Brandon at Random Reviews

Director Ridley Scott (who is one of my favs all time) made comments about this movie after it flopped at the box office. He claimed that millennials and their cell phones were to blame. He said they don’t like to learn anything if it’s not from their smartphones. Which is great, I love hearing someone from the older generations take us millennials down a peg or two, that doesn’t happen enough. It also reminds me of that thing from The Simpsons with Abe Simpson and the newspaper headline “Old Man Yells at Cloud”

There is very little to get excited about in the first 90 minutes of this movie. And when I say 90 minutes, I mean more like the first 35, 90 is just how long it felt. We see something of a battle! That lasts like a minute? Maybe less? Omg did you know there is a sport I read about on the web called “extreme ironing” “in which people take ironing boards to remote locations and iron items of clothing”? We do have Matt Damon (with a mullet of some sort, like legitimately the worst hair I’ve ever seen but maybe it’s historically accurate) and Adam Driver and Ben Affleck and some new actress I’ve never seen named Jodie Comer who in this movie kinda looks like Danielle Panabaker and Katy from Letterkenny had a blonde baby plus she can act so I hope she’s going places and I see her in many more things. Ben Affleck reverts to more of a pre-Oscar/Reindeer Games Affleck which is not good imo. Damon and Driver are great as I feel like they always are. There is a lot of good stuff here, but it just takes a while to get going. So naturally, I browsed around the internet on my smartphone like the piece of shit I am to pass the time.

The story is told through three different perspectives, one at a time. First is Damon, second is Driver, and third is Comer. This does make the story pretty compelling…then I started reading this article that is a list of inventors that were killed by there own inventions and it was really interesting. Where were we? Oh yes, Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel”. Did you know that Byzantine Emperor, Basil I died when his belt was entangled between antlers of a deer during a hunt and the animal subsequently dragged the emperor for 16 miles through the woods. Because of this accident Basil contracted fever and his demise came shortly afterwards?

But seriously, this was a pretty solid movie, it could’ve stood to be like a half hour shorter maybe but all in all I’d say it was well worth the watch. As I’m sure “The Great Pizza Funeral” of 1973 in Ossineke, MI was to watch, where 29,188 pizzas were ceremoniously discarded in a giant 18-foot-deep pit due to being recalled by the FDA. If you like Matt Damon and/or Adam Driver, they are great here and Jodi Comer surely may be a household name in no time. I find this era for period films to be super hit and miss, and the whole slow start might’ve been history’s fault, but that doesn’t mean I want to sit through slow-ass stories. Quit pissing and moaning, Ridley Scott, this was pretty solid and I ended up liking it quite a bit, but don’t blame millennials for you having made a less than marketable movie. No one else saw it either. You’ve made a lot of great stuff, if you don’t believe he has…LOOK HIM UP ON THE INTERNET. Sorry, I’ll stop now.

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“I think what it boils down to — what we’ve got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cell phones. The millennian do not ever want to be taught anything unless you are told it on the cell phone,” Scott continued. “This is a broad stroke, but I think we’re dealing with it right now with Facebook. There is a misdirection that has happened where it’s given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation, I think.” -R. Scott