Legendary video game designer Hideo Kojima has posted his ‘review’ of Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars and, just like Thumper in Bambi, it seems Koj believes that ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all,’ because he doesn’t actually say a critical word about the film in question.
Writing on X, Kojima’s 76-word post expounds on his history with Peter Heller’s original novel (he hasn’t read it), what he pictured the movie would be like (“something along the lines of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road”) and even his palpable disappointment that they didn’t create pamphlets for The Dog Stars (souvenir brochures that are commonly for sale in Japanese theaters). But what’s missing is any kind of verdict on the movie itself, which, if you’ve been following along with Kojima’s movie reviews, almost always means he disliked the movie and is too polite to say as much. Check out the full post below
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… pic.twitter.com/irC8ZjoMrHAugust 30, 2026
Of course, if you read between the lines, Kojima’s feelings about The Dog Stars are plain as day; he didn’t get on with it, perhaps because it wasn’t close enough to his McCarthy-aping expectations for his liking. Typically, there’s a direct correlation between tweet length and Kojima’s feelings about a movie, ie., the longer the tweet, the more warmly he feels about it. This is a rare example where that theory doesn’t hold. Perhaps he didn’t want to disparage the work of Death Stranding star Margaret Qualley so publicly.
So far this year, Kojima has been “blown away” by creepy pasta horror Backrooms, and was one of the few who liked Supergirl (he even compared it to The Good, the Bad and The Ugly). Still, Kojima’s verdict on The Dog Stars is nowhere near as damning as his Return to Silent Hill movie review, which ran just 8 words long (savage). And over a year later, we’re still waiting on his Electric State review.
As for The Dog Stars, Kojima wasn’t the only person who didn’t respond to the post-apocalyptic action drama, as despite costing almost $80 million to produce, it made less than $8 million at the US box office on its opening weekend. The 88-year-old Scott shows no signs of slowing down, however, as he recently revealed a third Alien prequel starring Michael Fassbender’s David is in the works.
The Dog Stars is currently in theaters. For more, check out our guide to all the biggest upcoming movies heading your way this year.