Ridley Scott Blasts Superhero Movies: "Boring as Sh-t"

Add Ridley Scott to the growing list of Hollywood auteurs that couldn't care about superhero movies in the slightest. The filmmaker is on the press tour for House of Gucci—his latest film which features the likes of Adam Driver, Lady Gaga, Al Pacino, and Jared Leto—and was caught railing against one of Tinsel Town's go-to genres. According to the Oscar-winning filmmaker, superheroes movies are simply "f-cking boring as sh-t."

"Their scripts are not any f-cking good," Scott recently told Deadline over Zoom. "I think I've done three great scripted superhero movies. One would be Alien with Sigourney Weaver. One would be f-cking Gladiator, and one would be Harrison Ford's [Blade Runner.] They're superhero movies."

He added, "So, why don't the superhero movies have better stories? Sorry. I got off the rail, but I mean, c'mon. They're mostly saved by special effects, and that's becoming boring for everyone who works with special effects, if you've got the money."

Interestingly enough, he managed to praise one comic book film in the same interview. Scott praised Joaquin Phoenix's performance in Warner Brothers' Joker. The two worked together on Scott's award-winning Gladiator.

"It's almost Shakespearean, and I think, you know, Joaquin can do anything," Scott told the trade. "So, when he then does something like Joker, there are moments in the Joker that I've never seen before. There are reactions in the Joker which are silly. You can't just say they're not evil. They're coming from a damaged soul. And that's what I'm looking for: What will Joaquin's version of Napoleon be? He will be the painter of his own portrait, and I'll be there to monitor it as best I can because that's what I do."

Phoenix ended up winning an Oscar for Best Actor for Joker, and is rumored to be returning to the role before too long at all.

Cover photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

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