For decades, protein folding and functional dynamics have been described in terms of diffusive motion across an underlying energy landscape. With continued advances in structural biology and high-performance computing, the field is positioned to extend these approaches to large biomolecular assemblies. Through the application of energy landscape techniques to the ribosome, one may work towards establishing a comprehensive description of the dynamics, which will bridge theoretical concepts and experimental observations. In this perspective, we discuss a few of the challenges that will need to be addressed as we extend the application of landscape principles to the ribosome.