Reccuring Themes - Father & Son Conflict

• Some of his films feature strong conflicts between father and son that usually end with the latter killing the former (Blade Runner, Gladiator) or witnessing the event (Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood). The Lord of Darkness in Legend also mentions his "father" on a few occasions. As part of the conflict between father and son there are some repetitive scenes: in Gladiator, the son hugs the father seemingly as an expression of love but this embrace turns into the suffocation and death of the father. There is a similar sequence in Blade Runner. In Prometheus, the character David says "Doesn't everyone want their parents dead?" - Source: Wikipedia 

• Maximus kills his father (Gladiator)
• Roy Batter's main ambition is too meet and slaughter his father (Blade Runner)
• The alien kills it's own host in order to be born, which is an act of survival (Alien)
• The character David says "Doesn't everyone want their parents dead?" (Prometheus)
• It's as though these characters seek to all kill their makers all for similar reasons, some for revenge, others for survival but all of them seem to relate to this theme of 'becoming the alpha male' as though in order to survive as the superior being they must first defeat their predecessors to earn the alpha male title , this is actually one thing i've noticed in Scott's form of developing his characters.  

Reccuring Themes - Colonization

Within all three films Prometheus, Alien and Blade Runner, their homeland is referred to as 'The Colony', this is because the whole world has formed into one whole colony instead of countries having separate governments there is only one that dominates all the land. However in Alien and Prometheus, the world is actually split into two Colonies which seem to be at war with each other; neither of these facts happen to be major plot details, however they do give us a sense of the type of world these characters now live in.

So as it is slightly clear that Colonization appears to be a recurring film across Scott's films, in fact there is even more significance to this theme within Prometheus and Gladiator. Within Prometheus, the alien race referred to as the Engineers try to re-visit earth, we can assume that this is because they intend to initiate colonisation across what was once their world. Technically they already did colonise the earth once, since we discover at the very start of the film that they were in fact the creators of all life on earth, creating individual colonies across earth. 

Gladiator is sent during the Roman Empire period; in the very first scenes we see General Maximus leading his Roman army to fight against the Germans at Vindobona, at this moment in time, the Roman empire was one of the largest empires the world had ever seen and was coming very close to colonising the world for themselves, they colonised many countries already and were one of the most powerful armies to be reckoned with. So instead of just references to colonization (within Alien and Blade Runner), within the more modern two of his films, Scott has actually put in footage of characters/factions trying and actually executing their colonization plans, we see this in Gladiator in the first scenes and also in Prometheus later on in the film. Why Scott chooses to put large colonies or colonization in his films is unknown, perhaps he himself believes the future holds some form of colonization forming across our own world or even our universe.     

Reccuring Themes - Androids

Ash the Android from Alien 1997

One of the recurring themes I've noticed within the four films I have chosen to study is the theme of Androids. Within three of the films (Alien, Prometheus and Blade Runner) I have chosen to study, Androids have made appearances with very significant roles; although no androids appear in the movie Gladiator, it only seems logical that they don't seeing as it isn't at all a Science Fiction movie, however the other three films that I've listed all happen to include elements of the Sci-Fi genre, one of those main elements is of course Androids.

Scott always presents these androids in a similar way in each film; usually they are classed as a villain within the films, yet they don't always commit actual crimes against the heroes or other characters within the plots, they simply act very intellectual yet with a sinister side to their persona. All the androids in Scott's movies seem to have purpose, they are never minor characters, instead they are very significant to the plot and help to develop the narrative more than most of the human characters do. For example:

Roy Batty the main Android villain from Blade Runner

•  Ash from the movie Alien was given orders to "Bring back the Alien life form" this was both a critical threat and unbeknownst to the rest of the crew, all of which were human. 
• David from the movie Prometheus takes many actions that puts the rest of his crew (again, all of which are human) at risk, although he saves them few times, he is the main reason they are all put in peril countless times, and yet he shows no remorse, even when it results in the death of a fellow crew member
• Batty is the main villain in the movie Blade Runner and is known as the world's most wanted replicant for murder and other crimes 

Scott seems to present most of his Android characters as "superior beings" within each of his movies. They are always very intelligent, they posses increased strength in comparison to the human characters that they interact with, they also seem to have an agenda or purpose that not only jeopardizes many other characters lives, but makes their own character seem a lot more important than those around them even though they aren't even "living beings" themselves. It's as though Scott has an obsession with these Androids and sees them as the superior race to humans, I believe the perfect example is the most modern example: David from the movie Prometheus.

