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Ridley Scott Pins ‘The Last Duel’ Bombing on Apathetic Millennials

Lunarorbit

Member
You know what? You're right ridley Scott, blame millenials. I didn't see it cause it looked like a movie that I could easily watch on hbo.

A medieval duel movie during a global pandemic with crazy rates of inflation in the US? Fuck you ridley Scott. I paid money to watch your garbage alien prequel and guess what... I'm not impressed with your sobbing.
 

Azurro

Banned
Had no idea Ridley Scott directed this...and didn't even know it was out. This is a fail of marketing tbh, and did they really market this as a MeToo movie? What?

Edit: Ok, I went and found the synopsis:

Jean de Carrouges is a respected knight known for his bravery and skill on the battlefield. Jacques Le Gris is a squire whose intelligence and eloquence makes him one of the most admired nobles in court. When Le Gris viciously assaults Carrouges' wife, she steps forward to accuse her attacker, an act of bravery and defiance that puts her life in jeopardy. The ensuing trial by combat, a grueling duel to the death, places the fate of all three in God's hands.

Yeah, this doesn't sound very enticing, I can see why they were calling it a MeToo movie. Eh, what a shame, Ridley Scott used to be one of my favourite film makers, but he's just directed dud after dud for like a decade now.
 
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Alcibiades

Member
Saw it a few days ago, had no idea what it was going to be about - but I was really engrossed the whole time. It's a slow, uncomfortable film at times, but really well made. The characters, dialogue, costumes, etc... all top-notch.

At first I was a tad annoyed at how they were speaking English in Paris, but quickly moved on. It's a long, expository film, which really helps build up to the final showdown. The movie has spent so much time building up that I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen. My only complaint, other than the English, is that the movie had a scene or two too many in the end (like all modern films nowadays).

EDIT: And while I don't generally like director's complaining, I sorta get where he is coming from. Not too many young people are going to have the patience to watch something like this.
 
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Aurelius

Member
I really wanted to see it in cinemas, but it coincided with a resurgence in covid-cases. I heard it's more like a European Medievil version of Rashomon? As in the same story (alledged rape) told from different persepectives before ending in a big duel.

Ridley Scott is still one of the best, and more interesting filmmakers around. At least from a visual standpoint.
 
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Neolombax

Member
I only heard about the movie from Chris Stuckmann's review. He gave a glowing review for this movie. Even then, I'm still not interested yet to go see this movie. Maybe its the subject matter, maybe its the portrayal (heard it can be pretty dark).
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Old man Ridley apparently doesn't understand that audiences change over time, and a lot of them clearly aren't interested in a medieval knight love story.

Not to mention there's like a global fucking pandemic going around making people even more hesitant to go to theatres, assuming they're even able to.
 
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AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I never even heard of it to make the decision to not watch it.

Maybe don't pin your sloppy marketing on an entire generation of people.
 

IDKFA

I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Shame. Movies was fantastic, but the marketing wasn't there.

Happy that Apple have picked up Kitbag, and I'm confident that movie is going to be amazing.

Hopefully somebody can pick up the planned Galidator sequel as well. I want more historical epics.
 

Maximusz

Member
Episode 9 Netflix GIF by South Park
 

Spaceman292

Banned
If you want more than the usual MCU fair (which everyone here knows I absolutely love) you need to seek out and support movies in the gennres you like. Hell, even support Netrflix movies at the cinema if you can.

Movies that have my interest over the next few months.

Blue Bayou
Tick Tick ... Boom
Cry Macho
Best Sellers
Titane
Dune
Encanto
The Card Counter
Don't Look Up
The French Dispatch
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Spider-Man: No Way Home
The Lost Daughter
Matrix Resurrections
West Side Story
Ghosdtbusters Afterlife
House of Gucci
The 355
The Kingsman
King Richard
Scream
Spencer
Morbius
Black Phone

That is a lot of variety of films just in the next 2 and a half months. I'll try and support as many of them as I can depending on screening times. Some are Netflix films but I'll watch them at the cinemas if I can like I did with Red Notice.
That's a crazy list. People who say that there's nothing but super hero movies anymore are utterly ignorant.
Titane, Dune, and French Dispatch were some of the best movies I've seen in years.
 

FunkMiller

Member
Man makes series of increasingly shit movies.

Wants to pin blame on others when this causes most recent film to bomb.

Also marketing, pandemic.

What a whiny cunt. Join the pile with Cameron, Nolan, Scorcese et al.

If these prissy fuckers actually complained about the real problem: the movie companies they prop up, then things might change.
 
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Razvedka

Banned
They were both brilliant in this movie. Adam Driver too.

