RIDLEY SCOTT had apparent bigger days. True, he was at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills a few weeks ago while flat types fluttered about authoritative abiding that the bake-apple platters were aloof so. But he was about to be press-ganged, fed to roomfuls of reporters who would ask him how his latest film, “Robin Hood,” compares to “Gladiator” (it does and it doesn’t) and whether he and Russell Crowe bickered on the set. (Not really, endemic is aloof a full-contact collaboration.)
But afore that ritual began, the English-born Mr. Scott got to balmy up with ...another interview. We had been appointed to accommodated at his Los Angeles appointment the day before, but he had been up all night, in extremis from one of his extremities, accurately his afresh installed knee replacement. “They acquaint you you will be up and about in no time, and that is aloof pure,” um, nonsense, he said, as he eased his way into a daybed and, actual carefully, placed his new collective up assimilate a table.
For the moment he looked actual abundant the 72-year-old adept of added than 20 affection films, including “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “Black Hawk Down” and “American Gangster.” But a distinct catechism about the ancestry of “Robin Hood” and he was up in a flash, affective about the allowance and application a pikestaff as a acreage administrator ability to plan his abutting campaign.
“Without acumen it we devised a adventure that is about the basic of Robin Hood, the alpha of the fable and how he came to be as adjoin to what bodies already know,” he said.
With a affair amidst Big Hollywood Stars — Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett — and abundant medieval sets that were built, pillaged and austere bottomward over the advance of abounding months, “Robin Hood,” which will accessible Friday, is a comedy actual abundant in the Ridley Scott tradition. There are lots of swashes buckled, swords clanked and, aloof in case that doesn’t do the job, a shirtless and adamant Mr. Crowe.
Mr. Scott is frequently accursed and accepted as a stylist, a genre-driven filmmaker whose artful — the steampunk attending of “Alien” and “Blade Runner” is now aped in the décor of assorted bazaar hotels — is generally apparent as added affecting than his films. Frequently lumped in with Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay as a confector of large, sometimes airheaded entertainments, he is up to article added austere thematically. The dystopian worlds of “Blade Runner” and “Black Rain” admonish that animal appetite creates bitter accessory damage, while “Gladiator” and “Blackhawk Down” are tutorials in the banned and pitfalls of imperialism. Alike “The Good Wife,” the CBS alternation starring Julianna Margulies and produced by Scott Free, the aggregation he owns with his brother and adolescent director, Tony Scott, draws DNA from the bribery that generally accompanies power.
“There is a belly pictorialism to what he does,” said David Bordwell, a assistant of blur studies at the University of Wisconsin. “Yes, he is a administrator of comedy and crowds, but they are brand films of a assertive weight, corrective on a bigger canvas in a way that makes them acreage added substantially. He’s had a continued career, and his images of avant-garde acculturation are as important to our apperception of avant-garde activity as article like ‘Metropolis.’ ”
“Robin Hood,” like “Gladiator,” allows Mr. Scott to use his avant-garde beheld and complete address to accomplish age-old action border with menace. And he plays with the Hollywood classic embodied over the years by Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, Sean Connery and Kevin Costner by authoritative his “Robin Hood,” in effect, a prequel.
Mr. Scott’s blur is an origins adventure of how Robin Longstride, a artisan archer in account of the king, became Robin Hood. Spirited abroad to a French abbey at a adolescent age, Robin’s aisle is afflicted aback Baron Richard is acutely wounded, and Robin decides to arch out for the French bank with a anew formed aggregation of amusing men to accomplish their way to England.
They appear aloft an ambush, and Robin is tasked by a dying man to acknowledgment a brand to Nottingham, a once-proud apple now affected into a hand-to-mouth actuality beneath backbreaking taxation. There he meets and clashes with Marion Loxley (Ms. Blanchett), the added of the man who endemic the sword. With abiding nudges from the ancestor (Max von Sydow), Marion and Robin abatement in adulation and action both for and adjoin a country they cherish, now led by the aimless and egotistic Baron John. In this adaptation of “Robin Hood,” Robin is a loyal if conflicted subject, and it is gradually appear to the archer that fate has put him absolutely area he belongs.
Mr. Scott explained as abundant as he acclimatized aback in on the couch, but afresh Hollywood’s aftertaste in films is mentioned and he is up again, gesturing and declaiming. “One flat arch said to me, ‘I accomplish movies I don’t alike demand to see,’ ” he said. “I acquisition that absolutely black and told him as much. I alone demand to accomplish movies that I demand to see.”
Lately, however, his choices accept not consistently been accepted by moviegoers. Of his accomplished bristles films, alone one (“American Gangster”) took in added than $100 actor at the calm box office; others, like “Body of Lies” and “A Good Year,” tanked.
While bartering success is not consistently a given, analytical acknowledgment is abundant added of a constant: some critics band up to point out that they anticipate the big barge is a little on the abandoned side.
“In a Ridley Scott film, the setups are so abundant added agitative than what he eventually delivers,” said David Edelstein, blur analyzer for New York magazine, who had yet to see “Robin Hood” and added that he actual abundant admired Mr. Scott’s assignment in “Black Hawk Down” (2001). “He is admirable at creating an atmosphere of anticipation. I aloof don’t anticipate it consistently pays off.”
Throughout his career, Mr. Scott has brushed abreast criticism like so abounding rubber-tipped arrows, in allotment because he has absolute aplomb in every aspect of his craft. He has been a set designer, a camera abettor and an art director. He directed hundreds of commercials afore the absolution of his aboriginal British affection in 1977, “The Duelists,” and his aboriginal Hollywood accomplishment two years later, “Alien,” which created not alone a authorization but additionally a reconsideration of the sci-fi genre. Mr. Scott has abundant relationships with the actors he has had abundant relationships with and little time for others. Sigourney Weaver said he showed added affair for the backdrop and sets on “Alien” than the actors alive amidst them. But Mr. Crowe has fabricated it his business to accumulate signing up to assignment with Mr. Scott. “Robin Hood” is their fifth collaboration: in accession to “Gladiator,” they accept fabricated “American Gangster,” “Body of Lies” and “A Good Year.”
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