Hideo Kojima Reviewed Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars — And Fans Think His Silence Says Everything

Hideo Kojima watched Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars in a 4DX theatre in Japan, and he posted about it on his English X account. The only problem — at least according to fans — is that he posted about everything except the actual movie. And if you know how Kojima reviews films he loves, that absence speaks volumes.

The post went live on August 30, 2026, two days after The Dog Stars hit theatres worldwide to a brutal critical reception and a $19 million global opening weekend — one of the lowest box office debuts of Ridley Scott’s career. Kojima’s take has since become its own conversation, with gaming and film communities dissecting what a celebrated director’s conspicuous non-review actually communicates.

Hideo Kojima Reviewed Ridley Scotts The Dog Stars

What Kojima Actually Said

Here’s the full text of Kojima’s post about The Dog Stars, reproduced as reported:

“Peter Heller’s original novel, The Dog Stars (previously published in Japanese under the title Itsuka Boku ga Kaeru Basho / The Place I’ll Return to Someday), has been sitting on my bookshelf for years, unread. Since it’s literary fiction rather than science fiction, I went to see the movie, picturing it might be something along the lines of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The music was by Harry. They weren’t selling (didn’t make) a pamphlet for the film.”

That’s it. He mentions the source novel. He mentions his expectations going in. He mentions the composer. He mentions the lack of a physical programme. What he does not mention: the story, the performances of Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, or Allison Janney, the direction, the visuals, the emotional impact, the ending, or literally any part of the film he actually watched.

Worth noting: Kojima watched it in a 4DX theatre — the immersive format with moving seats, water effects, and environmental simulation — which means he invested meaningfully in the experience. He just had very little to say about what that experience delivered.

Why Fans Think This Means He Hated It

The key context is how Kojima normally writes about movies he genuinely likes. The man is famously enthusiastic about film. His social media presence is essentially a running director’s commentary on cinema, and when something moves him, he produces lengthy, detailed posts that dive into themes, technique, specific scenes, performances, and connections to other works. This is not a person who keeps his film opinions to himself when he has positive ones.

The contrast case being cited repeatedly is his recent reaction to Kane Parsons’ Backrooms movie — described as a lengthy, emotionally engaged post in which Kojima expressed being “blown away” and couldn’t stop thinking about it. That’s the benchmark. Long, specific, enthusiastic, full of the kind of detail that shows he was genuinely affected by what he watched.

For The Dog Stars: book mention, expectation mention, composer credit, pamphlet observation.

Fans in the comments and on adjacent social media posts have drawn their own conclusions:

• “You can tell he didn’t like it because he said nothing about the actual film, lol.”
• “He said nothing about the film so he hated it lmao.”
• “Ridley’s a genius, he created a genre of Kojima tweets. Saying nothing about the actual film while talking about it.”

The last comment is the most pointed — framing Scott as having inadvertently inspired a new subgenre of Kojima post: the politely evasive non-review.

What Is The Dog Stars — And Why Is It So Divisive?

For anyone not following the film closely, The Dog Stars is Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 post-apocalyptic novel of the same name. The film stars Jacob Elordi as Hig, a pilot living in an abandoned Colorado airport who has survived a pandemic that wiped out most of humanity, alongside the hardened survivalist Bangley played by Josh Brolin. Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, Allison Janney, and Benedict Wong round out the cast. The film underwent a notable casting change during production — Elordi replaced Paul Mescal in the lead role.

It’s been a difficult release. Holding a notably low Rotten Tomatoes score for a Ridley Scott film, The Dog Stars debuted to his worst critical reception in over a decade. IGN’s review scored it a 5 out of 10, describing it as “a post-apocalyptic survival story that’s encased in three layers of emotionally protective bubble wrap with a wild third-act twist.” The consensus among negative reviews centres on sluggish pacing, an overly long runtime, and a sense that the film never quite earns its emotional ambitions.

Positive reviews do exist — early reactions from some critics praised Josh Brolin’s performance as scene-stealing, the chemistry between leads, and what one described as “Fury Road energy mixed with quiet campfires under the stars.” The divide is genuine, not just internet noise. But the aggregate is pulling negative, and the box office confirmed it: $19 million globally in its opening weekend is a significant underperformance for a Scott production of this scale.

The comparison to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road that Kojima himself makes in his post is one critics have repeatedly drawn too — and not always favourably. Scott previously worked with McCarthy on The Counselor, and reviewers have suggested that The Dog Stars lands somewhere closer to an airport-bookstore version of The Road’s post-apocalyptic DNA than a true successor to it.

Kojima as Film Critic — The Broader Pattern

Part of what makes the Kojima non-review so legible to his audience is that they’ve been watching him review films for years. The pattern fans have identified — detailed enthusiasm for loved films, minimal content for films he didn’t connect with — is consistent enough that people treat it as a reliable signal. He’s not obligated to say “I didn’t like it.” He just… says very little.

Kojima occupies a genuinely unusual cultural space. He’s a celebrated game director whose films like Death Stranding and Metal Gear Solid are explicitly cinematic in their ambition and heavily influenced by the directors he admires — Ridley Scott included, as the creator of Blade Runner and Alien. When Kojima watches a film and doesn’t say what he thought of it, people care. His taste is treated as informed and interesting in a way that most celebrity film reactions aren’t.

The irony — and the part that makes this worth writing about — is that his reticence on The Dog Stars communicates more clearly than a direct statement would. If he’d posted “it was fine but not one of Scott’s best,” the conversation would have been over. Instead, a post about an unread novel, a comparison to McCarthy, a composer credit, and an absent pamphlet has generated an entire parallel critical discussion about what Hideo Kojima didn’t say.

What’s Happening With Ridley Scott Beyond The Dog Stars

Scott has been unusually active in the press cycle recently, and the interviews haven’t all been about The Dog Stars. He’s confirmed that he is currently developing a sequel to Alien: Covenant with Michael Fassbender returning as the android David. His stated motivation: he feels the Alien franchise he created “needs some help,” and was diplomatically dismissive of Alien: Romulus — the 2024 Fede Álvarez-directed entry — saying it was “OK.” It was a comment that generated its own round of controversy, given that Romulus was well-received by critics and audiences at the time.

Between a box office disappointment, a subdued Kojima review, and a public statement that the franchise bearing his name is in need of rescue, it’s been a complicated few weeks for Ridley Scott’s public profile. His filmography earns him the benefit of the doubt most filmmakers would never receive — but The Dog Stars doesn’t appear to be the late-career statement that was hoped for.

For now, Kojima’s post stands as a small masterclass in diplomatic silence. He said exactly what he chose to say, included everything he found noteworthy, and left the rest entirely to implication. Whether Scott’s film deserved more is a question the $19 million opening weekend has already answered in its own way.