Ridley Scott
715 connections found
Filmography
Hannibal 2001 
Alien 1979 
Blade Runner 1982 
Prometheus 2012 
Gladiator 2000 
The Last Duel 2021 
Thelma & Louise 1991 
Black Rain 1989 
Robin Hood 2010 
White Squall 1996 
1492: Conquest of Paradise 1992 
Legend 1985 
G.I. Jane 1997 
Exodus: Gods and Kings 2014 
Someone to Watch Over Me 1987 
The Martian 2015 
Body of Lies 2008 
Black Hawk Down 2001 
The Counselor 2013 
A Good Year 2006 
Kingdom of Heaven 2005 
The Duellists 1977 
American Gangster 2007 
Matchstick Men 2003 
Alien: Covenant 2017 
Napoleon 2023 
House of Gucci 2021 
Gladiator II 2024 
All the Money in the World 2017 
The Dog Stars 2026 
Treasure Island 2028 View:
Connections, in both directions
Frankenstein (2025)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by Prometheus (2012), The Dog Stars (2026)
Visuals
Even though this take on the character looks distractingly similar to the Engineers in Prometheus, this does highlight how the Creature is less of a monster, so much as he’s grotesquely beautiful, in his own way.
Jacob Elordi is a very conventionally attractive man whose monster is designed like a blend of the Engineers from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy.
He looks like those God aliens in Prometheus.
…when the Creature is revealed for the first time, gigantic in stature and pale, translucent naked, he does resemble the Engineers from Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.
Jacob Elordi has the size (6’5”) to be the monster, but his design makes him look like a plastic god from the opening credits of “Prometheus.”
…he vaguely resembles the Engineers from “Prometheus” in the “Aliens” franchise.
…using what film buffs would call a Rashomon structure, named after the Japanese film best known for the now-familiar device of replaying the same events from different perspectives.
Ese cartel es, definitivamente, lo contrario a Rashomon.
…by employing a Rashomon-inspired approach to developing the narrative…
While Jager’s book leaves no ambiguity about what befell Marguerite de Carrouges, the film takes a Rashômon–style consideration.
…the film follows a Rashomon/The Handmaiden look at a single event, the rape of Marguerite de Carrouges (Comer) by accused attacker Jacques Le Gris (Driver)…
The Last Duel takes the Rashomon route of telling the story from three different points of view…
Jodorowsky's Dune (2013)
Directed by Frank Pavich
influenced by Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Prometheus (2012)
Visuals Themes
This should be the tragic ending, except that even unmade, “Dune” ended up influencing a generation of sci-fi films; you can see echoes of the designs in “Alien,” “Star Wars,” “Flash Gordon,” even all the way up to 2012’s “Prometheus.”
A segment on how the unmade “Dune” influenced future sci-fi cinema – O’Bannon took some of his ideas to “Alien,” and “The Fifth Element” and “Prometheus” are cited as containing Jodorowsky essence — merits deeper presentation.
There is a section at the end when Pavich juxtaposes images from the Dune archive with clips from an odd range of movies, including Flash Gordon, Masters of the Universe and Prometheus, The Matrix and Contact; the suggestion is that there are stylistic links between them.
His warriors had their fingers in much of what was to come, including "Star Wars," "Alien," "Total Recall," "Tron" and "Prometheus."
That said, the fascinating slow-motion impact that Jodorowsky’s failed folly seems to have had on future generations of sci-fi films, from Star Wars to Prometheus, is covered a little too briskly here.
The evidence presented regarding details George Lucas may have stolen for “Star Wars” is unconvincing, though O’Bannon, concept artist Chris Foss and Giger did go on to collaborate on “Alien,” extending a relationship that started with “Dune.”
The Thing (2011)
Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
influenced by Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982)
Visuals Themes Plot
Whenever director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. isn't blurring the line between referencing and replicating John Carpenter's 1982 version of The Thing (itself a remake of Howard Hawks' 1951 film The Thing from Another World), he's borrowing liberally from Ridley Scott's claustrophobic Alien.
