![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/137796375bbc3e06308e0386940d237532-thedogstars.rsquare.w400.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Fabio Lovino\/20th Century Studios\/Everett Collection\n <\/p>\n
We humans fixate a lot, especially nowadays, on our own eradication. There are many social, political, planetary, even biological reasons for this, but it\u2019s also reinforced by the cataclysmic visions we regularly endure in our cultural products. For years, we\u2019ve been inundated with movies in which cities and planets are annihilated, or almost annihilated, or recently annihilated,\u00a0so much so that we\u2019re now sort of numb to the devastation<\/a>. As Ridley Scott\u2019s The Dog Stars began, and I saw those familiar images of burnt buildings, ruined cities, and charred skeletons, I was filled not with dread or anticipation or even sadness but a kind of dull exhaustion. Not this again, I thought.<\/p>\n For all my initial skepticism, however, much of the first half of The Dog Stars held my attention. Based on Peter Heller\u2019s 2012 novel, it takes place sometime in the not-so-distant future, after a plague and the resulting chaos have wiped out almost all of humanity. Hig (Jacob Elordi), a former mechanic still mourning the loss of his wife and unborn child back in the mid-2030s, lives on a small, abandoned airport, his only human companion Bangley (Josh Brolin), a grizzled survivalist and former Marine. Accompanied by his loyal dog Jasper, Hig flies a small Cessna over the forests and mountains of Colorado, touching down on what used to be Denver for dwindling supplies, as well as a nearby community of Mennonites who have managed to remain together, even though illness is slowly taking them down as well.<\/p>\n When he\u2019s in the skies, Hig takes in the majestic landscape around him, hovering in denial over the reality on the ground. Though mired in grief, he remains a dreamer, curious about what\u2019s out there and hanging onto his last vestiges of kindness and maybe even to a sense that the world can be fixed. By contrast, Bangley, who refers to any and all strangers as \u201croaches,\u201d is pure suspicion and rage. \u201cAll the years we\u2019ve been out here, when has offering help made us safer?\u201d he asks Hig. \u201cThis world fits you,\u201d Hig responds. \u201cWake up, defend, survive. You like this shit.\u201d<\/p>\n Elordi\u2019s soft-spoken performance, paired with his delicate and awkward features, provides a nice contrast with Brolin\u2019s tree-stump obduracy. So long as Scott maintains this mood of hesitant survival \u2013 this sense of two men stuck in an indeterminate in-between that might be all they will ever have \u2013 he\u2019s on reasonably solid ground. When Hig strays off in his plane and chances upon another pair of survivors, former medical student Cema (Margaret Qualley) and her gruff father (Guy Pearce), we see the same dynamic at play between them as well. These differing approaches to the world don\u2019t really need an apocalypse to make sense; it\u2019s a universal, historic conflict, between a youthful openness to the world and a weary distrust. (Think The Road, but not nearly as good.)<\/p>\n I can\u2019t help but wonder what the younger Ridley Scott might have made of this material. Scott the aesthete, the creator of indelible images and ethereal moods who was unafraid to linger in beauty, even when that beauty was corrupted. Blade Runner, let\u2019s not forget, is also about a ruined future world. So too Alien, with its cruel interstellar intimacy, its metallic shadows and gooey whites. Scott\u2019s painterly care with these worlds wasn\u2019t ironic, but Romantic; something about the fearsome, post-human immensity of these spaces clearly inspired him. (See also: 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, hell, even White Squall.) The films were richer as a result, edging us towards mortal epiphanies: His characters were trapped in realities that didn\u2019t care for them, and so were we.<\/p>\n I mention all this because, for all of Scott\u2019s mastery of mood, The Dog Stars feels fundamentally hollow. The aforementioned contrast between Hig and Bangley is interesting, but the characters never quite transcend their outlines; they\u2019re like ideas looking for people. Especially in a world where we\u2019ve already gotten endless post-apocalyptic visions, from any number of zombie flicks to George Miller\u2019s gonzo Mad Max action operas, we need something. Visual style isn\u2019t just a frill; it\u2019s how cinema reveals its soul, and The Dog Stars could have used a blast of that old-time aestheticism. As it is, the film has lovely settings, but its visual appeal is mostly functional. It never takes our breath away, even when Hig is flying above the world. The Ridley Scott of yore would not have squandered such an opportunity. (That Ridley Scott hasn\u2019t entirely gone away. The Last Duel<\/a> was only a few years ago.)<\/p>\n I was unfamiliar with Heller\u2019s novel when I saw the film, but I did read it afterwards out of curiosity. Scott and screenwriter Mark E. Smith have certainly taken their liberties, which they should, but they also haven\u2019t figured out a cinematic corollary for the level of psychological depth that Heller delivers through his fragmented, stream-of-consciousness prose. That distinguishes the novel, but it exposes a void in the film. Without the richness of such detail, the characters are left with not much to do. That might also explain the movie\u2019s attempts to supercharge its few action sequences, as if the filmmakers realized belatedly that a sad book without much incident wasn\u2019t exactly prime summer studio release fodder.<\/p>\n Heller\u2019s novel came years before COVID, but it contains some impressively prophetic passages, particularly in its references to how the pandemic spread. The film goes for even further relevancy, taking its dynamic of suspicion vs. curiosity and adding a truly bizarre, late-breaking climax which I won\u2019t give away other than to say that it\u2019s all about the psychotic perils of nostalgia, about how some people in extreme circumstances find suicidal solace in bygone eras and \u201cthe way it used to be.\u201d It\u2019s an idea, though not a new one: Danny Boyle did it better in 28 Years Later, as did Bong Joon-ho in Snowpiercer. Those directors learned a lot from Ridley Scott, and I wonder what Ridley Scott might have learned from them. Still, in the interests of not dwelling too much more on the past, I will simply add that I\u2019m happy this director, at age 88, continues to churn out movies, and I look forward to whatever comes next.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Vulture Daily<\/p>\n An entertainment newsletter for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n