The 10/10 Sci-Fi Gem That Ridley Scott Felt Was “Too Long” Is the #1 Hit on HBO Max

Published Sep 5, 2026, 11:31 AM EDT

Rohan Naahar is a News Writer for Collider. From Francois Ozon to David Fincher, he’ll watch anything once. He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema.

A trend is emerging where director **Ridley Scott **shrugs at other filmmakers’ sequels to his sci-fi movies. He recently described ***Alien: Romulus ***as just “okay” in an interview with AlloCiné, and indicated that he wants to retake control of the franchise. But Romulus was credited with reviving the series with its $350 million worldwide box-office haul and “Certified Fresh” 80% Rotten Tomatoes score after the underperformance of Scott’s Alien: Covenant derailed it. He also told Vulture that Blade Runner 2049, which many consider among the greatest sequels ever made and perhaps even better than Scott’s original, was “too long.” With the franchise set to return as a streaming series soon, the 2017 sequel has seen a spike on streaming.

The movie starred Ryan Gosling alongside the returning Harrison Ford. Directed by Denis Villeneuve as his first mega-budget Hollywood movie after he’d proved his chops with Prisoners and Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 emerged as a box-office disappointment. It grossed around $275 million worldwide against a reported budget of $185 million. But it received tremendous reviews; the movie now holds a “Certified Fresh” 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Visually stunning and narratively satisfying, Blade Runner 2049 deepens and expands its predecessor’s story while standing as an impressive filmmaking achievement in its own right.”

Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.

You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.

The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.

You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.

Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.

The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

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