Almost thirty years since the release of John Carpenter's superb 1982 sci-fi thriller "The Thing," it remains one of the great so-called "monster movies" in cinema history, comparable in sheer mastery and creepiness to Ridley Scott's 1979 classic "Alien" with one key location change (Antarctica rather than outer space).
All three "Things," along with everything from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" to "Alien," owe their central ideas to the Depression-era story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell Jr. There's a rock-solid notion in that tale, that of an alien being able to take over a human body and cause pure paranoia in the populace.
…shocker a la "Alien."
It's Alien meets 30 Days of Night when a crew of Americans and Norwegians dig up something otherworldly in the Antarctic ice.
They recently announced plans for a return to the world of "Blade Runner," another movie that just didn't work at the box-office, and now we've got this weekend's release of a prequel to John Carpenter 's " The Thing ," another choice that makes no logical business sense.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Directed by David Lean
influenced Prometheus (2012), The Martian (2015), Gladiator (2000), Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Dialogue Visuals Plot Characters
Though the other epics I mention above are the most common ones, I also had a flashback to Lawrence of Arabia when Marcus Aurelius describes his wayward son as "brutal, cruel, and dark": It parallels Lawrence's description of the Arabs.
Mars’ vast orange-ish landscapes of dunes and rocky mountains (many of the exteriors were shot in the deserts of Jordan) get the David Lean treatment from cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who clearly has spent much time analyzing “Lawrence of Arabia.”
The scenes back on Earth provide a hectic, densely populated counterweight to the Martian aridity, which is magnificently represented by exteriors shot in the vicinity of Wadi Rum in Jordan, not far from where great stretches of Lawrence of Arabia were filmed.
And just as David the android quietly idolised and emulated Peter O’Toole as Lawrence of Arabia (aesthetically and parroting of dialogue – “the trick Mister Potter is not minding that it hurts”), The Martian riffs on Apollo 13, Castaway and Gravity (and a sprinkle of Avatar) to deliver something familiar and sickly, like a microwave meal claiming to taste ‘just like a home-cooked meal.’
The film continuously presents the audience with obvious parallels to Lawrence of Arabia, a film watched by the android David (Fassbender) in his attempts to gain insight into the folly of humanity’s collective potential/hubris.
The voyage is overseen by Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a chilly corporate representative with no scientific interest or imagination, and David (Michael Fassbender), a flaxen-haired android created by Weyland whose seemingly benign demeanor is undercut by his HAL-like vocal cadences, which are amusingly modeled on Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia (Fassbender, who was so intense and unhinged in Shame, is quite impeccable in playing the uncanniness of simulated human behavior).
It’s a place to have fun in a Blade Runner-lite playground with a lead actor who’s more than capable of delivering Wright’s smartass dialogue in a way that endears himself to the audience.
…could have birthed a formulaic Blade Runner rip-off…
Chung-hoon Chung’s cinematography feels futuristic yet still down-to-earth, without relying too heavily on the bright neon lights and high-contrast visuals one often associates with Blade Runner.
It’s the basic logline for hundreds of sci-fi dystopias, from Blade Runner to Wall-E.
Go beyond this year, and it is impossible not to think of The Hunger Games, Robocop, Brazil, Blade Runner, and Minority Report…
This isn’t Blade Runner’s neon gloom…
Yet, in design and stemming from all of the NASA related material, it's far more akin to Ron Howard's superlative "Apollo 13" about that lunar crew ending up stuck in space while the NASA folks down on terra firma tried to figure out how to get them home.
The film it most brings to mind is Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, which recreated the real-life attempt to return the crippled space ship and its three astronauts safely to Earth.
Perhaps not since Ron Howard's 1995 Apollo 13 has a movie paid such loving tribute to star-struck visionaries and their egghead enablers, those brainiacs who work tirelessly to send them soaring past the heavens and just as feverishly toil to return them safely to the fold.
With its seductive blend of hi-tech Nasa chic and Apollo 13 -style DIY, the production design creates a lived-in feel that echoes the industrial environments of Alien .
