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I love what Ive seen so far.
Ive only seen half an hour, but it looks incredible.
You change over time.
Thats enough science fiction for a career.
Its evolved and made another form of entertainment.
Because the very first film is a very clear indication of what the second will be.
And Im not going to tell you what it is, because Ill give the whole thing away.
And not only that, but itll sound too simple but its not simple, it gets quite complicated.
Its fundamentally about AIs, though.
He had to be.
So for this story to function today, he has to be a Replicant, otherwise theres no story.
That was the unique beast.
I said, obscenes good!
HAL was an eye in a wall, and a brain.
Apart from, the human beings are always fragile, both physically and psychologically.
But in so doing, youve got to have a protector of the investment.
So that, I think, was a stroke of genius, Ash.
Theres a very ambiguous relationship between the humans and Ash.
Like, the way he behaves towards Ripleys quite interesting.
Theres a sexual tension going on there.
Well, that was invented on the morning.
Thats what I do for a living.
None of that shits in the script.
She [Sigourney Weaver] was like, What are you trying to do to me with the magazine?
I said, Ill tell you afterwards.
Is it a combination of elements that would include confusion, anger thats emotion.
So when youve got so much data and the computers on overload, the box is already getting stressed.
Right there, that box can start to hate you for putting too much information into it.
Once thats happened, youre in trouble.
Human beings are in trouble.
They closed them down.
So maybe theyre out there somewhere.
I think if it ever happens, thats how itll happen by accident.
Same as giving nations H-bombs: you do not do that.
[Laughs]
Its quite terrifying isnt it.
Because right there you could have escalation by accident.
If you dont, youre in a position of autonomy, which makes you weak.
You need somebody there, always to say, I wouldnt do that if I was you.
Thats what makes it volatile.
Im hoping that this general in the US will say, You cant do that.
You cant do that.
Give me the key.
Because if you dont, therell be trouble.
Not only that, Stanley was visited by the CIA.
How do you know this?
How do I know what?
He said, Its kind of logical isnt it?
Yeah, but how do you know about all the check lists?
Well, thats logical too.
Hed invented a very good reason.
But by that moment its too late he cant turn it off.
There can be no last minute change of mind.
Because youre into commitment, its the end of the world.
Particularly with [Kim Jong-un].
I cant quite understand what hes complaining about.
Other than being a bloody nuisance so that we say, Okay, we wont trade with you.
So he gets angry and starts to get aggressive at this level.
You could pop him off with one [bomb].
But we never want to think about that.
Im a blitz baby.
I used to sit under the stairs in the blitz and hear houses shake and bombs scream.
The Doodlebugs sound like a motorbike, which would then cut out.
The bomb was driven by a jet, without a pilot.
Id see them: theyd cut out and just drop or glide.
It was kind of random.
Was that the same as the V-2?
No, the V-2 was much worse.
A Doodlebug would take out half a street.
A V-2 would take out a whole area half a square mile.
If hed got that sooner, psychologically, he probably wouldve destroyed us.
But ironically, post-War, the first person the Americans hired was Von Braun.
Thats it, yeah.
Well, when I didBlade Runner,Id already been successful since I was about 27.
I started my company at 27, and its 50 years old this year.
Weve been successful in both London and the US in fact, the US is the bigger operation.
The company still has about 60 directors.
Im not having any wool pulled over my eyes.
I knew exactly what I was walking into.
Because I was a new person on the block Id never made a film in Hollywood before.
And so what I walked into was not pleasant and was very controlling, and very unionised.
And I couldnt operate onBlade Runner,so that to me was tricky.
Ive always had a great eye.
But he was the best around, Jordan Cronenweth.
He had a crew around him who loved him.
But my investors said, Why the fuck did you hire this cameraman?
I said, Because hes the best in the business.
So between he and I, we put together the way it should look.
But then Syd Mead and Lawrence Paull [production designer] and I can draw.
Because I was at art school, I can really draw and really paint and really envision.
Id shot in Hong Kong before the first bank of Hong Kong went up.
Hong Kong was an eastern medieval town it was incredible.
New York at that point was smelly and dirty I didnt like it.
It wasnt until [Mayor, Michael] Bloomberg came in and really made it what it is.
New York right now is fantastic bore no relationship to New York in the 60s.
But I thought New York meets Hong Kong was it.
I think its gonna be Mexican.
Where did the Noir element come in, because thats what really adds the spice to the sci-fi.
Youve got to remember,Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheepwas an endless book.
An endless amount of story.
My show isMan In The High Castle.Thats my show.
So Dicks novel… we fell out, because I carelessly said, I couldnt get through it.
And he wasreallypissed off.
Now I know the family and the daughters and everything, so I think its all mended.
But nevertheless, what I got from the book I read about 20 pages.
19 stories in the first 50 pages.
