Ridley Scott's Return to Sci-Fi Is a Hopeful, Post-Apocalyptic Western | Review

Director Ridley Scott will be 89 years old in November, so excuse us if our first question regarding his latest, The Dog Stars, is not whether it works (it mostly does) or whether Jacob Elordi is any good (he mostly is), but rather how it all fits into Scott’s legendary career. The movie is certainly his best since 2015’s The Martian, a story about head-down, get-it-done, workmanlike problem-solving that probably appealed to such a pragmatic director. Why Peter Heller’s novel, The Dog Stars, spoke to Scott to such a degree that he was compelled to make a movie version is hard to say. It’s rare to see Scott in any sort of hopeful mood, but maybe that’s age chipping away at his famously gruff, cigar-chomping exterior. If Scott, who has never won a competitive Oscar, is too masculine a director to completely win us over emotionally, The Dog Stars succeeds as an effective, minor-key post-apocalyptic drama about risk and renewal.

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