Duncan Lay: Why I won’t watch Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel at the movies

Director Ridley Scott blamed Millennials for his new movie tanking at the box office but that generation is not the problem, Duncan Lay writes.

Ridley Scott is one of the great directors, with a long list of hit movies, some cult classics – and a few where spending two hours stuffing popcorn up your nose would be more entertaining.

While Gladiator, Thelma And Louise and The Martian were brilliant, Prometheus just made you pray an alien was going to burst out of your chest and end the misery, while Robin Hood was 80 minutes of adventure drowning in 140 minutes of overacting.

Now his latest movie, The Last Duel, with Matt Damon and Adam Driver, has flopped and the 83-year-old is blaming Millennials.

“I think what it boils down to – what we’ve got today (are) the audiences who were brought up on these f**king cellphones. The millennian (sic) do not ever want to be taught anything unless you’re told it on a cellphone,” Scott told the podcast WTF.

The Last Duel, for the 99 per cent of us who missed it, is the retelling of – funnily enough – the last duel fought in medieval France, with Damon and Driver fighting to the death for the honour of Damon’s character’s wife played by Jodie Comer.

Director Ridley Scott has slammed Millennials for his latest movie tanking. Picture: Michael Tran/AFP

Matt Damon as Jean de Carrouges in The Last Duel. Picture: Patrick Redmond/20th Century Studios

I actually think he has got Millennials (Gen Y), who are aged between 25 and 40, mixed up with Gen Z, who are under 24.

I know the guy has been at the cutting edge of science fiction since the 1970s but internet-capable mobiles have really only been a thing for the past 10 years.

Anyway, I’m not sure whether he thinks it is a short attention span or a dislike of history that is the issue.

One could argue that any movie where the French are all speaking in American accents is probably not textbook history but let’s not quibble.

The problem is that everyone has instant access to information.

Decades ago, you heard there was a new Ridley Scott movie out and you wanted to see it. Now, you pull out the mobile and you do a little research first.

That’s exactly what I did and my two Generation Z children would never accuse me of being anything like them.

Ben Affleck, Jodie Comer and Matt Damon at The Last Duel New York premiere in October. Picture: Arturo Holmes/Getty

While I do love a sword battle, I saw this went for two and a half hours and thought: “I’ll wait until I can watch that at home.”

That way, if it’s like Robin Hood, I can skip the boring bits and go right to where Damon and Driver pretend to hit each other with prop swords.

The problem isn’t the mobile phone. It’s that it has given us all the information we need to make an informed judgment call on how to spend our time and money.

Of course, like any good movie, there is a twist in this plot.

Scott may be 83 but he hasn’t just turned into a grumpy old man. He has a new movie out called House Of Gucci that needs a bit of a kick.

Sure, the studio will promote it and one of its stars Lady Gaga will push it to her fans but this “controversy” is the perfect way for Scott to do his bit.

In other words, this is his equivalent of a nude selfie, a tear-filled Instagram story and a viral TikTok video.

Originally published as Duncan Lay: Why I won’t watch Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel at the movies