In an era of franchises & tentpoles, Tony Scott made "movies"

As is the case with unexpected 'obituaries', you find yourself writing or saying things that you wish you had said when the person in question was still around to hear it or read it.  I wish I had written this in November 2010.  Tony Scott's film legacy is two-fold.  For the first fifteen years of his career, Tony Scott was among those most responsible for the modern-day macho blockbuster.  His second film, Top Gun, basically paved the way for the modern big-budget big-scale action picture that happened to be set on planet Earth.  I'm no fan of the film, but it was, along with Rambo: First Blood Part II, easily the biggest-scale action picture of its day that didn't involve Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or James Bond. It turned Tom Cruise into an icon and was almost as much of a cinematic game-changer as Star Wars or Batman.  But it was the second half of his career, spanning from 2001 to 2010, that made me a fan.  While we can argue over whether the first fifteen years were superior or inferior to his final nine, his last decade of work cast Mr. Scott in a new, arguably more important light.  In an era dominated by mega-budget fantasy spectacles, Tony Scott was often the last refuge for the old-school 'movie'.