Ridley Scott’s Movies, Ranked Worst to Best

Science-fiction landmarks, sword-and-sandal epics, slick neo-noirs, gritty crime thrillers, gory horror flicks, female-bonding road movies, war films, romantic comedies, lavish costume dramas, coming-of-age parables — Sir Ridley Scott has made virtually every type of movie you could imagine, short of musicals and Westerns. (And there’s a strong argument to be made that his latest, an adaptation of the dystopian novel The Dog Stars, is actually a Western in disguise.) He’s dealt with stories that take place 1300 B.C. and the 22nd century, giving respective screen time to Roman gladiator and paranoid androids, and has the ability to go from staging massive battle sequences to intimate conversations between two women on the open highway. Over a professional career that’s spanned five decades — six if you count his early days as a set designer for the BBC in the early 1960s and his prolific commercial work in the early 1970s — Scott has done it all. And the seemingly indefatigable 88-year-old filmmaker shows no sign of slowing down or stopping any time soon.

The sheer diversity in Sir Ridley’s resumé doesn’t just apply to genres, however. It also extends to the subject of quality. Look back at his filmography, and you’ll find masterpieces, cinematic car wrecks, and everything in between. In the spirit of admiration, we present our ranked list of the best and worst of Ridley Scott’s features — the good, the great, and the not-so-great. All that’s left to say is that we stand by our placement of his vastly underrated gem The Counselor and we will not be taking questions at this time.

• ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ (2014)

  Image Credit: Twentieth Century Studios

  Look, people, it’s hard to make a biblical epic. It was hard in the 1920s and the 1950s, when movie audiences were likely more forgiving. And it was definitely hard in 2014, even if you can conjure up a cast of thousands with the click or a mouse. Scott may be one of the few modern filmmakers who can pull off period spectacle, as numerous entries on this list prove. But good lord — pun intended — this retelling of Moses leading his people out of slavery is atrocious enough to make audiences leave theaters in droves. You can’t say that Christian Bale isn’t 100-percent committed per usual to playing the prophet who goes from boyhood chum of Ramses II to B.C. revolutionary, though it’s a mystery as to why, given the cinematic chariot wreck of a movie all around him. The cast includes an A-list’s worth of stars — Joel Edgerton, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley, Aaron Paul, John Turturro, Ben Mendelsohn in high camp mode — and whether or not you think most of them should have been cast as Egyptians is a matter between you and your God(s). But the fact that they all have to say some truly cringeworthy dialogue in between crocodile attacks and avoiding giant CGI waves suggests there’s no divine providence present or accounted for here. —David Fear