10 Perfect Movies, According to Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott, director of the highly anticipated Gladiator II, has created dozens of influential films over a career spanning more than half a century. From Alien and Gladiator to Thelma & Louise and Black Hawk Down, his genre-spanning filmography touches on almost every corner of the film industry since the late 1970s.

With such a varied career, it is no wonder that Ridley Scott has been on record discussing influences across the wide spectrum of movie history. Scott’s film inspirations reveal just what makes the director so broad and varied as he continues to create interesting and meaningful works of art to this day.

10 Ridley Scott Cites One of His Own Movies as an Inspiration

Blade Runner (1982)

The cult classic turned critical sensation Blade Runner is one of Ridley Scott’s best and most influential works, a film that has shaped cultural understanding of just how important a director’s cut can be in correcting the mistakes of a movie that went through the studio notes system a few too many times. The film follows Rick Deckard, a special type of police officer called a Blade Runner, whose job it is to kill rogue Replicants, a type of android manufactured for intensive labor that has slowly begun to gain self-awareness.

When asked for his four favorite films during a Letterboxd interview at the premiere of Alien: Romulus, Scott cited his own film, saying that it has “set the pace for many, many, many, many things.” The influence of Blade Runner can be felt over the last 40 years of science fiction film, television and video games, with projects like HBO’s Westworld and David Cage’s Detroit: Become Human clearly paying homage to Scott’s depiction of androids who have begun to shed their programming.

9 This Cold War Drama Is One of Scott’s Earliest Sci-Fi Influences

On The Beach (1959)

Back in 2015, while promoting his adaptation of the smash hit science fiction novel The Martian, Ridley Scott spoke with WIRED about his top science-fiction influences. While many of his other selections were classic pieces of incredibly recognizable genre fiction, his last pick is a much lesser-known work from the late 1950s.

On the Beach, based on the Nevil Shute novel of the same name, takes place in a dystopian 1960s where a nuclear World War III has decimated much of the Northern Hemisphere and the only inhabitable city in the world has slowly become Melbourne, Australia. In the interview, Scott cited the movie as one of the “one or two films that started to get made I thought were quite good when I was in my teens.”

8 This Childhood Movie Is One Scott Has Never Forgotten

Gilda (1946)

Some of the most influential pieces of art for any creative person are ones that are first seen at a young impressionable age, and Ridley Scott is no exception to this rule. In an interview with Deadline to promote his 2021 drama House of Gucci, Scott said that when his mother took him to see the film noir Gilda as a child and “Rita Heyworth takes her gloves off and sings,” he “could never forget that”.

Scott says there “was something special about the movie,” specifically citing Glenn Ford as the sinister casino manager Johnny Farrell, who finds himself in the middle of a sordid love affair involving the titular Gilda and his shady casino-owning boss, Ballin Mundson. The film gained cult classic status with critics over the decades, before being selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2013.

7 Ridley Scott Surprisingly Loves This Australian Comedic Drama

Muriel’s Wedding (1994)

It is always a pleasant surprise when a renowned filmmaker proves that they love a wide range of movies. During a directors’ round table discussion in 2015 with The Hollywood Reporter, Scott was asked what moment from a film he would take with him if a bomb went off. He cited the 90s classic Muriel’s Wedding saying, “I’ve seen it six times. It’s fantastic.”

The film follows a delightfully awkward Toni Collette as Muriel, a young woman who runs away from her domineering parents and terrible friends in a fictional American beach town to greener pastures in Sydney, Australia. The movie was nominated for numerous awards in the year it was released, including a Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical nomination for Collette at the Golden Globes.

6 Scott Recommends People Watch This Prehistoric Drama

Quest for Fire (1981)

Another one of Ridley Scott’s Four Film Favorites from his Letterboxd interview, Quest for Fire is a critically acclaimed fantasy adventure film based on the 1911 novel The Quest for Fire by J.-H. Rosny. The movie follows a group of Ulam people who encounter many dangers on their journey to figure out how to create fire after the small one they had been curating goes out.

