The one review that’s haunted Ridley Scott for decades: “I was crucified”
Ridley Scott has made some of the most successful movies of the past half-century. Alien, Gladiator, and The Martian were released decades apart, and each became a huge success at the box office. He’s also made movies that are beloved by a broad audience, even if they weren’t raking in revenue when they were released. Thelma and Louise is still one of the most classic buddy movies of all time, while his 1977 feature debut, The Duellists, still stands the test of time as one of the director’s most successful explorations of the past.
One of Scott’s most famous movies wasn’t just ignored when it was released but panned. 1982’s Blade Runner is one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made, but when it hit theatres, it fell flat on its dystopian face. Scott has never bothered mincing words when it comes to critics and audiences – he is more likely to swear at them than crack a smile – so it’s hardly surprising that as recently as 2023, he was still telling sceptics of the film to “go fuck themselves”.
However, that colourful language can sometimes obscure the fact that Scott really cares about how his movies are received. He isn’t just a misanthrope; he wants people to understand and appreciate his work. This was made especially clear in a 2021 interview with The New York Times in which he discussed how painful it was when his film The Last Duel slumped at the box office, comparing the experience to the release of the 1982 film.
“It was exceedingly disappointing,” he acknowledged. “The fatal thing is when you think you’ve got it, you haven’t — I thought I’d got it on Blade Runner and I hadn’t! I was crucified by a big critic at the time called Pauline Kael. It’s why I never read critiques, ever. You have to be your own decider — if you worry about what the audience is thinking and what they may want, that’s fatal. A good film will find itself, and now Blade Runner is in the Library of Congress.”
In her review of the 1982 classic, Kael called it a “suspenseless thriller”, criticising everything except the grimy dystopian world-building that she said undermined every other part of the movie. “At some point,” she wrote, “Scott and the others must have decided that the story was unimportant.”
There have been countless filmmakers and critics who have come out in the years since to deify the film as one of the greatest and most visionary of all time. It has inspired generations of directors and wowed generations of audiences. It is, without question, one of Scott’s most critically acclaimed films, albeit retrospectively. But the director clearly has not gotten over the initial sting of rejection.
Speaking to Total Film in 2023, he said that even though he is still clinging to his grudge against Kael, he tries to use it to his advantage, revealing that he keeps her full review in a prominent location in his office.
“I was so crushed,” he said. I had a hard time making it, and yet I thought I delivered something special. And then to have it killed … It actually affected the release of the movie. I took the four pages and I framed them on the wall of my office. They’re still there today because there’s a lesson in that, which is: ‘When you think you’ve got it, you don’t know shit.’”
