“In the future, the electronic message will make written speech one thing from the past,” said the narration of a 1999 television advertisement for Orange, the French telecommunications giant. “In the future, we will not have to travel; we will meet on video. In the future, we will not need to play in wind and rain; computer games will offer all the pleasure we need. And in the future, man will not need a woman, and the woman will not need a man.” Not in OUR The future, the voice rushes to add, speaking for Orange's business vision: a little irony to those of us who watch here in 2025, who could be forgiven to think that the predictions which led to summary there roughly the progress of the 21st century so far. He will not surprise us either to learn that the place was directed by Ridley ScottThis cinematographic painter of dystopian brilliance.
Future dark are only part of the Scott advertising portfolio. Look above through the Compilation of long longs of its advertisements (Assembly by the YouTube channel Shot, Drawn & Cut), and you will see duties of wealth in crosanas, execution expeditions, the trenches of the Great War, the waste from the Australian Outback, acts of spying of the Cold War, a dance in a nineteen of Nineteen America, a nineteen novel, which stop space in the aliens of space.
Not that Scott is a brand loyalist: that he did a lot of work for the second American soda brand, some not only Miami vice-How but with Don Johnson himself, did not prevent him from also directing a Coca-Cola spot with Max Headroom. The decade was, of course, the nineteen, at the beginning of which Scott made his most durable mark as a visual stylist with Blade runner.
A series of spotlights for Barclays Bank (whose computerized service indictments seem to be deactivated on our AI- “assisted” reality for the rapid supply) has so close that Blade runner Aesthetics that they could have been part of the same production as well. But Dystopian advertisements from Scott, none is more celebrated than The Super Bowl show for Apple Macintosh in which a launch-martal breaking a Nineteen-four-four-Style dictator on video. The compilation also includes a less largely recalled advertisement for the technically innovative predecessor but commercially stranded, the Apple Lisa. Scott has become Scott with advanced technology that he is easy to forget that he got up through the advertising world of his native Britain by making great impacts, again and again, for picturesque brands: Hovis breadMcDougall's Pentry Mix, Findus Frozen Fish Pies.
It may seem like a contradiction that Scott, long synonymous with the Hollywood gender blockbuster on a large scale, would have started by making such miniatures in nostalgia. And it would indeed need an inattentive spectator not to note that the man who supervised the definitive cinematographic vision of an urban dystopia influencing in threatening Asia would continue to make advertisements for the Sony Minidisc and the Nissan 300ZX. All this is more logical if you take Scott's artistic interests as having less to do with culture and more to do with bureaucracy, architecture, machines and other systems of this type in which humanity is contained: so natural for the field of advertising that it is almost a surprise that it has made at all. And indeed, he continues to do advertising work, bringing a film -shaped size to promotions of several minutes for brands like Hennessy and Turkish Airlines – Everyone was introduced as “a film Ridley Scott”.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.
At Learnopoly, Finn has championed a mission to deliver unbiased, in-depth reviews of online courses that empower learners to make well-informed decisions. With over a decade of experience in financial services, he has honed his expertise in strategic partnerships and business development, cultivating both a sharp analytical perspective and a collaborative spirit. A lifelong learner, Finn’s commitment to creating a trusted guide for online education was ignited by a frustrating encounter with biased course reviews.