Whether you liked his work or not, the late Tony Scott was where every director wanted to be with his career – at the top of his game, and heavily in demand.
His filmography has many big hit movies, including Top Gun, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Man on Fire, Déjà Vu, and Unstoppable, just to name a few.
At the time of his death, Scott was also reportedly meeting with Tom Cruise about a sequel to Top Gun, and it’s also remarkable how much current nostalgia there is for the original Gun, which is set for a 3D re-release sometime in the near future.
A 3D version of the movie will be shown at this Thursday at the 3D Entertainment Summit as a tribute to its late director, and we at TG will keep you posted as to the crowd’s reaction. Whether you love or hate the format, it is pretty damn clear that a 3D iteration of the film will blow everyone away.
Tony was of course not the only talented director in the family, his brother Ridley is the helmer of Alien, Blade Runner, and most recently Prometheus. Tony has a producer credit on Prometheus, and he worked closely with Ridley at the company they owned together, Scott Free.
Although from one angle it looked like Tony would always be in Ridley’s shadow, if you look at their work side by side, while both brothers share a flare for visual panache, Tony’s also always been his own man as a filmmaker.
You can also clearly see the influence both Scott brothers have had all over today’s movies. In the wake of Tony’s passing, Joe Carnahan (The A-Team) tweeted, “Tony’s influence on a generation of filmmakers is colossal. There isn’t a more commercially successful director who pushed the form like him.” And as Duncan Jones, the director of Moon and Source Code, tweeted, Tony “took me under his wing & ignited my passion to make movies.”
Tom Cruise, who of course starred in Top Gun, said in a statement that Tony “was a creative visionary whose mark on film is immeasurable.” As for the sequel Tony and Tom were reportedly working on, it certainly would have been interesting to see what a modern day Top Gun would look like, but the project is obviously on hold for now, and we’ll just have to make do with Top Gun in 3D.
Working with action and science fiction, both Ridley and Tony indeed pushed the envelope for filmmaking technique and visuals. Their passion for making movies and pushing the form is clearly evident in their best works, and that passion and visual flair should continue to inspire and influence filmmakers for many years to come.
