Is Ridley Scott Right About The Dangers Of Giving Big Movies To Indie Directors?

It all depends on the director. Some directors have a solid vision. Studios just have to be very careful with their selections.

everything in tlj was done right (cgi,cinematography) all except for that horrible screenwriting ugh, and lack of oversight that especially this franchise needed. where is this supposed star wars guru?!?!?

It really depends.

If you take a really talented and skilled and smart indie director (and those are all different qualities), who has a good head for management, then I doubt there's going to be all that much of a problem going from 20 to 160 million dollar budgets. There's definitely a learning curve, but as long as the director has reasonably competent producers around her, it's definitely manageable.

And then you have a studio like Marvel, that operates much more like a massive TV studio, where this existing mechanism of writers, producers, concept artists, set dressers, make-up people, and actors (and likely all the way down to grips) exist sort of separate from any individual director's influence. In that context, even a relatively inexperienced director may find that gaps in her abilities are being covered by the people who have already done this before. (And that can sometimes be a bad thing, if those studio stopgaps aren't actually all that good at their jobs, or are working across purposes, as sometimes happens.)

And then there are people like Tim Miller who had never directed a feature film in his life, but was easily capable of jumping into the deep end because he'd worked on these studio films before in an effects context and had a deep understanding of how to make them feel as spectacular as they should. Sort of the "ultimate non-indie". Because he had a basic creative understanding of story, character, plot, pacing, and all that on top of that technical skill, I'd wager the guy could have handled a film with a 300 million dollar budget on a first try (again, so long as there wasn't significant static in the studio infrastructure).

I mean... the truth is, there is no real answer. Each case is different. Each director is different. Each project is different. Is it better to gain experience through incremental steps? For most people, yes. Are there some people who have no business around a big budget studio film no matter how many times they've made Cannes cream their jeans? Absolutely.

I think he's looking at it with a warped perspective. I think what the studios are actually doing is still trying to replicate the success WB had with Batman Begins and it's sequels after hiring Christopher Nolan, who was a relative unknown at the time.

He brought his sensibilities to the table and made a big budget movie that became a critical and commercial success, and the follow up was extraordinarily successful. Of course the other studios are gonna try to do the same - indie directors take more risks and have more personality, which is what audiences wanna see. Having said that, yes there is also the fact that many (but not all) of them are easily pressured by the studios which would also be appealing to the suits.

But his comments about money don't really make sense. Sure, reshoots cost money, but the fee to hire a newbie vs a director with the same status and experience as Ridley would cost way more overall. Plus, reshoots aren't an exclusive trait of newer directors, even experienced ones have done them (to a lesser degree perhaps), it's a normal part of the filmmaking process, especially in big budget, effects driven blockbusters that rely so much more on what happens in the editing room to get a complete picture of what the final product will be.

It depends on the director and the circumstances.

Let me know when ridley Scott makes another good movie haven’t seen one of those in a long time .... A good ridley Scott movie not a good movie, I see plenty of good movies & Ridley Scott directed none of them none of them .