With Ridley Scott making a long-awaited return to sci-fi, the genre he helped redefine in the 1970s, it’s worth remembering that he changed how we view another genre in the early 2000s. While he is often associated with sci-fi, Scott has always moved fluidly from comedies to dramas, from action movies to historical epics. He has spent the last few years, in fact, working almost exclusively on period movies — Napoleon, The Last Duel, and most recently, Gladiator II. The upcoming film The Dog Stars is his first sci-fi feature in nearly a decade.
At nearly 90 years old, Scott can still mount a grand action set piece with skill that could put filmmakers decades younger than him to shame. Do not forget, he was born before World War II. You’d expect his technique to become dated, but what he achieved in the early 2000s in the war genre remains unparalleled. In 2001, fresh off the success of Gladiator, Scott directed Black Hawk Down, a star-studded modern warfare movie that inspired numerous films that came afterward, not to mention video game franchises such as Battlefield and Call of Duty. That said, it also contributed significantly to how Hollywood portrays “the other.” Black Hawk Down is currently streaming on Peacock in the United States, but it won’t stick around for much longer.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
Here’s How Long You Have Left to Watch ‘Black Hawk Down’ on Peacock
The movie was given a limited release mere weeks after the September 11 attacks. It expanded into wide release in January 2002, and went on to receive four Oscar nominations. Scott received his third Best Director nod, after Thelma & Louise and Gladiator. The movie was a solid hit, grossing $173 million worldwide against a reported budget of more than $90 million. It has, of course, taken on an entirely new life on home video in the years since. The movie is currently available to stream on Peacock, but it will be removed from the platform on July 1. Starring Josh Hartnett, Orlando Bloom, Jason Isaacs, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor, and others, the film holds a 77% critics’ score and an 88% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “Though it’s light on character development and cultural empathy, Black Hawk Down is a visceral, pulse-pounding portrait of war, elevated by Ridley Scott’s superb technical skill.” Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
