Much has been made of Ridley Scott’s (Prometheus, Robin Hood) films in the last decade or so as being a far cry from those earlier in his career. Highly anticipated, high-budget films such as House of Gucci, The Last Duel, Gladiator II, and Napoleon have failed to deliver either critically or financially. While three of the films turned a profit, The Last Duel grossed just $30 million off a $100 million budget, though it was the highest-rated of the four on Rotten Tomatoes (critics), IMDB, and Metacritic. I saw all four in the theater. I thought The Last Duel was great, Gladiator II was good, and the other two were terrible. The budget for his most recent film, The Dog Stars, was around $80 million, similar to House of Gucci and The Last Duel. Based on its audience and critics’ scores (40%, 71% on Rotten Tomatoes) and opening-weekend box office gross of just $8 million, The Dog Stars appears to be well on its way to being a massive flop. This will be a shame as it’s a pretty good, albeit flawed, film.
Right away, similarities will be made to the Will Smith-led I Am Legend, if for no other reason than that we spend the first ten minutes of the film alone with Hig Jacob Elordi (Wuthering Heights, Saltburn) and Jasper, his faithful Belgian Malinois canine companion, traversing an abandoned post-apocalyptic terrain. In the comparison department, I Am Legend did almost everything better. Elordi is undoubtedly on the verge of stardom as a leading Hollywood man. But he’s not Will Smith, and he may never reach that level. Smith is a unicorn in many ways. He succeeds in action-adventure, drama, and comedy. He’s excelled in television, film, and music. He was fantastic in I Am Legend, a film in which he was the only character on screen for 95% of the time.
As with many of his films, Scott excels at world-building in The Dog Stars. The film is set in 2035, a few years after a virus has destroyed much of the human population. Humanity has nearly crumbled. With no cure or even a known cause for the outbreak, those remaining have broken into living alone or just with a small group of others. Each character has lost people that they care for. Each character, wary of almost everyone else, has picked up new survival skills, whether it be hunting, caregiving, or anything in between. The new world is grim, bleak, and menacing. Evil lurks at each corner.
Hig, a mechanic by trade, shares an abandoned airfield outside of what’s left standing of Erie, Colorado, with a gun-loving ex-Marine named Bangley (Josh Brolin – Sicario, Oldboy). In his leisure time, he takes one of the airfield’s single-engine planes to the town he used to live in and reminisces about the life he once shared with Melissa (Sai Bennett – Hurt by Paradise) or about delivering supplies to Aaron Benedict Wong (Avengers: Infinity War, Prometheus) and a colony of Mennonites he leads.
The villains in the film are the reapers, an animalistic, violent gang of survivors who raid villages and encampments for food and weapons. The best way to describe them is the War Boys in Mad Max: Fury Road, minus the vehicles. While Hig makes the most of what he has by helping others, the reapers serve as a stark contrast on the opposite side of humanity. Driven by survival no matter the cost, nothing is off-limits to the reapers. Good versus evil is a central theme in the film, as most audiences will expect, even before the opening credits. It’s an age-old story, and Scott, unfortunately, doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen. If anything, it further demonstrates his limitations as a film director. In The Dog Stars, in a very real way, he makes Hig ‘too good.’ Hig’s character flaw is that he is a bit abrupt. He often makes the other characters wonder whether he’ll stay with them or abandon them.
The ‘too good’ element is on full display when Hig meets the beautiful Cima (Margaret Qualley – The Substance, Poor Things) and her protective father, Pops (Guy Pearce – Memento, The King’s Speech) on his way to Grand Junction. It almost feels like human emotions and needs are set to the back burner to make Higeven more likable than he might otherwise be. As a moviegoer, it’s easy to dismiss. As a critic, it’s one of many tropes Scott refuses to leave behind. While Cima and her Pops become an integral part of the story, I’ll withhold from saying how or in what fashion.
The action scenes are riveting. Each is wrought with tension and intensity. As with many of his films, action and battle scenes are among Scott’s trademark techniques. Unfortunately, for many viewers, they are few and far between, which may explain its poor audience scores. The premise, the director, and the actors (particularly Brolin) suggest the film will deliver far more action and suspense than it actually does. It’s not a criticism I have, though I understand why others might. I believe that’s the primary reason the audience scores weren’t great and why the film will likely lose a large sum of money at the box office. After a week and a half in the theater, the film has earned just $15 million off an $80 million budget. It is one of Scott’s biggest flops.
The Dog Stars is beautifully shot. Scott’s world-building is immersive in scope and rich with detail. Though it was pretty easy to figure out where the film would ultimately land, it didn’t make the ride any less enjoyable. While our main characters were one-dimensional and easily drawn, it didn’t take away from the experience. The acting was good, though it brought in some heavy-hitting A-list actors for a film that didn’t need them. Scott offered nothing new to the saturating, apocalyptic genre. The film draws on too many parallels to films like Bird Box, The Road, and Waterworld.
In the end, The Dog Stars deserved a better fate than a 3.5/5 movie. While adapted from source material, Scott has to take the blame for not doing more to address the lack of a story. Still, for a movie whose essential point is the universal idea that everything comes full circle, many will wonder whether the film needed to happen at all, if it didn’t offer anything new or do anything particularly well.
Plot 5/10 (it’s a backdrop that we’ve seen dozens and dozens of times in the last decade; the film’s biggest issue is that it didn’t really have a story)
Character Development 7/10
Character Chemistry 9.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 5/10 (again, the lack of a story was my biggest criticism)
Directing 8/10 (Scott was more than mediocre here)
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 10/10
Hook and Reel 9/10
Universal Relevance 9/10
81.5%
B
Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie
- Light of My Life
- The Road
- I Am Legend
- Waterworld
- A Quiet Place