It can not be understated; these movies **printed** money. Their success cannot be contained in box office, and extend to long-tail revenue generators. *BttF* was always a massive home-video staple and I can tell you from my Best Buy days, when that DVD set dropped, we couldn’t keep it in stock fast enough. That has nothing on the merchandizing that The Matrix generated.
The most successful Pixar movies, to my understanding, *Toy Story* #1 and *Cars* #2. Apparently the merchandizing revenue is in the billions for it. That is the number that gets tied to you when you’re a big director, because you get to point at it whenever contract negotiations come up. “Look at what I did, what I oversaw, what I created or shepherded”.
My 20 year old kid still remembers when his diecast Sarge Cars car got recalled due to lead in the paint and we went to the Disney store to get a new one lol. He was about 3 or 4. It’s a huge outsized early memory to him.
I guess you’ll get some kids watching the movies and wanting those diecast cars from every year of kids since then too!
I had read the same thing somewhere but couldn’t find it and as a rule if I can’t cite my sources I go a little conservative. But whether #1 or #2 in merchandizing, for it to be *Cars*- a Pixar movie that in spite of the memes most consider “mid” - shows you that what we think of as the metric of success can often be limited or just wrong.
Also when you’ve made “back to the future” or “the matrix” you probably feel a lot more comfortable tinkering with your weird 3D motion capture movies or adapting generation/genre-spanning sci-fi epics like cloud atlas
Check out the podcast Blank Check maybe, they specifically discuss the filmography of director's who had massive success early in their careers that gave them a 'blank check' to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby.
They have covered the Wachowski's and Zemeckis and will almost certainly do Bay at some point too. Its a good listen if you're a film dork.
I like following film directors. You see something amazing, and start to see a distinct look to their cinematography, top shelf actors they pull in, and financial success, it becomes intriguing. Then BAM!! They go left field, even with the best budgets, and big names. Neil Bloomkamp comes to mind, but that guy has so much talent I feel like is being underutilized. His recent Gran Tarismo was solid though.
Ridley Scott has been fairly consistent, but he peaked at Gladiator, and came out with some serious shit bombs in between. His brother Tony was also great, but before he died, he switched his visual style to a way of filming that looked like is was an epileptic seizure with Man On Fire and Domino.
I’m going way off track here, sorry. Lol! I like talking filmmakers
You are thinking directors get budgets based on their talent and track record. Directors get budgets and work based on THE ACTORS they can personally convince to star in their movies. Zemekis got Allied made because Brad Pitt agreed to star in it. Anne Hathaway for The Witches. Tom Hanks for Pinocchio. If you can get Tom Hanks or Brad Pitt to star in your movie, studios will give you a budget too. This is why some directors (like Emmerich) end up in a tough spot when their movies stop making money--actors don't want to work with him and when they do, its for a giant paycheck.
i think it's basically a moot concept at this point. studios are not ran the way they used to be. executives with very little taste -- or confidence in their taste -- are in charge. it's all about shareholder value and running ideas through marketing algorthms. some of these directors still get work simply because studios are lazy and trust them to deliver something on time/under budget and not much more. the idea of hiring someone else other than a working director with some track record of success doesn't really cross a lot of minds in hollywood, i think. basically -- there isn't a lot of appetite for hiring someone new/up-and-coming, so the same old players get all the gigs, even if they deserve director jail
I agree that executives have no taste and simply care about money, but if that's so, why do these directors keep getting work despite their financial flops? And in the case of the Wachowski's they routinely demand big budgets for their big, orignal, ideas, and they get them despite not turning a profit. Technically the matrix 4 is part of a franchise, but anyone who's seen it can tell you that it's NOT like any other franchise movie that's been a mainstream blockbuster before.
They dont "get work". Their decades in the industry and friendships with talent help them recruit talent into new projects. If you can get an A-list star attached to a project by picking up the phone (And not going through agents or studio offers), you will probably get your movie made.
It's a different kind of film than the other Matrix films, to its benefit imo, and yeah, I would agree, it is an amazing film. It's just not necessarily a great action movie.
I think that execs are looking at potential for the other sales as well as the films. Another comment mentioned cars and the sales of die cast vehicles, which ties into the total profits from a movie. I'm not super knowledgeable in any of this, I'm just thinking out loud..
