Ridley Scott’s “Dog Stars” is masterful science fiction. No one quite like Scott can take reality and bend, stretch and distort it into something so unworldly, yet so real.
Scott, 88, says his new film, based on Peter Heller’s 2012 post-apocalyptic novel, is grounded in a reality that is unfolding in real time. It’s only one cataclysm away.
The movie is anchored in 2035 — not so far off — after a pandemic that rivals the 1918 flu epidemic and 2020 COVID devastates earth’s human population.
“For some people, the Covid experience was incredibly tragic because they lost loved ones close to them” he said in a UK newspaper interview.
“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.”
Left in its wake, survivors must contend with an apocalyptic world of scarcity, devastation and savagery… and plenty of weirdness.
The protagonist is Hig, played by Jacob Elordi, a rising Australian actor who has already won critical aclaim for his work in the series, “Euphoria” (2019–2026), “Saltburn” (2023), and for role as the creature in Guillermo del Toro’s reimagining of “Frankenstein” (2025),
Hig is a pilot who lives in an abandoned Colorado airfield with his dog Jasper and sidekick Bangley, an aging former Marine (Josh Brolin).
The world the movie invisions is “around the corner, isn’t it? Every day,” Scott says.
“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,” he says.
“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.’
Given a choice of making a documentary or movie, Scott chose the latter.
“it’s great when it starts telling you something, the film starts speaking to you,” he says. ‘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 behavior, which is the empathy, the sympathy.”
Hig leads a lonely existence hoping a better day is around the corner, which gives the film its empathy. He must fight off marauders that sweep into his air base with the help of his irascible mate, until one day, he receives a sign.
A random transmission picked up by the radio in his ancient 1956 Cessna airplane, sparks a hope that a better life exists outside their tightly controlled world.
He decides to risk it all by flying past his point of no return to seek out the source of the transmission.
Along the way, he encounters another grizzled survivor (Guy Pearce) and daughter Cima (Margaret Qualley) who is medically trained.
Scott is best known for directing iconic science fiction and historical epic films like “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” “The Martian,” “Prometheus,” and “Gladiator.”
After focusing on historic fiction with “Gladiator” and “Gladiator II,” “The Dog Stars” is his first foray back into science fiction.
“The Dog Stars” will be released on Friday, Aug. 28. Check out the trailer below:
Keith Girard has four decades of experience as an award-winning reporter, editor-in-chief, and senior media executive. Keith’s career began in Washington, D.C., where he was a reporter for The Washington Post and a contributing editor for Regardie’s and Washingtonian magazines. He also worked as a writer/producer in CNN’s Washington Bureau and has written non-fiction books on the U.S. Marines in the Gulf War and Donald Trump and two novels, “The Heidelberg Conundrum” and “The Curse of Northam Bay.”