While the likes of Apollo 13 and Castaway (both clear touchstones for this) were all about escape, Watney is more focused on endurance, making full use of the surroundings to prolong his own existence for as long as necessary.
That quote is one of the most memorable utterances in “Apollo 13,” a movie that “The Martian,” with its NASA-centric story and its all-hands-to-the-pumps, cooperation-is-key vibe, resembles more than just a little.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
influenced Prometheus (2012), The Martian (2015)
Themes Visuals
But “The Martian” echoes plenty of other sci-fi landmarks, especially “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
For example, compare the likes of "Mission to Mars," "Red Planet" or "Ghosts of Mars" to space movies set elsewhere such as "Gravity," "The Right Stuff" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," and the difference in artistic quality is off the charts.
At times it seems as if the movie's greatest artistic inspiration is not any particular previous film or novel, but the second act of " 2001: A Space Odyssey ," which features endearing images of Dr. Heywood Floyd anxiously reading the instructions on a zero gravity toilet, and sleeping on a Pan Am flight to an orbital space station like a businessman taking the red eye from Los Angeles to New York.
“The Martian” is to moviegoers of today what “2001: A Space Odyssey” was to audiences in 1968, when Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke fired up imaginations and stoked a longing for space exploration.
The film may not be a new “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
The Martian is a working man’s Mars movie, by which I mean it is light on wondering about our place in the universe (think Solaris , The Fountain , 2001: A Space Odyssey ) and heavy on working out a way to get duct tape to seal an air leak.
A flashy big-budget studio gangster flick that could be viewed as a combination of the black "Scarface" and the Jewish "Serpico."
American Gangster reminds one of The French Connection, The Godfather, Scarface; some have called it Super Fly vs. Serpico -- the list could go on and on, really.
This aspect of American Gangster , plus its 70s New York and New Jersey urban settings, make it evoke The French Connection and Serpico more than The Godfather or Goodfellas .
It's half Serpico and half Goodfellas, telling parallel stories of Frank Lucas (Washington)'s rise to dominance in the drug trade in the '70s, and Detective Richie Roberts' pursuit of Lucas.
The sense that we've seen all this before is inevitable in a film that ripples with references to "Serpico," "Scarface" and "The Godfather."
Movie goers who long for the days of Serpico will be gladdened by the many reminders here, including skuzzy cops on the take (Josh Brolin, a riot of pomade) and cut portions of French Connection powder.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Directed by Rupert Sanders
influenced by Blade Runner (1982)
Plot Visuals Themes
It all feels too familiar by a half, from a premise which reminds at key junctures of Alex Proyas' superior 2004 thriller " I, Robot ," to a tone that recalls Steven Spielberg's 2002 pic " Minority Report ," to set design and art direction clearly inspired by?but far less vivid than?"Blade Runner."
The setting appears to be another neo-Tokyo, recalling that other anime classic “Akira” (1988), with almost everything about the visuals lifted from Ridley Scott’s 1982 landmark “Blade Runner,” including giant animated advertisements on the sides of high-rises.
Once again, echoes of other comparable fare — Blade Runner , which pre-dates the manga; The Matrix , which is widely regarded to have taken inspiration from it — remain evident, without overshadowing the end product thanks to the imagery’s all-round dazzling display.
But Masamune borrowed a lot from Blade Runner, and that movie seems to be the primary visual inspiration for this adaptation.
The film slavishly revisits not only the original inspiration but such other sci-fi landmarks as Blade Runner and Metropolis, creating an unsettling feeling not unlike the “uncanny valley” effect more common to photorealistic animation.
Though it pays “creative homage” to a number of films (the opening credits sequence is practically lifted from the 2014 version of Godzilla ), it owes its biggest debts to Alien , Aliens , and the collected works of Paul W.S. Anderson, the sci-fi deathtrap B-movie maestro behind Event Horizon and the Resident Evil films .
Too many films have drawn inspiration from 1979’s Alien over the years, including countless C-list rip-offs not worth mentioning.
