8. Gladiator
Director Ridley Scott, is known as much for his wildly divergent subject matter as for his meticulous attention to place and atmosphereto making the scenery as much a part of a scene as the props and actors. From the tech-noir of
Blade Runner, to the stark planet so fatefully visited in
Alien, no corners are cut in fleshing out the environments his characters' find themselves in. In fact, they pulsate with such life that they seem to drive the key protagonists' actions, from the languor of the southern U.S. states in
Thelma and Louise to the harrowing menace of Mogadishu's streets in
Black Hawk Down. His swords and sandals epic,
Gladiator, set during the height of the Roman Empire, follows its hero, Maximus, from his betrayal in the forests of Germania, to his return to the fold in The Coliseumthe violent heart of Rome. The frigid gloom of Germania's dark forest, however, was in fact a wood in Surrey, England, just twenty miles south-west of London. And the pulsating streets of Rome were a combination of Maltese locations and the magic of CGI.