Cast members at the premiere of “The Martian” (Getty Images)
With his 1978 monster thriller Alien and 1982 neo-noir epic Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott helped set the tone for more than three decades of dark, gritty, and thought-provoking sci-fi movies. Three decades later, having made everything from historical epics to crime comedies, he returned to his roots with the 2012 Alien prequel Prometheus, and now the 78-year-old British filmmaker is continuing his own unique sci-fi revival with The Martian, the long-awaited film adaptation of Andy Weir’s 2011 hit novel.
The film stars Matt Damon as botanist and astronaut Mark Watney, who was presumed dead after a violent storm on Mars forced the crew to abort the mission and return to Earth. However, Watney managed to survive. Watney wakes up and must find a way to survive on the barren planet and contact NASA to determine how to get him back to Earth. What follows is a mixture of ingenuity, perseverance and fiercely focused determination – all traits that Scott himself has displayed in films such as Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and Thelma & Louise.
Scott spoke to Yahoo Movies in New York on Monday about “The Martian,” the “Blade Runner” sequel and the “Prometheus” sequel.
The film’s main plot revolves around Matt Damon’s Mark Watney trying to create water on a barren planet, when in fact NASA has just announced that they’ve found water on Mars.
I knew about it a few months ago. When I first spoke with NASA, we were talking about a lot of different things, and I said, “I know there’s a giant glacier there,” and he said, “Oh, that giant white thing…” [on the surface of Mars] “If it’s covered in dust, we’re assuming it’s ice,” I said. And I said, “Wow! Does that mean there was an ocean? Are we in the same state now as Mars was 750 million years ago?” And they said, “Yeah, that’s a good question.” So they want to go there and find out.
Your depiction of Mars is very vast and barren. You shot in Jordan and Turkey. How much of the Mars set was physically built and how much was green screen?
desert [in Jordan] She was a virgin. [and] The rocks are spectacular. They rival Monument Valley. It was truly amazing. We were great as the temperature was 70 degrees instead of 120. [degrees]It looks great but I wanted it to be more of a terracotta red. I love color grading [adjust the color of the picture on screen]This is the final act of my film. Literally, I’m sitting there with my technical artists grading this amazing film. There’s a lot of tweaking and tweaking going on. You see the whole thing come to life. And by that time, I’ve put in all the skies. Every sky shot has a trail of dust running through it.
Do you love building as much as you can?
I love it. I’m still an art student at heart. [Editor’s Note: Scott studied at the Royal College of Art].
Are most filmmakers OK with building such elaborate, authentic sets these days, or is it just too expensive?
In the interim, [lowering costs with green screen] That was the intention. Digital effects are getting more expensive, in my opinion. There are a lot of people fumbling around and complaining about going back to building sets. I build as much as I can. In Gladiator, we built 40 percent of the stadium at life-scale. We saved money by not building the top level of the stadium. We mapped it digitally and used wireframes to fill in the fifth level. We paint it digitally.
On stage in Budapest [for The Martian] It was bigger than Pinewood. We put a new green screen up there, 65 feet up to the gantry. We put the habitat and the rover up there, and we positioned them on the rocky terrain of Wadi Rum. We did tracking shots all over the valley, sampling the desert. So if he walked in any direction, they could follow him and piece the whole thing together. [desert from footage].
Have you ever considered using virtual reality for movies?
You have to try, and it would be foolish not to try.
Why not give it a try?
I am now one of them. I won’t say which one. [movie]People say, “You can’t have a theater full of people wearing helmets.” So for me, maybe sitting in a room like this, [walk] Explore the entire universe alone and tell your family about it. Or, get two or three helmets and do the same, but you’ll bump into each other, so it’s better to go in a different room.
Are you doing it for a feature film?
They are already preparing for ‘The Martian’. It’s a little late, but it will be released. [in the form of a 15-minute Oculus Rift experience]The special effects in The Martian are done from the perspective of an astronaut. It’s about what can you do to save your life? I think people are very interested in the film and the response has been very good. The film has an emotional ending, but it’s optimistic and I think it works very well in today’s world. I’m very British, so I like dark endings, but I pay the price.
Like Blade Runner.
I’ve been paying the price for 27 years. I’m making a second one now. Apparently, this one is a work of art. Hmm.
Will there be a final cut of Blade Runner 2?
