Dear Ridley Scott, Stop Pissing Me Off

If you Google "greatest filmmakers of all time," chances are you won't have to look for long before you see Ridley Scott's name. He is one of the highest-grossing filmmakers in history, has been nominated for multiple Oscars... Oh, and he's a Knight. Yet, I can't remember the last time I went to the theatre to see a Ridley Scott picture and actually enjoyed myself. More often than not, I leave pissed off.

Scott hasn't made any movies of note since The Martian in 2015, and he hasn't made anything truly great since Thelma & Louise in 1991. The overarching word that I would use to describe Scott's filmography since the turn of the century is "boring," but the prestige of his early work has managed to blind most to the pure mediocrity of his catalogue.

I'm not going to sit here and say that Ridley hasn't made some great movies. He absolutely has. But he certainly doesn't fit in among the greatest to ever do it. Out of the over 50 films he has directed, only a handful have been truly excellent, whereas the majority, in my opinion, have ranged anywhere from "meh" to straight-up terrible. Just because he made Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator doesn't mean that he gets a free pass for the rest of his career. For some reason though, his name is one of those that seems to put blinders on critics and audiences alike. The excuse is always the same: "Yeah, it wasn't great, but it's Ridley Scott." Well, I'm sick of it.

If what it takes for me to prove my point is a deep dive into Ridley Scott's "prestigious career," then buckle up I guess. Did anyone ask for this? Absolutely not, but I've got one hell of an axe to grind. I'll never get a refund for sitting through Napoleon, Alien: Covenant, House of Gucci, or my personal nemesis, The Last Duel, so please, just give me this. In a flacid attempt at fairness, I'll start with the good stuff. Don't worry, it'll be quick.

With Alien, Ridley Scott stormed into Hollywood, changed the game, and wrote himself a blank cheque. As much as I may deplore much of what followed, I can't deny the power of this claustrophobic sci-fi horror, or the impact that Ellen Ripley and the xenomorphs have left behind. Four years later, Blade Runner. Another sci-fi film that has left an indelible impact on American cinema. It is visually stunning, but I must confess, it's not my favourite.

Some of Ridley's trademarks are starting to show. A very morose man makes his way through a very dour setting, and picks up a love interest with little to no personality along the way. This pattern will continue to repeat itself over and over. I find it incredibly disappointing that the man who brought some of the best female protagonists in history to the screen seems to have such an active disinterest, and in some cases, contempt, for his female characters. That's probably why I cling onto Thelma & Louise so tightly.

This one, controversially, might be my favourite. It has some of the most compelling characters—the titular Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon)—and the best script of Ridley's entire filmography (he didn't write it, of course). For once, spectacle takes a back seat. I can't say the same for much of what came after. I also have to give an obligatory shoutout to Gladiator—on it's 25th anniversary no less—and The Martian. The first is what I would call the pinnacle of Ridley Scott's style, and the second is a complete departure from it. Gladiator pulls off the epic scale of Ancient Rome paired with an interesting story and compelling characters, something that Scott has been striving to recapture ever since. And The Martian, what I maintain, is the last good movie he's made. Well, it's a good time. Finally, Ridley is willing to have a little fun. I wish he would try it more often.

The vast majority of Ridley Scott's directorial ouvre are what I like to call, "everyone is miserable and so am I," movies. They aren't bad enough to make me angry, and they aren't good enough to enjoy. They're just a slog. Most Ridley films are sci-fi or period dramas, with a thriller sprinkled in here and there for good measure. The tone is almost always dark, brooding and tense, with nary a moment of levity to ease the pain. Just a bunch of battles and angry men yelling at each other. It gets old pretty fast.

Napoleon, Prometheus, All the Money in the World, Exodus: Gods and Kings. What do they have in common? Too long, and far too impressed with themselves. Whether the protagonist is a French general, a doctor/astronaut, or the mother of a kidnapped son, any intrigue that the plot might have to offer fades long before the movie can get to the point. It doesn't matter how visually interesting your movie is, Sir, if the story is bad, I will find something better to do with my time than figure out what exactly is going on. Seconds after the credits rolled on all of these, I swear I forgot I'd even watched them. Body of Lies and Black Hawk Down also fit into this category, but get extra demerits for being extremely problematic in their portrayals of Jordanians and Somalis respectively. Mark Strong in brown face was a very unwelcome surprise.

Robin Hood wastes the one thing it had going for it—the fact that Robin Longstride (Russell Crowe) assumes the identity of Robin Loxley in order to become the hero we all know—in about 15 minutes. The rest of the film reads like someone decided to surgically remove anything interesting about the tale of Robin Hood, and add in weird secondary villains and the least believable love story of the decade. Kingdom of Heaven feels like almost the exact same movie, but set in 12th century Jerusalem instead of England. I swear, if you played me clips of these movies back to back, the only thing that would differentiate them is that Orlando Bloom is the one yelling instead of Crowe.

