John Mathieson, the cinematographer for both Gladiator films, has slammed Ridley Scott’s recent filmmaking habits in a new interview.
Speaking on The DocFix podcast, Mathieson described Scott’s tendency to leave things in shot to be later cleaned up in post-production as “lazy”.
“It’s really lazy. It’s the CG elements now of tidying-up, leaving things in shot, cameras in shot, microphones in shot, bits of set hanging down, shadows from [boom mics]. And they just said [on Gladiator 2], ‘Well, clean it up.'"
The cinematographer didn’t stop there, calling Scott “impatient” for getting “as much as he can” using a multi-camera setup.
“Having lots of cameras I don’t think has made the films any better," Mathieson said. "It’s a bit rush, rush, rush. That’s changed in him. But that’s the way he wants to do it and I don’t like it and I don’t think many people do, but people love his films and he’s Ridley Scott and can do what he wants.”
Speaking of Ridley Scott.
But then in an astute creative move, the sequel was put in the hands of one of the truly best directors working today, in fact it could be said that Dennis Villeneuve is the Ridley Scott of his day. Like Michael Mann has been the John Ford of his day.
Although Villeneuve so far has been a guarantee of quality both in content and presentation, while Scott’s erratic career is sprinkled with quite a few mediocre efforts and misfires, like he gets easily distracted, and you can even get a whiff of that in the way he fidgets unnecessarily with his older movies (speaking of Blade Runner) like Lucas did with the Star Wars original trilogy.