Oh yeah. I mean, I always ask for final cut on everything. Part of it is because I’m user-friendly. I’ve always been like, if someone gives me X amount of dollars and tells me to make a movie, there’s no line. If I was an investor and you did that to me, I’d chop your ankles off. So don’t do that as a film director. I respect people who give me money, and I respect studios that are like, “Yeah, if you want to do this, let’s get started.”
You’ve made four Prometheus films. Would you like to do the same with Blade Runner?
Everyone else does it, so why not? I love to work. The French say “work to live,” but I live to work. I’m very lucky to have a job that I love. All my kids do the same thing. It can be hard, but it’s like playing professional sports. It’s very competitive. [that] You better keep bouncing the ball. There’s no time to rest.
Ryan Gosling is the perfect choice for Blade Runner 2.
Yeah, Harrison came back, and Harrison said, “Oh well,” and I said, “No, read this,” and I think he said, “This is the best script we’ve ever written. We’d been working on this script for a few years.
You said in the first film that he was a replicant.
Of course he’s a replicant! He’ll have to admit it.
So replicants don’t die after 4 years?
I won’t tell you, the story will tell you everything.
The franchise will then be handed over to Ryan Gosling.
yeah yeah.
What year is it set in?
That was in 2017, so it’ll be about 2047 when I come back. As young as I can get to play Ryan Gosling. He’s 34, but he looks 27 when he’s doing push-ups. So, probably 2050.
And will Prometheus 2 be a continuation of the story?
Of course. Have you read Milton’s Paradise Lost? It’s interesting. [Prometheus 2]. There’s this cool guy who’s really evil and gets all the girls and goes to the nightclubs. The other guy is not as good looking but he’s really bored and stays at home. Interestingly, they based it on that and made Alien: Paradise Lost. It’s really creepy. It’s a sequel to the first one, with Elizabeth Shaw. [Noomi Rapace] “I want to go where they came from,” she says. Michael Fassbender is in a two-parter, so she’ll slowly bring him back. They’ll go to the world of the engineers.
To the center of the planet.
They’re going there, they’re going to find out who designed these horrible bio-mechanoid organisms, which are like giant bacteria.
You often include director’s cuts on your films’ DVDs — do you think we’ll ever see a four-and-a-half hour cut of Exodus?
Yes. Sometimes the cuts that get cut are the last ones. I really regret cutting 17 minutes from Kingdom of Heaven because that was a whole side story for Eva Green’s character. But sometimes you think, “This is good, this is good.” There’s a longer version of The Martian, but… [by] 15 minutes. This isn’t a wasted scene, it’s an actual scene, they just cut out the scenes that weren’t needed. But it was a good scene. I hate it when they put out a DVD and it’s just stupid scenes, unnecessary scenes, long shots. It’s boring.
So will we see that in Exodus? [which was plagued with controversy over a cast filled with white actors playing North Africans]?
Who did this stupid thing? [one critic] She claimed to represent the black community. I don’t care about politics. To me, everyone is my friend. She [asking]”Why Was Moses Not in Darkness? [in the film]”I said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘For the cost… Denzel Washington is too old.’ If Denzel could play a 30-year-old or a 32-year-old, I’d work with him in a heartbeat. My man. [Christian Bale] We got away with it somehow… but then it became a racial issue and it got really weird. I said to the critics, “Were you there? No. How do you know what he looked like? Was he African and dark-skinned? Or was he Arab and dark-skinned? How do you know she was Ethiopian? Because that’s what the Bible says?” I think we did some pretty stupid things there.
Do you think that hurt box office takings and critical reviews?
Oh, sure. But I think the danger is that if you go up there and say, “It’s about religion,” people tend not to want to learn anything. They just want to go there and have fun. So I thought I’d give them everything I could to develop the story of what happened to Moses. I like the fact that Moses was an agnostic.
So you made not only Alien but also The Martian, in which Watney is the only lifeform on Earth. Do you believe that aliens exist in the real world?
Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of silly to think otherwise. Carl Sagan… I met Carl Sagan at the Pasadena Planetarium when I had just finished Alien. Carl Sagan was there the week of the release, and he came up to me with a glass of champagne and said, “Of course, aliens aren’t going to show up in your lifetime or in my lifetime.” I said, “Carl, take it easy. It’s a movie.”