Following up on his 2014 brainteaser The Signal , William Eubank's Underwater lets viewers know what they're in for from the start: If its title treatment's faint echo of Alien doesn't tip you off (with letters materializing onscreen out of order against a ghostly expanse), a credits sequence heavy on newspaper-headline exposition may remind you of recent Godzilla reboots, in which humanity's hubris awakened terrible creatures from the deep.
There’s no doubt that Kristen Stewart has been styled to evoke Weaver as Ripley in Underwater , to the point of collapsing the character’s various incarnations into one package: She’s got close-cropped hair (shades of Alien 3 ), carries a big gun (á la Aliens ), and spends a significant amount of time running around in her underwear (as in the climax of Alien ), all while projecting the same terse toughness as her inspiration.
While my initial impression was a combination of Aquaman’s The Trench and Alien, and yes, there are some nods to the latter franchise, Underwater brings so much more to the table.
Life (2017)
Directed by Daniel Espinosa
influenced by Alien (1979), The Martian (2015), Prometheus (2012)
Visuals Themes Plot
The claustrophobic International Space Station setting is immediately reminiscent of Alien, its plot verges closer and closer to Gravity as it continues, while the patter between its characters and use of scientific jargon recalls The Martian.
But this movie is in desperate need for its version of Matt Damon in “The Martian” using science to fight back against the threat.
While certainly not beholden to thieving outright from just Scott’s groundbreaking film — it also liberally adopts elements of Gravity, Event Horizon and and The Martian also by Ridley Scott — the projector could alternate reels mid-film and you probably wouldn’t lose your way.
This will look great on our resumes after Gravity (2013) and The Martian (2015) they thought.
Like "The Martian," "Passengers" and "Arrival," everything from the story to the effects and dialogue flies in the face of genre cliches.
The Martian and Interstellar doubled as works of pro-science advocacy, and while that’s a very honorable aim, it has started to feel obligatory.
The story doesn’t have a traditional structure, there are multiple protagonists, and then you have just a lot of weird techno-future stuff where there’s the Blade Runner-esque grimy neon, but also stuff like robot strippers (that don’t look human, but would fit well inside the world of Futurama), creepy designs, and basically a “keep out” sign for the future.
To be honest, Leo’s Amish identity is a far more interesting characteristic than his voicelessness, especially in a movie that appears to have lifted its gorgeous, neon-lit future-noir aesthetic from “Blade Runner.”
From a familiar set of references, the movie forges an unexpected narrative stew — namely, the story of a voiceless Amish man in a “Blade Runner”-inspired Berlin (which, of course, carries plenty of Bowie resonance on its own).
So that’s the lay of the land, and how wildly undulating it is, the action cutting between Skarsgård running around futuristic Berlin – which looks like if Warner Bros licensed a Blade Runner theme park – with a weaponised table leg he’s whittled, and Rudd and Theroux, whose character names are Cactus and Duck by the way, tenpin bowling and shooting the shit and perving on girls like they’re in deleted scenes from Dazed and Confused.
The film's setting is Berlin 40 years in the future, and over that time it's become the same neon-hued, graffiti-pocked, advertisement-ravaged dystopia that's figured in countless films that have followed in the footsteps of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report .
The Holy Grail in this regard is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (and more recently, Denis Villeneuve’s belated follow-up, Blade Runner 2049) — the 80s classic immerses viewers into smartly-conceived environments that feel lived-in and tangible, foreign but familiar, and that in turn works to enhance the narrative.
Pitch Black (2000)
Directed by David Twohy
influenced by Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982)
Plot Themes
The most obvious comparison to Pitch Black has to be Alien since both begin with freighters drifting in space with crew in hypersleep, a leading lady as captain, and survivors fighting for their lives against a bloodthirsty alien creature.
Pitch Black is Alien without the distraction of real characters.
At second glance, this is still true, but you notice something else: Despite its rip-offs (mostly of "Alien" ), "Pitch Black" delivers not only on thrills and suspense, but on artistic direction and clever plotting.
If at times it is reminiscent of "Alien", "Mad Max" or of countless hilarious straight-faced science fiction B-movies, "Pitch Black" takes itself as seriously as it needs to and embraces every cliché it comes across like an old friend.
