Optimism ‘essential’ in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi movie comeback The Dog Stars
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Jacob Elordi plays mechanic Hig, who survived a pandemic, and Rak Jasper is his ageing dog in The Dog Stars.
PHOTO: THE WALT DISNEY CO
LONDON – Ridley Scott returns to science-fiction films after nearly a decade with a dystopian thriller that the prolific English director-producer and his starry cast say carries a message of hope.
The Alien (1979), Gladiator (2000) and The Martian (2015) film-maker’s latest movie, The Dog Stars, is based on American author Peter Heller’s 2012 book of the same name and set in a post-apocalyptic world.
Jacob Elordi plays Hig, a mechanic who survived a pandemic that wiped out most of humanity, including his wife. He is holed up at an abandoned airport in Erie, Colorado, accompanied by his ageing dog and ex-military man Bangley (Josh Brolin).
Hig regularly sets off in an old yellow Cessna in search of other survivors and supplies. When he comes across a patchy radio transmission and the mountain hideout of Cima (Margaret Qualley) and Pops (Guy Pearce), he finds respite and trouble.
Attending the film’s world premiere in London on Aug 20, Scott said he jumped on the project after being sent screenwriter Mark L. Smith’s adaptation.
“When I get science fiction which works on paper, you have to pay attention. I then react intuitively, and so when I’m halfway through a script like that, I start to perspire in case the writer drops the ball. He didn’t, so here we are,” the 88-year-old said.
“There have been so many zombie movies. There are no zombies in this,” added Scott, who instead wanted to include optimism, which he said was “essential”.
Director Ridley Scott (left) and actor Jacob Elordi at the premiere of The Dog Stars in London on Aug 20.
PHOTO: AFP
Most of The Dog Stars was filmed on location in Italy and shot on multiple cameras.
“This was huge. Ridley is the king of epic, so everything was big,” said Elordi, star of Frankenstein (2025) and Euphoria (2019 to 2025), who enjoyed getting to “spend a lot of time outside” and working with his canine co-star, Rak Jasper.
“Rak Jasper has this incredible team of trainers that did all the work and I really had to just be there with a treat in my pocket,” added the 29-year-old Australian actor.
Heller set no conditions on the big-screen adaptation and was “blown away” by the finished film.
“Cinema is a completely different discipline, it has its own demands,” he said. “The power of the message that we have to keep our hearts open and take risks to love each other is in the movie and that’s the main deal.”
English actor Benedict Wong, 55, who plays a member of a Mennonite community, said: “It definitely centres on hope, human decency, human connection in devastating times. That’s a leaf out of this book that we can all take and definitely something we really need in our times now.” REUTERS
The Dog Stars opens in Singapore cinemas on Aug 27.
