Let’s listen in:
“At one stage I was going to something called The Ebola which would examine the ‘big daddies’ that suddenly come for no reason out of nowhere, descend on a community, wipe out 90 to 100 per cent, stay for a few weeks and then, inexplicably, go,” Scott claimed. “The film’s thesis was the more we rip down rain forests and disturb places that have not been touched for millions of years, we are going to uncover things that have been dormant.”
One of those dormant things? Ebola, apparently, which Scott speculates came from a cave in Africa. Where, of course, we’re doing a ton of deforestation, right? And it certainly isn’t the widely held belief of scientists that Ebola spread to humans through contact with primates, right?
Don’t get me wrong. The idea of a crazy virus lying in wait for some greedy human to uncover it sounds fantastic, but – if you read the entire interview – Scott’s concept of reality seems to be more conspiracy theorist than science-fiction. He mentions the wild card of having space material carrying bacteria enter our atmosphere without burning up. Of course, we’ve all seen this phenomenon first hand since, as we all know, that’s how Peter Parker turned into Venom.
When asked if there were religious components to “The Andromeda Strain”, Scott responds by talking about how he owns two Priuses (Priusi?) and an SUV. What this has to do with God’s wrath is unclear, but he also speaks of how the atmosphere is going to eat us if we don’t treat it right. He carries on to discuss the worst-case scenario:
“It is simple…you go home at night in January, the worst possible time of the year, there is a storm and all the power goes out. Have you got candles? Have you got matches? No, you are going about in the dark at the entire mercy of when the lights might go back on. It is THAT simple.”
No candles? No matches?! We’re doomed. Game over, humans. Of course, Scott will still be alive because he’s aiming to make his entire house solar-powered. Meanwhile, all I have is some lighters and a few candles that smell like apple pie. When they find my body, they’ll wonder, “Was he foolishly attempting to bake in his last hours?” The answer will be, yes.
Of course, the best idea from the entire interview is a story that “deals with what we have done to the ocean and that the ocean has rights.” That’s right. The Ocean. Has. Rights. Let that sink in.
Thankfully, some of the interview actually gets down to brass tacks. Scott claims he’s still slogging through on Blood Meridian, and, even better, he’s shooting for an X-rating (the British equivalent of our NC-17). In addition to that project, he’s working with Russell Crowe again on a Robin Hood story after finishing up the filming for A House of Lies featuring Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio.
His upcoming projects sound fantastic, even though “The Andromeda Strain” is a bit off the mark. And if he ends up making a movie where The Ocean gets fed up with us dumping oil into it and attacks us, all the better. I’d just rather not know where that motivation is coming from. I’m probably being a bit too harsh, but I’m looking forward to Scott keeping eye on the camera lens and his mouth off the microphone for a while.
Read more articles by Dr. Cole Abaius
