Gladiator 2's cinematographer says Ridley Scott has got lazy

Alien, Gladiator. Those films wouldn't be what they were without Ridley Scott, but decades have passed since their releases, and it seems time may have worn on the director. According to the cinematographer for Gladiator 2, Scott is even said to have become lazy with his filmmaking.

Speaking on the DocFix podcast, John Mathieson describes how Scott has let himself make mistakes during the process of making Gladiator 2. He would use multiple cameras to shoot as much as he could at once, rather than reshooting scenes.

He also apparently didn't block shots when rehearsing scenes, and relied on thousands of VFX shots, a lot of which were used because equipment had been left in the background, which then had to be edited out in post.

Reactions have been rather mixed for Gladiator 2, as they were with Scott's last film, Napoleon. Whether that's down to lazy filmmaking or something else is difficult to know. After all, without being on set, we can't really describe what working with Scott is like.