People in this thread actually saying Ridley Scott is a bad film maker? Lolol
No, but Scott has this tendency to shit talk everyone and everything seemingly out of ego when something doesn't go his way. He criticized the new Bladerrunner, he criticized Hunger Games when Prometheus got an R rating and wasn't doing so hot in the box office, he's now criticizing millennials, he's stated that the new alien TV series 'can never be as good' as his original movie, and so on.

At some point if the stuff you're doing isn't setting the world on fire, it's not the world that is out of touch. It's probably you.

And I say this is as someone who loves scott's movies he is one of my favorite directors. Hell, I love Prometheus and to a lesser extent Covenant- but I don't think anyone can say those movies are not deeply flawed.

Edit: that being said, I share his disdain for my generation.
 
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Prometheus was a huge pile of shit. After that I wasn't sure what the fuck Ridley Scott was on but it wasn't the good stuff.
No it wasn't. Easily one of the best new alien designs in the last 30 years. Great android performance from Fassbender. Cool to see more origin story for the Alien mythology.

Just had a few minor flaws. The hyperbole is ridiculous around Prometheus. It was a big budget, original sci-fi movie. We don't even get those anymore.
 
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Meicyn

Gold Member
I just find it hilarious that he treats his movies as though audiences are obligated to watch them, out of some sense of entitlement to our free time and cash. I’ll watch what I want on the format of my choosing. Don’t get mad at me for not trusting your directorial choices. Prometheus sucked.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Scott's too old and too rich to give a fuck anymore about what he says :D

I kinda like it.

PS. Millennials do suck. Its a generalization sure, but then again Gen-X in the same broad terms were kinda defined by their cynicism and love of ironic detachment... so I guess we should shoulder some of the blame for setting terrible examples. :D
 

AJUMP23

Member
To be fair to movie goers. A historical drama is a very specific type of audience. Many of which might have been taken out by COVID, or not comfortable with the theater. Too Erudite for the masses with the threat of Covid.
 

Von Hugh

Member
A movie which has Ben Affleck and Matt Damon looking like this
streamland-the-last-duel-matt-damon-ben-affleck.jpg
while having a title and premise like this: "The Last Duel is a 2021 epic historical drama film. Set in medieval France, the film stars Damon as Jean de Carrouges, a knight who challenges his friend, squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) to a judicial duel after Jean's wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer), accuses Jacques of raping her. The events leading up to the duel are divided into three chapters, reflecting the perspectives of the three main characters."

And coming also with zero marketing efforts, who woulda thunk it would flop?
 
A movie which has Ben Affleck and Matt Damon looking like this
streamland-the-last-duel-matt-damon-ben-affleck.jpg
while having a title and premise like this: "The Last Duel is a 2021 epic historical drama film. Set in medieval France, the film stars Damon as Jean de Carrouges, a knight who challenges his friend, squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) to a judicial duel after Jean's wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer), accuses Jacques of raping her. The events leading up to the duel are divided into three chapters, reflecting the perspectives of the three main characters."

And coming also with zero marketing efforts, who woulda thunk it would flop?
I kinda want to see it now.

Honestly, I haven't seen a single promotional image for the film.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
I want to see it but Pandemic has made my local theatre not worth seeing anything even if it was $1. THe audio and video quality are terrible. I mostly wait for 4K home releases now. If its something I really wanna see I will travel the 30 min to a diff theatre.
 

DKehoe

Gold Member
Didn't get a chance to see it when it was in my usual cinema and unfortunately it didn't stick around for long. Heard good things though. I think somewhere else a little further away from me is showing it on Saturday night so I may try and see it then.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
A movie which has Ben Affleck and Matt Damon looking like this
streamland-the-last-duel-matt-damon-ben-affleck.jpg
while having a title and premise like this: "The Last Duel is a 2021 epic historical drama film. Set in medieval France, the film stars Damon as Jean de Carrouges, a knight who challenges his friend, squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) to a judicial duel after Jean's wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer), accuses Jacques of raping her. The events leading up to the duel are divided into three chapters, reflecting the perspectives of the three main characters."

And coming also with zero marketing efforts, who woulda thunk it would flop?

It's as if they didn't do any market research beforehand.

How can you make a movie with a premise like this and think it's gonna blow up the box office? This is a niche subject with a synopsis that's almost impossible to read in one go without falling asleep.

It's a Hollywood-budgeted indie movie.
 
It's as if they didn't do any market research beforehand.

How can you make a movie with a premise like this and think it's gonna blow up the box office? This is a niche subject with a synopsis that's almost impossible to read in one go without falling asleep.

It's a Hollywood-budgeted indie movie.
And that is kind of what he's talking about. That's not how it used to be.