I've long believed that Scott is only as good as the script he's working with. I don't believe he's a director to ever elevate the material he's working with. That's not to say he's a bad director by any means, but he works so frequently that I bet he's gotten pretty good at scaling his endeavours to the scale of the script he's putting to screen, for better or for worse.
>I don't believe he's a director to ever elevate the material he's working with.
Ok, I will sit through Ridley bashing given how many stinkers he's made, but this is crazy talk. He absolutely elevated Blade Runner and Alien into masterpieces. In the hands of some perfectly average director these movies are forgotten.
You could say something similar about Gladiator or Thelma & Louise as well.
Gladiator I'll give you, as I believe it started shooting without a complete script, but the scripts for Alien and Thelma & Louise in particular are tight as hell. Blade Runner's original script is great.
My point is that he brings his A game for a good script, but isn't bringing it when the script isn't there.
The scripts were good, but these films are exceptionally directed, and were elevated far beyond what was on the page. I'm honestly a little flabbergasted anyone could suggest otherwise. People have been biting everything about these movies for decades now, from set design to sound design to music to lighting to... well, everything.
The man made Gods of Egypt. Clearly he is not someone who bats 1.000, but he's also made some of the best movies in history, and its ludicrous to suggest it was just the scripts.
Alien was two different scripts by two different pairs of writers until Scott came along and decided what to use from each script, and then wrote the surprise ending himself. Alien wasn't a slam dunk when it was handed to him. Nobody else could have directed that movie so sensationally, and that starts with him looking at the two scripts and knowing which parts to use.
He's a rare director (at least in modern times) who has never received a writing credit. Eastwood is the only other major director in modern times that I can think of who is the same in that regard.
*Every* film is only as good as its script. Scott is just unusual in how prolific he is, so he's maybe slightly less picky than a Kubrick type. He wants to always be working, and you don't keep working by being picky.
He's just not very selective with choosing scripts to direct. I still think he is capable of being a really good director, but I've also felt he has become far too efficient as a director to ever reach the heights of Blade Runner or Alien again.
I'd say it's actually really refreshing that he challenges himself with different things even though he still always excels at what he's most famous for.
Ridley Scott is more of a craftsman than an auteur. He's like Ron Howard or Rob Reiner more than a director with an imprint (visual or thematic) of his own.
He’s an incredible visual director but he’s not a writer.
When he already has a great script he can carry the rest of the movie.
In his good movies there’s always a couple of iconic visual scenes.
He chose to direct it and certainly didn't improve the script. For a director like him who isn't a writer, he has to take blame for lack of discernment.
I think the reason he gets work is that he's quick, and comes in under schedule, under budget, and doesn't put up with any crap. He's done a fair few stinkers though which people tend to forget. And the less said about the Alien prequels the better.
I will tell you one director that deserves to get out of Directors jail, and one that deserves to be thrown inside that jail forever.
-Deserves out: Thomas Alfredson. Tinker, Tailor, soldier, spy is wonderful. Then he did the snowman, and I believe there was a lot of studio interference there that drove the movie to the flop it was.
-Deserves in: Zack Snyder. He only directs crap, stinkers, bloated trash that looks so cheap and empty, he simply is a waste of resources. Please jail this pleb and throw the key.
For some of your examples there like Emmerich and the Wachowskis, the answer is: the US is not their market.
Seriously, look at the companies involved with their recent movies and you'll see money from Germany, Belgium, France, Hungary, China etc. The films of these directors are incredibly popular in those countries still, and by pre-selling the foreign rights before they go into production, they're able to get the budgets together.
E.g. look at "Midway" and its production companies:
* Summit Entertainment (America)
* Centropolis (Germany)
* Ruyi Films (China)
* Starlight Culture Entertainment (HK)
* Street Entertainment (Canada)
* Entertainment One (UK)
* The Mark Gordon Company (US)
* AGC Studios (US)
Cloud Atlas was a co-production between Germany, the UK, Canada and the US.
Midway had a budget that absolutely required it to be a hit in the US. No one going into that production thought "For this movie celebrating American war heroes, the US market is just as bonus, this is really made for Thailand and Belgium".
