“That’s the stunner”: A collection of Ridley Scott’s favourite shots from his own movies
There’s no point even trying to make it to the top of the film industry without having some semblance of ego, with Ridley Scott more than happy to celebrate his own achievements, which is entirely fair based on the body of work he’s put together over the last five decades.
He’s directed two of the greatest sci-fi movies there’s ever going to be, and he knows it, so there’s no shame in the mastermind behind both Alien and Blade Runner anointing them as just that, even though he was the one who directed them. It might sound self-aggrandising, but it’s also 100% accurate, and no list of cosmic classics is complete without them.
A proven hand at almost every genre, Scott has continued expanding his horizons to incorporate new styles and settings into his oeuvre, even if he continues returning to the historical epic more often than not. From the road-tripping adventures of Thelma & Louise to the tension-fuelled battlefield of Black Hawk Down via the fleet-footed crime caper Matchstick Men and biographical crime drama American Gangster, his versatility has never been in doubt.
Like any long-tenured filmmaker, Scott hasn’t been above the odd misstep or two, but regardless of the overall quality to be found within, the one constant is that every single one of his features is gorgeous to look at. The man knows shot composition like few others, and in the spirit of patting himself on the back, he was capable of singling out the cream of the crop for IGN.
For the first of his seminal sci-fi flicks, he settled on “the shots prowling around the corridors”, which was “a fairly new way of doing it” at the time that would soon become standard practice. “Alien, to me, was kind of really a B-movie, done in an A+ way,” a sentiment that’s difficult to disagree with after it turned a simple ‘haunted house in space’ setup into an all-time great.
As for the second? Blade Runner kicks off with a bang. “That’s the stunner,” Scott said of its opening shot, but he didn’t want to take the credit, instead placing it “almost entirely upon Doug Trumbull and his team”. When it comes to Gladiator, though, the Academy Award-nominated director unexpectedly channelled his inner Theresa May. “The hand of wheat” stands out as the ‘Best Picture’ winner’s finest single shot, which became “in a funny kind of way a symbol, a metaphor for immortality, going to heaven” for the way Russell Crowe’s Maximus casually caresses the grain when ruminating on the afterlife.
The bravura street-set landing sequence in Black Hawk Down was the first time Scott had used 11 cameras simultaneously, even though it was filmed as a single shot. Still, as much as he’s “very visual and can operate as a good operator,” he needed his camera crew firing on all cylinders to capture one of the war epic’s most thrilling and visceral sequences.
Scale has always been a key component of Scott’s filmography, too, which might be why from his most recent movie, “The best shot is the very high wide shot looking from the forest across the lake and you have the small figure of Napoleon and his officers all standing, waiting there.” It’s got plenty of large-scale battle sequences and intense drama, but for its director, a moment of quiet tranquillity stands tallest and speaks loudest.