It used to be that you could focus on making something original, and put in 2 big movie stars and people would check it out. People have commented on this for a while about the death of the movie star. Now you have IPs and shared universes taking precedence over a prominent actor. That is part of the generational shift he's talking about. Revenge and love aren't really niche topics. Historical dramas are kind of niche. And this did get zero marketing.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
I was thinking more about how myself, and apparently many others in this thread, have seen zero marketing for this. In fact, I don't see any marketing for any movie. If there is not a RLM review, or it is not a huge tentpole film like a Marvel movie or Jurassic Park, I am straight up not aware of movies until they are out for rent and/or streaming because then they are plastered on the front page of apps that I do open daily.

I think it is a matter of unless the movie is overwhelmingly huge such that you get word of mouth pre-release hype on content that I do consume (gaf threads, it seeping into gaming discussions, etc.) I am just not aware of it. Hollywood is something that maybe I get a few hours a year of enjoyment from, so therefore I don't actively seek out movie release information anymore. Like if you sub to a youtube channel, but that channel only puts out a few videos a year, you forget about it.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe better marketing, but I actively avoid marketing. Maybe allowing those $20-$30 day 1 rentals simply to get some money from people who want to see it Day 1, but don't want to go to a theater (which also gets the movie name out on the apps people actually use).

But then again, I don't really care about if people in hollywood make money. They have long been an institution that has been a net cultural negative so fuck 'em. Let them burn.
 
I was thinking more about how myself, and apparently many others in this thread, have seen zero marketing for this. In fact, I don't see any marketing for any movie. If there is not a RLM review, or it is not a huge tentpole film like a Marvel movie or Jurassic Park, I am straight up not aware of movies until they are out for rent and/or streaming because then they are plastered on the front page of apps that I do open daily.

I think it is a matter of unless the movie is overwhelmingly huge such that you get word of mouth pre-release hype on content that I do consume (gaf threads, it seeping into gaming discussions, etc.) I am just not aware of it. Hollywood is something that maybe I get a few hours a year of enjoyment from, so therefore I don't actively seek out movie release information anymore. Like if you sub to a youtube channel, but that channel only puts out a few videos a year, you forget about it.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe better marketing, but I actively avoid marketing. Maybe allowing those $20-$30 day 1 rentals simply to get some money from people who want to see it Day 1, but don't want to go to a theater (which also gets the movie name out on the apps people actually use).

But then again, I don't really care about if people in hollywood make money. They have long been an institution that has been a net cultural negative so fuck 'em. Let them burn.
It's true, that without cable, with my ad blockers, I have successfully insulated myself from most ads for about 15 years. Sometimes there is a slight downside because you can miss out on some basic cultural info that can make you feel out of touch. I guess you just have to manually look more, instead of having it put in front of you.

Note to self, google "new movies theater" once every 6 months. I literally never even check.
 

Fbh

Member
Wouldn't blame it all on the audience, going to the movies is annoying and expensive now and home electronics have become more accessible so almost everyone has a big decent TV at home. People are only going to show up for big, hyper marketed and hyped stuff.

When I was 18 I could go to the movies for like $5, you'd just show up, sit there and enjoy the movie. It was also way nicer than at home where we just had a kinda crappy 32" TV.
Now it's like $15 (before you add any sort of snack), you need to have your temperature taken, possibly have some sort of green pass and you have to sit there with a facemask the entire time.

I'd rather just stay home, rent a new movie for the price of a single theater ticket (often less) and enjoy watching it on my 55" TV as I relax on my couch and enjoy normally priced snacks


Also Ridley hasn't made a truly great movie in like 15 years. His name no longer sells tickets like it once did.
 
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It also bombed because it was described as a feminist medieval movie. And we are tired of seeing shitty feminist movies where men are evil and women are good/victims, with simplistic scripts.

I read this movie is actually interesting, so it is failing because of all the other shitty feminist movies that came before it. Maybe word of mouth will make it perform better later in the cycle and have some legs.

I kinda want to see it now.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Well, at least no one is saying that it did poorly because it didn't have an ahistorical but globally diverse cast.

I'd chalk it up to pandemic blues and just feeling like a dark, color bleached maudlin film. I'll watch it at home at some point but it didn't scream "THEATER!!! " to me.
 

Hari Seldon

Member
The other factor in my lack of enthusiasm for actually going to the movie theater is that the new trend of terrible sound mixing and actors mumbling words to be "more realistic" means that any movie with a serious plot I want to watch with subtitles on. Nolan movies are exceptionally bad in this regard and I will see none of his movies in the theater because of this.
 

GymWolf

Member
A movie which has Ben Affleck and Matt Damon looking like this
streamland-the-last-duel-matt-damon-ben-affleck.jpg
while having a title and premise like this: "The Last Duel is a 2021 epic historical drama film. Set in medieval France, the film stars Damon as Jean de Carrouges, a knight who challenges his friend, squire Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) to a judicial duel after Jean's wife, Marguerite (Jodie Comer), accuses Jacques of raping her. The events leading up to the duel are divided into three chapters, reflecting the perspectives of the three main characters."

