Ridley Scott has never shied away from being blunt and bold towards the fictional worlds in which he works. He confidently took the Alien franchise into bizarre new territory with Alien: Covenant, and he recently even managed to effectively swap out Kevin Spacey for Christopher Plummer in his latest film, All the Money in the World. Now it seems that the filmmaking icon has finally addressed his feelings towards Denis Villeneuve's follow-up to his work on Blade Runner. According to Scott, it appears that he actually thought Blade Runner 2049 was far too long, saying:
I have to be careful what I say. I have to be careful what I say. It was fucking way too long. Fuck me! And most of that script's mine.
If you've seen Blade Runner 2049, you should already know the film clocks in at a meaty two hours and forty-four minutes in length, and it is clear that Denis Villeneuve made a deliberate effort to tell a slow and methodical detective story that's almost an hour longer than the Ridley Scott's original film. Even with its excellent 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, Blade Runner 2049 was a somewhat divisive movie that struggled at the box office for a wide variety of reasons. In that regard, there's a strong case to be made that Ridley Scott's comments are not without merit.
Following his critique of Blade Runner 2049's runtime, Ridley Scott continued and highlighted his remarks about ownership of many of the film's plot elements. Building off of those claims, Scott explained:
I sit with writers for an inordinate amount of time and I will not take credit, because it means I've got to sit there with a tape recorder while we talk. I can't do that to a good writer. But I have to, because to prove I'm part of the actual process, I have to then have an endless amount [of proof], and I can't be bothered.
Warning: spoilers ahead for Blade Runner 2049! Don't read any further if you have not seen the long-awaited Blade Runner sequel!
From there, Ridley Scott continued in his interview with Vulture to explain that certain plot elements from Blade Runner 2049 stemmed from his own involvement. Among these ideas included the plot thread of a film centering on the child of Rick Deckard and Rachael, as well as the idea of Officer K having a romantic entanglement with a piece of artificial intelligence. Since none of this was documented, it's hard to tell how much work he actually put into the movie, and most movies get a ton of input from a slew of different places anyway. Still, however much Scott actually worked on the movie, it's clear he thinks it was too fucking long.
End of Blade Runner 2049 spoilers.
As for Ridley Scott's other projects, you can currently catch All the Money in the World, which is now in theaters. Looking ahead to the next year of major movie releases, you can also take a look at CinemaBlend's 2018 movie premiere guide to see what the next 365 days have in store!
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