Ridley Scott has spent much of his career putting people under pressure. His films are full of hostile environments, collapsing systems and characters trying to survive forces much larger than themselves. From Alien and Blade Runner through Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, Scott has repeatedly asked how people behave when the systems around them fail. Even when his films aren’t bleak, they are usually fascinated by danger, pressure and survival.

With a screenplay written by Mark L. Smith, Ridley Scott’s latest film, The Dog Stars, reconfigures these familiar preoccupations. Here, the apocalypse isn’t the climax – it’s the starting point. A catastrophic virus has already wiped out most of humanity, dropping us directly into a sparse, post-apocalyptic landscape where Scott isn’t particularly interested in explaining how or why the world ended. Instead, he focuses on what remains inside an abandoned airport hangar where survivors Hig (the lead character, played by Jacob Elordi) and Bangley (Josh Brolin) carve out a fragile existence in a space defined by grief, isolation, and deep-seated distrust of outsiders.

The distinction between these two men gives the film much of its shape. Both are exceptionally capable survivors, but they have reached very different conclusions about how to live. Bangley can barely see beyond the scope of his rifle or the perimeter of the compound he is protecting. Hig, by contrast, looks up at the stars, sometimes wistfully, and yearns to venture out west, towards whatever might exist beyond the world he knows.

Bangley isn’t necessarily wrong about the dangers around them, and Hig isn’t naive about what the world has become. The difference is that Hig hasn’t allowed survival to become his whole life. So, when he intercepts a static-broken radio transmission, the film beautifully shifts gears – moving from a story of stagnant survival to a search for human connection.

That is where The Dog Stars becomes a surprisingly hopeful film, but not because its characters are certain everything will work out. Quite the opposite. Scott takes grief seriously. What has been lost cannot simply be forgotten or recovered, and the film never pretends otherwise. Its optimism comes from something smaller: the possibility that a person can remain curious after catastrophe, that genuine connection and community might still be possible after immense hardship and loss, and that there might be something worth moving towards even when you can’t quite see it yet.

That feels particularly striking from Scott, and it also helps explain why The Dog Stars stands out as one of his better films of the last decade or so, alongside The Martian. The films are very different, but both are propelled by a belief in perseverance: the idea that when circumstances become impossible, there is still value in figuring out what to do next.

In The Martian, that idea becomes an exhilarating practical problem. Mark Watney survives by solving one crisis after another, with ingenuity and a considerable amount of humour. The Dog Stars is more melancholy. Its catastrophe has already happened. There is no great mathematical puzzle left to solve and no civilisation waiting to be restored. The question is more human: what do you do with the life you still have? That makes its hope feel quieter, but perhaps more profound.

And maybe that is why the film feels like such a good fit for this stage of Scott’s career. Nearly fifty years on from The Duellists, he continues to work with a remarkable sense of forward momentum. The Dog Stars doesn’t feel like a summation of his career or an attempt to announce some grand final statement. It feels like another film from a director who still wants to see what comes next.

The Dog Stars isn’t perfect. But it is one of Scott’s best films in recent years, and perhaps one of his most unexpectedly generous. At a point in his career when looking backwards would be entirely understandable, he has made a beautiful film about looking forwards.

And at 88, that feels rather wonderful.

The Dog Stars is in cinemas August 28.