And coming also with zero marketing efforts, who woulda thunk it would flop?
They both look hilariously ridicolous...

Is the movie a comedy or a musical?
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
Putting away Covid-19 and millenials doesn't it seem to others this is super niche stuff? I mean, it's literally a last ever judicial-binding duel between two knights set deeply in the era and mannerism of main characters.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I didnt even know the movie was about rape. I had heard that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were finally writing another movie together and after Good Will Hunting, thats all i needed to hear. then i heard, ridley scott directed it and Adam Driver was in it, and I was like omg, this is going to be amazing.

Back in the day, thats all you needed. You got 2-3 big stars, plus a big name director, and an action packed trailer showing some war scenes and people would come to the theaters. Not happening anymore.

I typically avoid all trailers and promotional marketing for movies i want to watch, but I never saw anything for this movie. Meanwhile, Bond was everywhere. Everyone was talking about. Daniel Craig was on every show and he hates doing PR for his movies. I never saw Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. All I saw about Ben Affleck was that he was banging J Lo again. nothing about the movie. Same goes for Dune. Dune was being talked about on twitter, on forums, on my whatsapp chat groups, and every other article was about how much effort Denise Villenvue put into the movie. I never saw Ridley do any press.

I think lack of marketing is probably what doomed the movie. Also have to agree on the hairdos of both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Every hollywood movie takes a lot of creative liberties, they shouldve changed their haristyles to make them look less ridiculous. Adam Driver and Jodie Cormer both looked fine.
 
I didnt even know the movie was about rape. I had heard that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were finally writing another movie together and after Good Will Hunting, thats all i needed to hear. then i heard, ridley scott directed it and Adam Driver was in it, and I was like omg, this is going to be amazing.

Back in the day, thats all you needed. You got 2-3 big stars, plus a big name director, and an action packed trailer showing some war scenes and people would come to the theaters. Not happening anymore.

I typically avoid all trailers and promotional marketing for movies i want to watch, but I never saw anything for this movie. Meanwhile, Bond was everywhere. Everyone was talking about. Daniel Craig was on every show and he hates doing PR for his movies. I never saw Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. All I saw about Ben Affleck was that he was banging J Lo again. nothing about the movie. Same goes for Dune. Dune was being talked about on twitter, on forums, on my whatsapp chat groups, and every other article was about how much effort Denise Villenvue put into the movie. I never saw Ridley do any press.

I think lack of marketing is probably what doomed the movie. Also have to agree on the hairdos of both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Every hollywood movie takes a lot of creative liberties, they shouldve changed their haristyles to make them look less ridiculous. Adam Driver and Jodie Cormer both looked fine.
They wrote it? I really do need to see this. Good Will Hunting was awesome.
 

AJUMP23

Member
A movie which has Ben Affleck and Matt Damon looking like this
streamland-the-last-duel-matt-damon-ben-affleck.jpg

As I watched the movie I was convinced that is Ben Affleck, then I would go, not that cannot be Ben Affleck. I went back and forth through this move convincing myself it was and was not Bat-dad.
 

MrMephistoX

Member
If you want more than the usual MCU fair (which everyone here knows I absolutely love) you need to seek out and support movies in the gennres you like. Hell, even support Netrflix movies at the cinema if you can.

Movies that have my interest over the next few months.

Blue Bayou
Tick Tick ... Boom
Cry Macho
Best Sellers
Titane
Dune
Encanto
The Card Counter
Don't Look Up
The French Dispatch
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Spider-Man: No Way Home
The Lost Daughter
Matrix Resurrections
West Side Story
Ghosdtbusters Afterlife
House of Gucci
The 355
The Kingsman
King Richard
Scream
Spencer
Morbius
Black Phone

That is a lot of variety of films just in the next 2 and a half months. I'll try and support as many of them as I can depending on screening times. Some are Netflix films but I'll watch them at the cinemas if I can like I did with Red Notice.
With the exception of Ghost busters and Matrix the big screen adds nothing to the experience. I’m interested in all of these but if they’re a days and date release at home I’d actually be more inclined to watch them.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
It's a serious drama, but there are definitely comedic moments. Ben Affleck is hilarious
His scenes were the highlight of the movie for me. I just love how he just cant stand Matt Damon and spends 90% of the movie in the company of nude women.

Looking back, Im pretty sure that if it wasnt for him, Matt Damon and Adam Driver's characters would still be friends and the rape wouldve never happened because there wouldve been no animosity between the two.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
How can you make a movie with a premise like this and think it's gonna blow up the box office? This is a niche subject with a synopsis that's almost impossible to read in one go without falling asleep.

It's a Hollywood-budgeted indie movie.
That's what I was thinking - they maybe would have made a little bit more interesting by throwing hints that the whole thing was made up (historians do not seem to agree here), but I imagine a potential backslash over 'putting women as false accusers of rape' might have them quickly forget about it.
 
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