I'm not a fan of his, but I seem to recall most critics feel he either hits well or misses badly. I only like a couple of his movies, but I seem to recall he was supposed to adapt Brave new World and Forever War, two books I wanted to see as films. But, if he can make an Alien-ish movie or get sidetracked with a tacky side project, he'll probably be dead before we get these.
Technically, not necessarily an American movie. Well, Ridley Scott is not anyway.

All the big directors you mentioned also had flukes, we only tend to remember the great ones.

'Exodus: Gods and Kings' is a very strange choice though.
For one thing it is clearly a religious film.
Sure, 1492 and Kingdom of Heaven also had religious tones but they were historical films.
I can't imagine many people being genuinely interested in this film unless they were rather religious.
Then there's the whole issue of white people playing middle-eastern people and north Africans.
This feels very archaic, like somethings from 60's and 70's.
It is odd to me that Scott actually thought this film would be successful.

ridley scott is british
maybe its supposed to be a throwback ?

And? I was talking about the movie, not him personally, wherever he is from.

Half of the movies you mentioned in the OP are quite bad. There's just a handful of Ridley Scott's movies that are worth watching: Alien, Blade Runner (Original or first Director's Cut), Thelma and Louise, The Duellists.

The rest of his movies is average at best.

and ?
you said the movie was american
the director is british

kinda of a huge difference believe it or not
which influences the movie huge big surprise there i am sure

I saw it recently as well, and while I liked the visual look of the film I didn't think the characters had any depth or personality to them, apart from Rutger Hauer perhaps. So I was left feeling rather indifferent in the end.

Ridley Scott is an amazing director visually speaking. His biggest propblem lately, or perhaps always, has been that he doesn't seem to be able to find good scripts, or even regocnize them, to use those talents on.

Like Prometheus for an example. It's visually one of the most stunnig sci-fi movies I've seen lately, but the script is, at places, just horribly bad.Some choises made in it just boggle my mind. But visually it is still an amazing movie. Hell, I'd bet Scott could make a visual feast of a movie where man sits and drinks tea.

But then again, a lot of the visually gifted directors have the same issue, be it Peter Jackson ballooning the Hobbit with unneeded, and often poorly written, additional material or James Cameron just throwing mud on the wall to see if it sticks. Both visually great directors, but their writing often leaves room for improvement.

I'm waiting for his Zombie project. If he gets around to doing it, I think he'll have some real insights on the subject.

It is easily my favourite in the series. The unedited version is criminally underrated. The story was real good, very depressing and just awkward. the visuals were stunning, brilliant soundtrack and they killed that seriously fucking annoying little girl. The worst part of Aliens. Woman thinks its wise to risk the other two survivors to save some random girl, fuck that! Though I would of loved to of seen what some of the prisoners would of done...

The history of that movie is absolutely shocking, if it was this interesting when it was being fucked over I would of loved of seen what the intended movie was suppose to be.

That's true, and it applies to all artists. Michelangelo had most of his drawings burned so most of what is left is only the best and most complete of his works, making him look more perfect than he was. He didn't want to share the process as much as the final results with the rest of the world, and certainly not any of the failures. I can understand that, it's rather frustrating though because you can learn more from preliminary works (and failures) than from finished ones when you study an artist's work.
And most people don't know that Michelangelo didn't like painting, doing the Sistine Chapel was a particularly big pain in the ass to him, just a job to pay the bills. His real passion was sculpting and the difference between his paintings and his sculptures is huge. He would make an ultimate troll face if he would hear all the oohs and aahs people make at the Sistine Chapel paintings. If you'd switch those paintings with works by lesser known painters from the same time period, 99% of all people wouldn't even notice, except for the Creation of Adam which everyone already knows.

Most directors have a limited era where their vision and social commentary are relevant and exciting. After that they usually play catch-up and make a lot of mediocre shit. You can go to IMDB and track almost every director's great period and it's usually around 10-15 years long.

What Alien 3?
I would have been disappointed by BHD's plot even if it were just a dumb FPS.

*slap* Stop it! :P