Sir Ridley Scott is a celebrated filmmaker, having directed classics like Alien, Gladiator, and Blade Runner. Even though his own films have been given plenty of praise, he doesn’t have great things to say about other people’s films. On October 5, Scott appeared at the British Film Institute Southbank in London, England, where he used an expletive to describe most films made today. Everyone’s entitled to opinions, but the director’s take feels misguided and exaggerated. He could have taken this opportunity to highlight all the great films that have released in the past five years, like One Battle After Another and Oppenheimer.
Ridley Scott Admits He Mostly Watches His Own Films
During his talk at the British Film Institute Southbank, Ridley Scott took a moment to bash Hollywood’s current output of films. According to Tori Brazier of Metro, who was at the event, Scott said:
“The quantity of movies that are made today, literally globally — millions. Not thousands, millions … and most of it is sh*t.”
Ridley Scott might be a fine director, but he’s not nearly as good of a statistician. Based on data from the World Intellectual Property Organization and Omdia, 9,511 films were produced around the world in 2023, the last year with a full data set at the moment. That number is the highest in two decades (which is when the data set starts), so Scott’s estimate of millions is way off. Still, he continued his talk with more opinions about what Hollywood’s wrong, while also boosting his own ego:
“I think a lot of films today are saved and made more expensive by digital effects, because what they haven’t got is a great thing on paper first … Right now, I’m finding mediocrity — we’re drowning in mediocrity. And so what I do — it’s a horrible thing — but I’ve started watching my own movies, and actually, they’re pretty good. And also, they don’t age.”
Scott tried to give percentages to his opinions on films, saying that only 10% of films released today are pretty good and 5% are great. Based on his estimate that millions of films are made today, those numbers aren’t very reliable. If 1 million movies are made today and 5% of them are great, that’s 50,000 great movies, which is more than five times the number of films produced in 2023.
Seems Like the Director Missed the Decade’s Best Films
Ridley Scott’s take has some agreeable ideas. Sure, digital effects are largely present in movies. He’s also right that some films are rushed into production without a complete idea on paper, like in the case of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday which started filming without a full script, according to cast members. That doesn’t excuse the fact that his take is cynical and dismissive of the great films that have released since 2020.
The Academy Awards have highlighted a few of these films with Best Picture wins for movies like the hilarious Everything Everywhere All at Once and the dramatic Oppenheimer. It’s not all about awards, though, as crowd-pleasing superhero flicks have made great bounds with films like Superman, The Batman, and the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Other films have managed to fit into Hollywood’s definition of success while still feeling unique or original, including Sinners, Top Gun: Maverick, and Conclave.
New generations of directors are also proving that today’s slate of films isn’t as worrisome as Scott says. Weapons, directed by second-time film director Zach Cregger, was an exciting new horror film that used a different structure compared to most horror films. I Saw the TV Glow, directed by Jane Schoenbrun, combined horror and teen drama with themes about gender identity. Past Lives, the first film by Celine Song, presents a dramatic dilemma that’s deeper than most romance films.
It can’t just be a case of Ridley Scott aging out of today’s culture either. Directors around the same age as him, like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, have made some of their best work in the 2020s, such as The Fabelmans and Killers of the Flower Moon. Spielberg himself doesn’t seem as cynical as Scott about today’s movies, having recently praised the 2025 film One Battle After Another rather than bashing movies in general.
Maybe He’s Caught Up in the Mediocrity of His Modern Flops
There’s a simple explanation for Ridley Scott’s ideas about films today: He doesn’t know what makes movies great. His track record for films he’s made over the past few years certainly proves that. The Last Duel couldn’t earn its $100 million budget back at the box office, according to Box Office Mojo. House of Gucci has some lackluster performances from actors like Al Pacino and Jared Leto that Scott somehow allowed to appear in the final film. Napoleon was far too long and expensive. Gladiator II is the only film of the bunch that’s not bad, but it’s still not as good as the classic Gladiator.
Ridley Scott’s next film is a post-apocalyptic thriller titled The Dog Stars, based on Peter Heller’s book of the same name. The movie tells the story of a pilot trying to survive a pandemic and stars Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, and Guy Pearce. The Dog Stars releases on March 27, 2026, and hopefully it’s good. Otherwise, it might be time for Ridley Scott to retire.
- Release Date
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March 27, 2026
- Writers
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Mark L. Smith, Peter Heller
- Producers
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Michael A. Pruss