Ridley Scott has certainly had misunderstood films throughout his career — some of his now classics, particularly “Blade Runner,” were once met with negative reviews.
One film that seems to have garnered a cult following over the years is Scott’s "The Counselor," which had a screenplay written by the late Cormac McCarthy.
The 2013 film, which revolved around a lawyer and a drug deal gone bad, was most famous for its scene of a scantily clad Cameron Diaz having sex with an expensive car. Suffice to say, it wasn't the kind of movie that would have mainstream audiences clamoring for encores and, no surprise, its box-office was disastrous.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Scott vents about the bad reception that “The Counselor” garnered and how it has somehow found new life over the years:
Cormac McCarthy, in my world, is probably the best dialogue writer ever. The Counselor is one of my favorites of my movies, but it’s a very dark subtext, and you can feel it coming from minute one. It’s so dark because it’s based on a certain amount of truth. I was so disappointed, and I don’t know who to blame because I think the film is really fuckin’ good. It’s so fun and cynical. People take it so seriously! People are getting it now. It’s always annoying because my films tend to get got later. The famous one is Blade Runner, which was dead for twenty years.
Scott has been vocal about how 20th Century Fox didn't market the film properly and that “The Counselor” deserved better than being tossed aside by the studio.
“I really loved ‘The Counselor,’ which should have been f—ing HUGE! With that cast, we should have had a $50-million weekend. After the marketing and advertising on that, I was ready to kill somebody. You don’t preview films like that. You keep them in a box … you’ve got Brad [Pitt], you’ve got Cameron Diaz, you’ve got Javier Bardem, you’ve got Penelope Cruz, you’ve got Michael Fassbender…are you f—ing kidding me? You don’t show it, you advertise and you put it out and you’ll have a $50-million opening weekend.” “I also loved ‘Legend‘ and [the studio] f—ing killed that. I was 27 years ahead of Disney, that’s all,” Scott added.
I can’t say I agree, for now, with Scott about "The Counselor," but I’ve also not seen it since the year it was released. It was a film that, I admit, totally caught me off guard, and gave me something that I didn’t expect. In a nutshell, it was this plotless romp with graphic violence, sex and an abundance of McCarthy's well known philosophical speak.
Its 35% Rotten Tomatoes score might turn you off, but some folks completely abide by this film, and critics like Glenn Kenny and Manhola Dargis have been defending the film since its release. Ditto Guillermo del Toro who has stated that he loves “The Counselor” on a “molecular level,” adding that the film was “brilliant” and “underappreciated.”
This cultish love for “The Counselor” resulted in it being named the ninth best film of Scott’s career in a recent critics poll. Will it continue to rise up in the rankings? Is Scott’s film destined to become one of the seminal ones of his career?
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.