Ridley Scott Is Rewatching His Own Classics—Here’s Why You Should Too
Ridley Scott is blasting Hollywood’s mediocrity—and says it’s gotten so dire he’s rewatching his own Alien, Gladiator, and Blade Runner instead.
If you have been wondering how Ridley Scott feels about the current movie landscape, he answered it in London on Oct 5: not great. The Alien/Gladiator/Blade Runner director says he is so unimpressed with what is coming out right now that he has started rewatching his own films instead.
Scott vs. the state of Hollywood
Speaking on stage at BFI Southbank in London, Scott did not tiptoe around it. He thinks there is an avalanche of movies being made globally — he emphasized millions, not thousands — and in his view, a big chunk of that output just is not good. He also took a swing at modern production habits, arguing that studios are leaning on expensive digital effects to bail out flimsy scripts. His advice was as old-school as it gets: get the story right before you shoot.
"We are drowning in mediocrity."
He even tossed in a blunt aside about the volume-to-quality ratio, calling a lot of it "s---." Not exactly subtle, but he has never been subtle.
Why he is rewatching his own movies
Scott said the drought of great new releases has pushed him into a weird habit: putting on his own work. He claims they do not age the way he expected, and one recent late-night screening left him a little stunned. After revisiting Black Hawk Down, he said he caught himself thinking, "How in the hell did I manage to do that?" Every now and then a new release does break through and remind him why he loves movies, but those moments feel like a relief.
The early days and the one that means the most
Looking back, he remembered arriving in Hollywood to make Blade Runner and feeling out of place as an English director walking into a very different machine. The production was tough, the world-building was brand new at the time, and he still calls Blade Runner the most personal film he has ever made. That tracks if you have ever watched it and wondered how it got made at all in that era.
The next one on his slate
Scott is not just reminiscing. He is currently at work on a new sci-fi project, The Dog Stars, which is scheduled to open on March 27, 2026. Inside baseball note: given his comments about scripts and VFX, it will be interesting to see how he approaches this one in 2025-era production reality — and whether he lets the effects serve the script, not the other way around.