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Ridley Scott blames millennials for the box office failure of The Last Duel

BRB, adding Ridley Scott's last movie to the list of things millennials have killed.

Mark Serrels Editorial Director
Mark Serrels is an award-winning Senior Editorial Director focused on all things culture. He covers TV, movies, anime, video games and whatever weird things are happening on the internet. He especially likes to write about the hardships of being a parent in the age of memes, Minecraft and Fortnite. Definitely don't follow him on Twitter.
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Mark Serrels
2 min read
last-duel-review

Matt Damon and his very strange facial hair in The Last Duel.

 Scott Free

Millennials. They can't stop killing things. They've killed the housing market, they've killed the NFL. Folks, they even killed light yogurt.

Now, these cursed murderous millennials are hunting the most dangerous prey: Ridley Scott movies.

Ridley Scott is the director of -- legitimately -- some of the greatest movies ever made. Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, all among the most celebrated and iconic movies of the last century. But his latest movie, The Last Duel, got a bit of a bum deal at the box office.

Starring Matt Damon and Adam Driver and Jodie Comer, The Last Duel took in a worldwide total of $27.5 million when it was released in October. That's a pretty low number, particularly when you consider the movie had a production budget of $100 million.

But even with an easy out -- the fact the movie was released with the world in the grip of a pandemic -- Ridley Scott decided to blame millennials for this failure.

"What we've got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cell phones," he said, speaking on Marc Maron's WTF podcast. "The millennials, [who] do not ever want to be taught anything unless you're told it on the cell phone," Scott said.

"This is a broad stroke, but I think we're dealing with it right now with Facebook. This is a misdirection that has happened where it's given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation, I think."

While it is very funny to hear people still blaming millennials for things, I'm willing to cut Scott some slack based on the fact that.

1. He made Alien. Which is probably my favorite movie ever.

2. I'd never actually heard of The Last Duel which, when you consider the fact it was not only directed by Scott, but starred both Matt Damon and Adam Driver, is probably a massive failure of marketing. 

But at the same time, millennials are borderline middle-aged now, so blaming them for being this wacky group of people who make wacky choices based on their collective love of technology seems a little strange. Blame the zoomers please. It's their fault. Or blame the ludicrous facial hair of Matt Damon, or the content of the movie itself, which many found offputting.

For what it's worth, Scott was happy with The Last Duel. 

"I learned very early on to be your own critic," he said. "The only thing you should really have an opinion on is what you just did. Walk away. Make sure you're happy. And don't look back."