Alien, the now-classic 1979 Ridley Scott sci-fi epic, is possibly cinema’s most cloned movie.
Incorporating disparate genre archetypes (the movie mixes "Swiss Family Robinson" with "Ten Little Indians" by way of "Alien"), "Pitch Black" provides a thrill ride from its chaotic opening scenes (in which a transport vehicle is forced to make a crash landing) to its surprising outcome.
The Godfather (1972)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced American Gangster (2007), Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)
Visuals Themes
The better it gets -- and the drama grows in power over its quasi-epic course of 157 minutes -- the more it brings to mind the truly great gangster films of American movie history, starting with "The Godfather" and extending back to such landmarks as "The Public Enemy" and "Scarface."
Shaft , The Godfather , The French Connection , Prince of the City , even Apocalypse Now — they come and go in this farrago like bits in an Oscar tribute montage.
American Gangster reminds one of The French Connection, The Godfather, Scarface; some have called it Super Fly vs. Serpico -- the list could go on and on, really.
This aspect of American Gangster , plus its 70s New York and New Jersey urban settings, make it evoke The French Connection and Serpico more than The Godfather or Goodfellas .
Actually, I'm not at all sure how anyone can watch this film and not recall The Godfather films, Friedkin's The French Connection , De Palma's Scarface , Leone's Once Upon a Time in America , Scorsese's GoodFellas , Joel Coen's Miller's Crossing , "The Sopranos," or even Cronenberg's current Eastern Promises .
The sense that we've seen all this before is inevitable in a film that ripples with references to "Serpico," "Scarface" and "The Godfather."
Bodies and cave-scaling implements drop with loud cracks; portentous music telegraphs just about every surprise coming; the sightless goo-covered "crawlers" who live in the cave recesses (but who occasionally go topside to hunt) drop abruptly, with "Alien"-like grace, into the camera frame.
That general synopsis will probably sound like a very generic horror movie premise, and though director Neil ("Dog Soldiers") Marshall's influences are somewhat obvious, but veering more towards thrillers like "Deliverance" and "Alien" than out-and-out horror movies.
This is also when the filmic allusions start piling up into their own sort of zombie brigade: scare quotes, if you like, from Don't Look Now, Carrie, Apocalypse Now, The Blair Witch Project, the Gollum sequences in The Lord of the Rings, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the original Alien, and in one sudden flash-reveal of a whole brigade of crouching monsters, a direct lift from Aliens.
But the best way to illustrate the smashing success of The Descent may not be to compare it to a classic like Alien -- though this movie surely will earn a spot in the pantheon next to it -- but to last summer’s very similar, if desperately unscary, The Cave .
There have been a lot of comparisons to "Alien", but "Descent" is more like "Jaws" in a cave.
The final sections of The Descent which manage to evoke Ridley Scott's Alien (1979), Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) and even Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses (2003) are bloody, brutal and tense.
Another car chase, surely, or another grisly scene of medical malfeasance, whether in the form of implanting tiny crawling robotic critters under someone's eyelid or some unsavory business involving a bone saw, or yet one more reference to (or rip-off from) "Blade Runner" or "Logan's Run" or "Gattaca" or "Minority Report" or "The Island of Dr. Moreau" or "Austin Powers" (unintentional, but there are scenes featuring McGregor's character and his nemesis, played by Sean Bean, that can't help but conjure Dr. Evil).
But writer Caspian Tredwell-Owen - who adapted his own story with co-screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci - was also inspired by Philip K. Dick's "Blade Runner," which proposed the notion of having manufactured humans fight for their identities after being implanted with previously existing memories.
The resultant motion picture is sort of a combination "THX-1138," "Logan's Run," "Blade Runner," and "The Matrix."
Their hesitation to kiss, you see, comes from the fact they're playing harvested beings, or replicants -- to borrow a term from "Blade Runner," which Michael Bay's movie has ransacked like WorldCom's Bernard Ebbers.
Possessing no new ideas, it reworks and borrows from such films as Blade Runner, The Matrix and Logan's Run.
