Sir Ridley Scott has insisted that the events of his new film, The Dog Stars, are just around the corner – if not already happening, or have happened. Based on Peter Heller’s 2012 post-apocalyptic novel, The Dog Stars is set in 2035 after a devastating influenza pandemic that has almost eradicated humanity. It focuses on Jacob Elordi’s mechanic and pilot Hig, who lives in an abandoned local airport in Eerie, Colorado, with his dog Jasper and Bangley, a former Marine (Josh Brolin).
Director's warning on global chaos
Discussing taking on the movie after the events of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, which made it seem far closer to reality, the Gladiator filmmaker told Metro and other press at a conference on Friday: ‘Well, it’s around the corner, isn’t it? Every day.’
He also warned of other world events feeding into the film. ‘People don’t watch the news, and I’m a newshound so I watch the global news twice a day, and a lot of this is happening already. We’ve just got blinkers on, on every level: climate change, chaos in certain territories around the world – I’m not going to mention where they are – but there’s chaos fundamentally. Calamities.’
Why the film needed to be made
Sir Ridley, 88, confirmed that The Dog Stars’ uncomfortable closeness to reality was a reason he wanted to make the movie. ‘I don’t want to make it into a documentary, but it does need to, in that very loose term, “entertain”. But “entertain” should also challenge you. You can’t just sit there grinning at some stupid movie, but it’s great when it starts telling you something, the film starts speaking to you.
‘I think the film speaks to you, but as an under[tone], as a platform. But I try and find on top of that the human behaviour, which is the empathy, the sympathy.’
Actor Guy Pearce, who also stars in the film as another survivor encountered by Elordi’s Hig – alongside his medically trained daughter Cima (Margaret Qualley) – also mused on the strangeness of working on The Dog Stars after Covid. ‘For some people, the Covid experience was incredibly tragic because they lost loved ones close to them. For the rest of us, I think it was just a kind of a strange, shocking wake-up call that was so unusual that the whole world was experiencing this thing at the same time.
‘The setting in our film is even more extreme, obviously. But it just feels like it’s not that far away, as Ridley says.’
Director's past lessons and cast praise
Sir Ridley said that he had tried ‘to hide what I think underneath because I tend to get very dark, being Celtic’. ‘I was killed on Blade Runner for being so dark – I’ve never forgotten that,’ he added, recalling being ‘crucified’ by Pauline Kael’s review of the 1982 movie – now considered a sci-fi classic – which he described as ‘four pages of destruction’, and which he famously has hanging framed in his office. ‘What it taught me is don’t read your own press, good or bad.’
While Pearce has worked with Sir Ridley before, playing Peter Weyland in Alien prequel Prometheus, and Brolin was cast in his 2007 crime drama American Gangster, The Dog Stars is Elordi’s first experience of working with the legendary director. The Wuthering Heights actor, who replaced Gladiator II star Paul Mescal in the main role after Mescal was forced to exit the project due to his commitments with Sir Sam Mendes’ four-part Beatles biopic series, said Sir Ridley ‘exceeded’ his hopes.
‘I just had such a great time. He’s so wonderful to work with and so open to us as actors. He’s obviously such a visual filmmaker, but he gave us such freedom within the text to kind of do what we wanted to do, and he gave us the space to do that.
‘But that’s not necessarily surprising because he’s one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. He kind of lives up to and exceeds expectations.’
Brolin also marvelled over working with Sir Ridley again nearly 20 years later and realising ‘there’s no effect of age’. ‘Normal people age. He doesn’t! I was just thinking of American Gangster and the pressure of having such a big film and you have Denzel [Washington], Russell [Crowe], all these personalities. He’s somebody who has the confidence without bringing in a self-absorbed ego to tell people, “We need to shift” or “I don’t believe this moment”. Somebody who’s enough of a visionary but also has the ability to manipulate his actors without his actors getting their tail between their legs.
‘So, he inspires, but he’s also getting what he wants. And you’re happy about it! You know he’s manipulating you and you’re happy about it.’
‘But can you imagine Denzel, Russell and him? Are you kidding?’ the director then pointed out, to laughs from his cast, with Brolin conceding: ‘It was a colourful set.’
The Dog Stars is released in UK cinemas on Wednesday, August 26, and in the US on Friday, August 28.
