Ridley Scott may be 84-years-old but he has not let that stop him from cranking out not one but two movies this year. As he gears up for the highly anticipated release of House of Gucci on Thanksgiving, Scott also saw the release of The Last Duel just last month. Released during the same weekend that Halloween Kills dominated the box office, The Last Duel was embraced by critics but with a current gross of $10.6 million on a reported $100 million budget, it appears that the audience just wasn’t there for the historical epic drama. Now that some time has passed since the film’s release, director Ridley Scott is sharing his thoughts about the film’s box office performance.
While promoting the upcoming release of House of Gucci with “The New York Times“, Scott reflected on the film’s “exceedingly disappointing” box office take by comparing it to a similar scenario that he had following the release of Blade Runner back in 1982 when he, as he puts it, was “crucified” by critics. Scott also expressed the importance of “never reading” into what critics have to say because it could prove to be “fatal” to a filmmaker. Check out more of what he had to say below:
“It was exceedingly disappointing. 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.”
Scott makes a great point in regards to Blade Runner. Despite how the film is revered today, the film was a bit of a disappointment when it was released in 1982. The film opened well enough at $6.1 million, a good figure for 1982, but it was released close to other major sci-fi fantasy films such as Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, Conan the Barbarian, The Thing, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which affected its overall commercial performance. Initial responses from critics were mixed back in 1982 but it became a film that was consistently reexamined over the years as a classic of the genre.
Ridley Scott also went through this with 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven. The film received extremely mixed responses from critics upon release and although it grossed $218 million worldwide, the film carried a $130 million budget and only $47.4 million of that came from the U.S. It wasn’t until the release of an extended director’s cut that Kingdom of Heaven began to be looked at through a different lens. Unlike the mixed critical reception of the theatrical cut, the added 45 minutes that was taken out of the initial release received overwhelmingly positive reviews. If anyone knows that films can find their audience down the line, it’s definitely Ridley Scott.
Based on the book “The Last Duel: A True Story of Trial by Combat in Medieval France” by Eric Jager, the film stars Matt Damon in the lead role of Jean de Carrouges. In the film, set in 14th-century France, knight Jean de Carrougues and his squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) are ordered to fight to the death after Carrouges accuses Le Gris of raping his wife. In addition to co-writing the film, Ben Affleck also takes on a supporting role in the film as Count Pierre d’Alencon while the movie also stars Jodie Comer, Harriet Walter, Nathaniel Parker, Sam Hazeldine, and Michael McElhatton.
What are YOUR thoughts on Ridley Scott’s views on The Last Duel’s box office performance?