Obviously people will make comparisons to Blade Runner and Logan's Run , and some from writer Philip K. Dick.
Annihilation (2018)
Directed by Alex Garland
influenced by Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Prometheus (2012)
Themes Visuals Plot
…creature feature like Alien and The Thing.
Over its 115-minute journey, “Annihilation” steers a course from a brooding “Arrival” science fiction vibe into a kind of tense sci-fi/horror hybrid like Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” then finally to a kind of heady, hardcore science fiction of the “2001: A Space Odyssey” Stanley Kubrick variety.
Based on Tallahassee author Jeff VanderMeer�s novel, Annihilation on the surface is a dead-ducks mission like Alien with the Ripley factor times five.
Annihilation is a sci-fi film that works well as a straight-up horror film, much like Alien used a sci-fi premise to deliver the scares.
Annihilation follows the familiar form of science fiction horror found in films from Alien to The Cloverfield Paradox , with a cast of characters in isolation, slowly being picked off by a force they don’t understand.
However, I can only hope that as time passes, those who were sorting derisively or scratching their heads will eventually come around and see the film as I did—as a conceptually ambitious and stunningly executed sci-fi film along the lines of such masterworks as “2001,” “Solaris,” “Blade Runner,” “Dark City" and “Inception” that will continue to live on long after today’s current chart-toppers have been long forgotten.
The Cloverfield Paradox (2018)
Directed by Julius Onah
influenced by Alien (1979), Alien: Covenant (2017)
Themes Visuals Plot
Wearing its influences far too readily on its sleeve – virtually every spaceship movie made in the last fifty years, from Alien to last year’s far superior but criminally-underrated Life – The Cloverfield Paradox, despite a strong opening and a satisfactorily-downbeat ending, has little of real interest going on for the bulk of its running time.
It’s not a monster movie, it’s not a character study of a diverse group working together to accomplish a scientific goal that could potentially bring about world peace, it’s not straight-up horror (the terrifying bits do seem inspired by Alien which is pleasant to report), and it’s not a time paradox mind-bender; it’s all of the above and fails at them all.
A hodgepodge of everything from Alien to Event Horizon to an episode of “Fringe” to Back to the Future to an H.P. Lovecraft story to the classic 1983 television movie The Day After , to call this effort a mess would be massively understating things.
To name only a handful: Poltergeist, Evil Dead 2, Moon, Another Earth, Alien, Event Horizon and even Alien Resurrection seem to receive clear callbacks.
Essentially: Blame science, and take a page or three from the scripts for Alien, Event Horizon and Pacific Rim.
Manically riffing on “Sunshine,” “Interstellar,” “Alien,” and then “Event Horizon” in a mad dash to obscure the fact that the film looks like a basic cable episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Cloverfield Paradox” illustrates the dangerous cognitive dissonance that can result from a painfully derivative movie about a situation where anything is possible.
Many of the land-dwelling critters evoke the xenomorphs from the Alien franchise, which is unsurprising given that Pitch Black started life as writer-director David Twohy's script submission for Alien 3 at a time when Sigourney Weaver was refusing to reprise her role as Ripley.
There is an early scene in which he leaps into a pool in order to hide from flesh-hungry beasts and must maintain frozen posture while submerged in order to not aggravate the piranha-like eels that are slithering around him, inspiring a moment of tension that harkens us back to some of the best nail-biting moments of the “Alien” pictures.
An efficient, if decidedly derivative, space-set monster movie in the "Alien" vein, 2000's "Pitch Black" proved a small sleeper success, just about doubling its no-frills $21-million budget and creating a star out of Vin Diesel (who would go on to make " The Fast and the Furious " the following year).
Alas, here comes “Riddick” to follow 2000’s dull “Alien” rip-off and 2004’s dull sci-fi/action epic that makes less sense as it goes.
The first hour of the film is spent with Riddick in full survivalist mode as he tries to figure out a way past a poisonous hydra monster that looks like it was ripped straight out of Alien.
Swap a solar eclipse and Alien clones for a rainstorm and giant water scorpions, and the films bear more than a passing resemblance.