It was all taking place in an apartment internalised storytelling, as [Philip K] Dick would have.
What do you think?
I said, I love the writing.
I love the writer.
Eight months later, I found myself doingDune, and then I thought, What am I doingDunefor?
I thinkBlade Runner,that was a great thing.
And this person falls in love with him.
I want to see what it looks like outside.
I want to see what the world [looks like], and whos doing this.
Because you never breathe a word of that in Hollywood.
They go, Film noir?
Im out of here, thank you very much.
But film noir it was, on a very grand level Philip Marlowe, really.
I thought his voice-over was terrific.
So I had that on the side, as a style but not as a necessity.
As a style, should we play around with that?
The storys pretty straightforward.
But its when youre trying to take everything in that youre going, What?
Why is it dark?
Why is it always raining?
And I never met her.
Because Im 44, Im mature pretty mature at that point.
And I thought, You know what?
Ill never read another piece of criticism about me.
Ive never read press since.
And if you read bad press, they can be wrong.
And she was so fucking wrong.
She was wrong to do that.
Also, whats wrong about critique is, I cant reply.
Why didnt you just ignore me?
To me, thats as bad as industrial espionage.
Why do you think it had that reaction from some quarters?
Because she was an old lady who didnt get it.
You cant do that.
You cant say, I dont get why David Hockney painted, I think hes no bloody good.
You cant do that!
Or write about it.
Teaching, and health, and welfare are the most important things in society.
Other than that, youve got a lot of freeloaders youve got to get rid of.
I was wondering whether inAlien: Covenant,youve got David in his lair creating monsters.
Giger was very private.
Im the only one allowed in there every day.
Id pop in there at about four oclock in the afternoon for a cup of tea.
He took the smallest stage in Shepperton, which is a 12,000 square foot stage.
I gave him an entire studio to work in.
He always wore black.
Ive never seen someone wear so much black.
But then he was covered in white powder chalk of some kind, from sculpting.
He was a lovely man, and I got on very well with him.
The point being, in a book calledNecronomicon, I saw the alien.
I said, God, thats it.
The studio were very nervous.
They thought it was too much.
I said, How can it be too much?
I went to Giger and he said, I can do better.
I said, I doubt it.
The production designer, Michael Seymour, did the other bit, the Earth stuff.
Giger did the alien stuff.
And it was good, because we got two design brains working on two separate entities.
It just struck me that David was creating his monsters was kind of like Giger.
I was thinking more, honestly, of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Da Vinci was a great man not evil in any sense of the word.
And hes a buddy of Michelangelo, whos pretty good with marble.
So were they both AI?
But then youve got to look at maybe Mozart.
A genius painter, but not so inventive and innovative that it would stand out.
I always had the theory that if you go back 70,000 I think its 70,000 years.
Youve got a caveman, whos only just walking upright.
So his prime function on a daily basis is to find food.
By now he has family.
By now hes found hes better inside a cave, out of the weather than not.
So one day he witnesses lightning strike a tree.
The tree falls, hits a deer.
Kills the deer and cooks the deer.
He smells cooked meat, tears at the meat, burns his fingers.
Sucks them, My god that tastes good.
Also, his fingers are black.
So he hauls the deer back into the cave.
The family then feast on cooked venison for the next week.
In that time theres a lot of charcoal wood in there as well.
On the walls of his limestone cave this is the moment, this is the big moment.
Does somebody touch him?
Like the two fingers in the Vatican?
He draws what he saw.
Have you seen those drawings?
Theres the filmCave Of Forgotten Dreams, isnt there?
So the influence of that… was that the moment of getting touched, of getting an idea?
Its so grand, its bigger than Galileo, its bigger than anything.
Youre describing that2001moment, almost.
In this instance, we get the grand idea of using a shinbone as a weapon.
And so those elements, I think, are things that we take for granted.
On that topic, is the flute inPrometheusandAlien: Covenant,is that a similar sort of thing?
Is that why you put that in there?
So I felt the flute was the most basic of all instruments the air.
Or you could have percussion, drums.
But I think it was air, to get an interesting, magical sound.
But I always revolve around the idea of, I like the genius of Michelangelo.
In terms of his brain, his mathematical, engineering, artistic mind.
It makes him one of the absolute greats, really.
He was 100 years ahead of his time.
They were fascinated by what I do, which is fiction.
They said, Your suits look better than ours!
There was this great swapping of notes.
Science, mathematics, art mathematics is totally art.
In the same way that music is mathematics, right?
So its all linked.
Was there a creator?
Thats a different question.
Or was there a group that are our creators, who pre-visited us?
I believe in that possibility way more than I believe in the Holy Bible.
Its kind of logical.
Thirty years ago, they said it was absolutely ridiculous.
I could never accept that I thought it was nonsense.
Ridley Scott, thank you very much.
Blade Runner 2049is out in UK cinemas on the 5th October.
