Gladiator II DP walks back comments that Ridley Scott is “lazy”

Last Updated on December 2, 2024

Directors tend to use the same cinematographers throughout their career. And while Ridley Scott only began working with DP John Mathieson with 2000’s Gladiator, the two have had enough collaborations for Mathieson to know just how Scott operates. And apparently that’s not always for the better.

But first, some context. John Mathieson says that a two-hour interview he did – most of which wasn’t even about Gladiator II, as it was eight months from release – was cut down to just 30 minutes, leaving plenty of room for interpretation and out of context comments about both the film and Ridley Scott.

The most damning found Mathieson saying that Ridley Scott has grown lazy in his age, relying on post-production to handle any sloppy work he employed on the set of Gladiator II. “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 booms…And they just said, ‘Well, clean it up [in editing].’…Look at his older films and getting depth into things was very much part of lighting. You can’t do that with a lot of cameras but he just wants to get it all done.” Here is where you should note all of the ellipses, strung together from The Telegraph in a way that helps highlight just how much these pieces were cobbled together.

GTo clear the air, Mathieson and the host of the podcast, Nigel Levy, sat down with Deadline ahead of Gladiator II’s second week in theaters. In his own statement, Mathieson said that he got to talking about the digital age of the film industry and the work that goes into it from the perspective of a modern cinematographer. “We talked about that and I said that people just come in the morning, switch the coffee machine on, switch the cameras on, say, what are we doing? Because the digital stuff doesn’t cost anything, but so you shoot a lot. And I saying that is that, and I said, this was the quote. I said, the industry, it’s really lazy. Lazy and sloppy are not two words I would ever put with this gentleman of a certain age and genius. But if you slide out — and you can hear it — you slide out a paragraph and put it right next to, oh, let’s talk about Rid and multi cameras. And he edits the piece down to 30 minutes…I could hear the blip of the sound. I said, well, that wasn’t said against that. That was probably said maybe 20 minutes later. However, this is what has risen to the surface. And I’m deeply regretful of that.”

For his part, Levy worked to salvage the interview, protect the marketing of Gladiator II and push for nothing but positivity for Ridley Scott. “One thing I was sure about was that John never intended to criticize Ridley. It does seem that bringing separate comments closer together might have made things ambiguous if people chose to take things out of context – which they did. I’m sorry John and I didn’t have a chance to go through it after my cutdown. In the end, some people have chosen to listen to it and imply things John certainly never meant…I’m sorry for any problems this has caused John, the film and Ridley Scott. He is, after all, a clearly brilliant film director.” Now, will Ridley Scott hire John Mathieson back for Gladiator III…?