Most Movies Are ‘S***’ So Ridley Scott Just Goes Back And Watches His Own

Ridley Scott is one of the most prodigious directors working in Hollywood right now. Every movie studio seems content to lavish him with massive budgets no matter how tenuous the pitch. But the filmmaker behind Blade Runner and other classics has grown unimpressed with what everyone else around him is producing. “The quantity of movies that are made today, literally globally–millions. Not thousands, millions,” he said during an interview this weekend. “And most of it is shit.”

The choice comments came during a retrospective on his career at the BFI Southbank in London, Deadline reports. Scott, whose 2024 blockbuster Gladiator II at one point featured a mostly green-screened sea battle within a colosseum with massive sharks, lamented that too many bad films are “saved” with digital effects added in post-production instead of relying on solid scripts.

Scott was asked if he has any movie comfort foods. Why yes, yes he does: his own movies.

I watched Alien with his commentary last night and every other scene he said something along the lines of “damn that’s good” or “it hasn't aged at all” and I just nodded in agreement every time. https://t.co/iYnYyBpZaj

— Barto (@bartonovopolis) October 6, 2025

“Well, actually, right now, I’m finding mediocrity–we’re drowning in mediocrity,” he said. “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.”

He continued, “I watched Black Hawk [Down] the other night and I thought, ‘How in the hell did I manage to do that?’ But I think occasionally a good one will happen, [and] it’s like a relief that there’s somebody out there who’s doing a good movie.”

It’s unclear if he went on to mention what those “good ones” are. It would be hard to top 2023’s Napoleon, after all. Scott’s next movie is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller called The Dog Stars. It’s out March 2026.