Low-budget movies inspires Ridley Scott

When Ridley Scott called ‘action!’ for the first time on the sets of Prometheus, it brought things full circle for the legendary British director. The 74-year-old has worked in a plethora of genres since Alien—war movie, feminist road movie, historical epic, even gentle comedy.
We spoke to Sir Ridley about Prometheus, returning to action fantasy and arguably the biggest question of them all: why are we here?
Can you talk about returning to your most influential genre after all these years?
Such films are a wonderful universe, sorry about the pun, for another much-overused word, creativity.It’s an arena where anything goes, but you have to make sure it’s a good story and is not abused. There’s a serious lack of originality in many films in that often, they are mostly dressing. You can fundamentally do anything you want, provided you draw up the rules of your drama first. Within that universe, you have to stick to your own rulebook. The hardest thing to do is to get the bloody screenplay right.
Prometheus tackles major themes
It is about the beginning of life. It’s a giant ‘what if?’ This ball we’ve been sitting on right now has been around for a long f***ing time. I think it’s three billion years. There was a very nice quote by someone whose name I can’t remember right now, which fundamentally said that if we haven’t been pre-visited, what on earth has this planet been doing for all that time? It’s only our arrogance that says that’s impossible, that we’re the first ones. I really really doubt it. Is there a guiding force into this process? Is it a much larger idea or an entity that we can’t fathom?
Where do you find inspiration?
I find most of my inspiration from low-budget movies now. There are not a lot of big ones I look at and get a lot from anymore. So if there’s a big movie that’s a) good and b) plays, it’s a huge relief.