For our final sword-and-sandal epic in this section, we have Gladiator II. The utterly unnecessary sequel not only weakens the story of the original, but falls into the same traps as other recent Ridley films. The whole point of Gladiator is that Maximus does everything to avenge his dead wife and son. You expect me to believe that in the middle of that movie, he sleeps with Lucilla OFFSCREEN!? No. I will not accept this. Paul Mescal and the twin twink emperors are the only things that make this movie slightly more entertaining than the others on this list. Cutting to flashbacks of your other, better movie is not a great show of confidence in yourself, or your audience.

American Gangster is the one entry here that I am a little nervous to include. I thought about leaving it out of the article entirely, but I'm no coward. Come at me in the comments. Popular opinion hails this 2007 thriller as one of the great modern gangster movies. And it might have been. If it would just fucking end. The movie is three hours long, but it feels like four. None of the characters are likeable or fun to watch, and I never really cared what happened to them. For every tense or well-directed moment, I was forced to sit through 15 minutes of filler about Russell Crowe's custody battle or a Lucas family Thanksgiving. Everything this movie has to offer has been done before, and done better. Not even Denzel can save this by-the-books mafia movie for me. It's emblematic of the problem with most of Ridley's movies. If you take away the visual, there's very rarely much going on below the surface.

Okay, let's get to what you came here for. The worst of the worst. I could have some fun and rip on the famously bad Legend, or bring up movies that no one remembers, like Black Rain or White Squall, but that feels too mean, even for me. Everyone has to cut their teeth somehow, and these movies are a product of the time, as well as Scott's relative inexperience. But when it comes to other, more recent, flops, I am far less forgiving.

The Counselor. Yikes. Another overstuffed, convoluted thriller that wastes a stacked cast. I'm not even surprised at this point. At every turn, Michael Fassbender's Counselor manages to make the wrong decision, but none of them are as bad as the ones that were made about costuming and hair for Javier Bardem. I've gotta give credit where its due, this one did make me laugh.

Speaking of bad hair, let's talk House of Gucci. If you watch this movie as satire, it's brilliant. Unfortunately, it is actually an incredibly earnest attempt to tell the story of the Gucci family, complete with wacky accents, an inflated runtime, and an utterly incomprehensible Jared Leto. For the first half, I really thought that the movie was going to try something different and strike a lighter, almost farcical tone. But no, it takes an apparently inescapable dark turn, and whatever fun I was having evaporated on the spot. The abrupt shift makes me wonder if I've spent the last hour laughing with the movie, or at it. But Ridley wasn't done. The very same year that House of Gucci hit theatres, he gave us another good old medieval epic. And this one I hate most of all.

The Last Duel could have been just another overly long, boring, but technically well-made Ridley movie. Par for the course at this point in his career. But this one is special. It had a message to deliver. At the height of the #MeToo movement, when it seemed that every man in Hollywood was making their personal statement about cancel culture, we got Scott's version. The Last Duel is a story, told from three perspectives, about the last duel ever recorded in France. What caused it, might you ask? Trigger warning for sexual assault here, because God knows I would've appreciated one before sitting through this trash fire.

Jacques le Gris (Adam Driver) rapes his friend Jean de Carrouges' (Matt Damon) wife. The events leading up to it are told in a Rashomon-style narrative, showing all three characters' perspectives. One thing that doesn't change in any of them though, is that I was forced to watch a minutes-long sequence of brutal sexual assault. Over and over again. Each change in perspective is preceded by a title card, and when, as we finally switch to the female perspective, it patronizingly fades to read "The Truth," it just feels like salt in the wound. I knew that already. I didn't need to watch in agonizing detail to understand that rape is bad or that I should believe women, Ridley. As much as you may think otherwise, I already hate all of the men in this movie. I'm not saying that you can't tell this kind of story, but I have literally never seen it handled this badly. The whole movie reads like a giant pat on the back for men who abide by the barest possible minimum of human decency. Don't commit violence against women.

Groundbreaking.

As the movie kept going, and going, and going, my shock faded to dread, which faded to rage. Because how dare he? I watched The Last Duel sitting next to some of the smartest, most thoughtful women that I know, and when the lights came up, we all sat completely still, not saying a word. For lack of a better word, we were shell-shocked. The bluntness of the message paired with the utter lack of insight or introspection made this movie worse than bad, worse than boring. It made it patronizing. And aside from all of that, it's not even good! It falls into the same tired spectacle as all the rest of the movies I've already spent far too long talking about. I really, really, want to keep going, but unlike a certain director, I know when to stop.

So there you have it. That's my completely true, totally unbiased take on Ridley Scott's career. I didn't have time to get to every movie he's made, but I think you get the point. Not my fave. I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me. I've accepted that. But when you sit down to watch any of the five movies Ridley is set to release in the coming years, I implore you to think a little deeper. Is it actually good, or are you just giving it a pass because, hey, it's Ridley Scott. To paraphrase a certain gladiator, "Are you even entertained?"