David the Android from Prometheus

Appearance wise, David (Shown on the right) matches the "Aryan Race" which was once referred to by many as the "Superior race", he is a tall man with white skin, blue eyes and blonde hair (Roy Batty from Blade Runner also possesses this same similar appearance to the Aryan Race); David is even shown speaking and listening in the German language within the movie Prometheus. David also happens to be one of the only characters within the whole movie that has a sense of knowledge as to what entirely is going on in this alien planet that he and his crew members have discovered. In fact he is one of the only characters to survive all of it's threats and does not at any point show signs of fear, which contrasts with almost every human character within the film. This may all seem like a coincidence, but I believe Ridley Scott is trying to present these Android beings in a way that makes them seem above humanity itself, making their characters seem very important to the audience and the narrative of his movies, or at least science fiction movies.

Video Source - Ridley Scott - Gladiator - Behind The Scenes

Ridley Scott - Gladiator - Behind The Scenes

• The coliseum was built for the set and topped off with CGI 
• Real Tigers were used on set
• Scott says working with films is a lot easier than working with TV
• Russell Crowe - "I like being on Ridley's set because actors can perform... and the focus is on the performer's."

Internet Source - Wikipedia

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridley_Scott#Approach_and_style

• Often includes strong female characters.
• Often makes use of classical music (Hovis Advertisements, Someone To Watch Over Me).
• Extensive use of smoke and other atmospheres, plus fans and fan-like objects which he uses in Hannibal for symbolic purposes.
• Storyboarding his films extensively. These illustrations, when made by himself, have been refferred to as "Ridleygrams" in DVD releases.
• Seems to use extreme levels of lighting in his films. Blade Runner is for the most part dark and dingy, whereas Thelma & Louise, for the most part, is bright, sunny and happy. 

Book Source - Chambers Film Factfinder, 2006

Source: Chambers Film FactFinder 2006, by Editors of Chambers

"The often spectacular visual composition of his work has earned him the nickname 'The Rembrandt of Light'. He owns Shepparton film studios with his younger brother, the director Tony Scott, and despite a career lull during the mid-1990s, is one of the most successful British directors in Hollywood."

Critical Responses

• "Directors tend to emphasize different issues in their interpretations of scripts. For a director such as Ridley Scott, masculinity and its habitual need to prove itself is a presence even in his films about women (Thelma and Louise and GI Jane). The value that prevails in a Scott film is the positive value of masculinity."  - Ken Dancyger 
• "Though Scott has forged a style that is recognizably his own, his approach to filmmaking has a precedent in German Expressionist filmmaking. The Expressionists were among the first to use the elements of mise-en-scène (set design, lighting, props, costuming) to suggest traits of character or enhance meaning. Similarly, Scott's techniques are stunning yet highly artificial, a trait often criticized by American reviewers, who too often value plot and character over visual style, and realism over symbolism." - Susan Doll
• "Although the films Ridley Scott chooses to make suggest a director of considerable ambition, he is unlikely to be taken very seriously until he overcomes an inability to tell a story clearly or to create credible, vivid characters. Too concerned with the look of things, his work is often predictable, even incoherent." - Geoff Andrew
• "Often derided by critics for his tendency to emphasise style over substance, particularly in the use of inexplicable, though atmospheric, light sources (a quality he shares with his brother Tony), Scott has created a vision of the past, present and, most dramatically, the future, that has influenced a whole generation of film-makers." - Ian Haydn Smith
• "Scott is a decorator, a borrower, and a synthesist; like a great machine he contains all striking images and can deliver and fuse them, so long as the product is impersonal… He is a as blithe and versatile as Michael Curtiz, who always made hokum look as good as quality. Scott can find his imagery in 1800 or 1492, in the Dark Ages or the darker future of twenty-first century L.A." - David Thompson
• "If his decorative pictorial style can produce breathtaking images, on a bad day Ridley Scott is also capable of virtually a parody of the over-designed advertising aesthetic, such as the blossom-strewn fantasy Legend (1985), which at times resembles a commercial for toilet paper." - Ronald Bergan 
• "People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at." - Ridley Scott