Ridley Scott Says Today’s Movies Are “Drowning in Mediocrity,” So He Rewatches His Own

Director Ridley Scott finds today’s movies so bad that he was moved to go back and check his own work.

According to UK Yahoo News, the acclaimed 87-year-old director was speaking at the BFI Southbank about how he watches lots of current TV and film projects, largely in search of new talent to cast in his own productions. For example, he revealed that he found Paul Mescal for Gladiator II thanks to his turn on the BBC miniseries, Normal People.

For the most part, however, Scott is far from impressed by the majority of what he sees.

“Well, right now I’m finding mediocrity, we’re drowning in mediocrity,” Scott explained. “The quantity of movies that are made today, literally globally, millions. There’s not thousands, there’s millions, and most of it is shit — 80-60 percent ‘eh,’ 40 percent is the rest, and 25 percent of that 40 is not bad, and 10 percent is pretty good, and the top 5 percent is great.”

While Scott conceded that his math might be fuzzy (“I’m not sure about the portion of what I’ve just said”), he stands by his assessment of modern movies. “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 [script] on paper first. Get it on paper.”

The director went on to admit that the current quality of movies is so poor that he’s prone to reviewing his own filmography.

“So what I do — and it’s a horrible thing — but I’ve started to watch my own movies, and actually they’re really good,” he said. “And also, they don’t age … I watched Black Hawk Down the other night and I thought, ‘How the hell did I do that?’”

He also has fond memories of the pioneering 1982 sci-fi cult classic, Blade Runner, despite the difficulties of bringing it to life.

“It was a great movie. Doing it was very hard because, understandably, I think why the film wasn’t successful either was because it was so different and such a new universe,” he said. “I had to have it this way and that way, and had it in my head, and on paper, and people hadn’t experienced that before. I hadn’t seen this before, either, [a movie] getting into the social realms of science fiction.”

Scott has less favorable memories of making the 1979 sci-fi classic, Alien, thanks to meddling movie executives. “Between my producers, everyone had an opinion, and I was not used to opinions. I’d been on my own boss for years. I had to literally draw the line in the sand and say, ‘Back off. Watch me do this, okay?’ And so it was not a good experience.”

Through it all, he’s willing to slog through modern productions for the gems that he still might find: “I think that occasionally there’s a good one that will happen, it’s like a relief that there’s somebody out there who’s doing a good movie.”