Scott says that Quest for Fire is “a film that people don’t know is so clever [and] so brilliant”, imploring the audience to watch the movie. The film was lauded in the early 80s as being a spectacle of modern technical achievement, winning the Academy Award for Best Makeup and winning Best Film at the French César Awards.

5 Akira Kurosawa’s Masterpiece Is One of Scott’s Favorites

Seven Samurai (1954)

In 2006, when promoting the Kingdom Of Heaven Director’s Cut on DVD, Ridley Scott was asked to name a few of his favorite movies as part of the BBC’s “Going Direct with Directors” series. Not only does Scott cite Seven Samurai as one of his favorite movies of all time, but he also says that, given the chance to see any director at work, he’d “like to watch Akira Kurosawa.”

Seven Samurai follows the titular seven warriors who are hired by a small farming village that is under attack from invading bandits. The film is often cited as one of the best and most influential movies of all time and continues to have a strong legacy to this day, as a 4K restoration of the film was recently re-released in theaters for its 70th anniversary to a surprisingly strong box office haul.

4 Scott Wants to See Director David Lean at Work

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

In the same 2006 interview with the BBC, the other director that Ridley Scott says he would “like to watch” at work is David Lean, the British legend responsible for large-scale epics like The Bridge on the River Kwai and Doctor Zhivago. Later in the same interview, Scott mentions that Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is one of his favorite movies of all time.

Based on T. E. Lawrence’s 1926 autobiography Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence of Arabia follows the protagonist during the British campaigns in the Middle East as a part of the First World War. Often cited as one of the best films of all time, Lawrence of Arabia is notable for its depiction of Lawrence as a man who has a difficult time reconciling the violence of war and his growing affection toward the Arabian desert tribes.

3 Orson Welles’ Directorial Debut Is Another of Scott’s Favorites

Citizen Kane (1941)

The film that was considered the best of all time for 40 years, according to the British Film Institutes’ legendary Sight & Sound poll, Citizen Kane is another of Ridley Scott’s personal favorite films, mentioned in the 2006 BBC interview. Scott says that a list of his favorite movies has to include something by Orson Welles and would “probably have to be” Citizen Kane, Welles’ first feature, which was a box-office disappointment but a critical sensation in 1941.

The movie follows reporter Jerry Thompson as he attempts to uncover the real story behind the meaning of “Rosebud,” the final word of deceased newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane. Kane, a loose allegory for real-life media titan William Randolph Hearst, would become one of the most iconic characters in the history of cinema.

2 Stanley Kubrick’s Trippy Sci-Fi Caught Ridley Scott’s Eye

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

One of the best pieces of hard science-fiction ever made, 2001: A Space Odyssey reworked the often campy genre as a platform for artists to tell far-out stories about the human condition. It’s no wonder that Ridley Scott picked it as one of his Four Film Favorites during his recent Letterboxd interview, calling the movie “seminal” to the creation of his own unfeeling artificial intelligence in Alien.

2001: A Space Odyssey follows astronaut Dave Bowman as he attempts to survive the murderous intentions of his ship’s AI control system HAL9000 and investigate the signal of an ominous black monolith that is orbiting Jupiter. The film is lauded as being one of the most influential of all time, particularly for its Academy Award-winning special effects that redefined how space flight was depicted in movies.

1 Star Wars Convinced Ridley Scott to Make Alien

Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)

In the Four Film Favorites interview, Ridley Scott says that he had just finished his Cannes prize-winning film The Duelist when he first saw Star Wars and that George Lucas’ space fantasy made him “depressed for three months.” So instead of making another drama as he intended, he agreed to helm Alien, which was offered to him only a few weeks after he saw Star Wars.

Quite possibly the most influential movie of the 20th Century, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope took the swash-buckling fun of serialized television like Flash Gordon and combined it with both the mystical aesthetic of King Arthur and the classical samurai genre films of Akira Kurosawa. What resulted was the second-highest grossing film franchise of all time, a series that has captivated audiences and inspired viewers for generations.