I'm not sure he needs a "comeback". He has become a definition of a hit and miss director in this century and I doubt this trend will change. For every Covenant, you get a Prometheus; for every Good Year, you get American Gangster; for every Exodus, you get The Martian; for every Kingdom of Heaven you get... the Director's Cut ; and for every The Counselor... ok, that one was super terrible But in general you just take the bad with the good because when it's good it's worth it and you just hope that the next one is one of the better ones.
Its funny how Ridley Scott made 2 of my favourite movies of all time (Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise) and I'm still not a big fan. His filmography is really weird
Yeah, this happens with a few directors.
Forman made two of the greatest films with Cuckoo's nest and Amadeus imo, but Larry Flint or Hair are very weak imo, except for a few scenes. And I don't see the same qualities in Amadeus and Cuckoo's nest, and love them for different reasons. Whereas most people will like the same thing in Goodfellas and The wolf of Wall Street, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Dunkirk and Inception. Though in each case, these are very different movies, you definitely feel the resemblance.
As always a visually stunning Ridley Scott movie. Nowadays many movies (even the big budget ones) look so fake and cheap. Like a tv series. Scott never fails at this task. But lately he can only nail the visuals. The rest....meh. The last Scott movie I geniuely enjoyed was Kingdom Of Heaven (Directors Cut)
Here's the thing: the historical accounts of this, the last trial-by-combat in France, do not require any changes by screenwriters to be interesting.
However, looking back at films like Kingdom of Heaven (even the Director's cut), Scott makes some wild and even baffling changes to historical facts that were not necessary and add little to nothing in terms of the actual drama. The trailer makes this look very interesting but I hope that they stick closer to actual History than Scott has in some of his previous historical drama films.
Scott tends to be unable to distinguish good from bad screenplays (he's like Tim Burton that way) so when he's got a great screenplay he can make a great film, when the script's bad the film is good-looking but dumb schlock.