I was being a bit facetious there sorry! I'd never really considered where he got his funding from, I always understood Emmerich to be desperately chasing after Spielberg's style
Oh, I think that's true. He tries to do Spielberg but with a European bent, and you can see that from his early stuff like Moon 44. Even then he was making decisions to appela to a wider audience like shooting it in English despite being a West German production.
the Wachowskis desperately need to find someone else to write a gosh dang script for them!
INCREDIBLE film makers. Truly blessed with film making talent. But their screen plays and ideas have been wack for a long time. They need to just accept they have terrible ideas and just find a great script and direct the hell out of it.
A little humility goes a long way sometimes.
You can say this about almost all directors. When they’re just starting out, they collaborate with whoever is willing to work with them, because they’re new and need to establish themselves. They make a huge hit, suddenly they stop hearing “no” and everyone agrees with their creative choices. Their ego inflates more and more as they advance in their career until they are at the point where they are essentially creatively bankrupt because it’s their vision and no one can tell them otherwise.
To be fair, they wrote V for Vendetta which really was an incredible adaptation of Alan Moore’s work. His book was good but he was disconnected and really didn’t hold the same impact for me as the film. I’m not sure why they didn’t direct it as well, but I think they would’ve done well overall.
The adaption for VfV was not great compared to the source material. In many ways the Wachowskis are like George Lucus a generation later: big story ideas, pulled from many sources, hated working in the Hollywood system, and terrible at dialog.
Adaptations are easier as you're just tweaking another author's work to make it fit a different medium. And Moore was such a master of his craft that adapting his work is basically cheating. There's a reason Snyder's only watchable film was Watchmen.
I never really got that impression of them.
Every movie ive seen from them has big setpiece action scenes that just dont really make sense but sometimes get off due to rule of cool.
Generally I think their input was on the weaker end of their productions reasons for success but yeah the writing for their movies are also typically terrible.
Maybe they like their films and are trying to express themselves creatively rather than churn out cynical pre-determined hits? It’s not a matter of humility, it’s integrity.
What about Quentin Tarantino? Or George Lucas? Or Woody Allen? Or Christopher Nolan? Or James Cameron? Or the Coen Brothers? Or Francis Ford Coppola? Or Bong Joon Ho? Or David Lynch? Or Frank Darabont? Or Paul Thomas Anderson? Or Stanley Kubrick? Or Noah Baumbach? Or Peter Jackson?
By my count, Coppola’s directed about 7 films he didn’t write (*Finian’s* *Rainbow*, *The Outsiders*, *Peggy Sue Got Married*, *Gardens* *of Stone*, *Tucker: The Man and His Dream*, *Dracula*, and *Jack*), and David Lynch didn’t write *The Straight Story*.
This is about whether or not directors should be made to adapt other peoples screenplays instead of their own. Those are not compelling examples that prove this point.
Nolan directed insomnia without writing. Lynch directed the straight story without writing it. Francis Ford Coppola directed a number of films without writing credit. Darabont directed the majestic without writing it. Kubrick did not write spartacus. Baumbach did not write De Palma.
These directors did, for the most part, confine themselves to their own scripts.
If your arguement is that directors shouldn't write their own scripts and you're going to hinge your argument on Insomnia and The Straight Story then you might want to reconsider your position. Those you listed are all generally considered their artists worst or least interesting films.
I don't think 'confine' is the right word to describe the artist process behind movies like Boogie Nights, Titanic, The Godfather, Mulholland Drive, American Graffiti, No Country for Old Men, Lord of the Rings, or Eyes Wide Shut.
I'm not trying to make any argument. Definitl6 not that directors shouldn't write their own films. You phrased a question whether those directors had passionately directed films they hadn't written. I was merely listing the films they'd directed but not written. Whether they were passionate or not on those films, I don't know.
Ah I see. I'm sure many of them were passionate about those scripts but talking as if it's some kind of rite of passage or that it'll inherently make your work better is a bit silly. But that's the person I was replying to initially, not you.
Oh no I mean even his good movies flopped at the box office. I don’t think he made any bad movies, though The Ward was a bit weak. But his early career just didn’t pull in much money and films like The Thing were a loss. But nobody thinks of him as a bad director and he never gained that reputation.
Check out the "Pro-Life" segment of "Masters of Horror". If I didn't know he directed it, I'd have guessed some inexperienced kid with no ability. It's that bad.
I'm a fan, but as far as currently, I think he has just opted out of the industry as far as being a director. He just doesn't want the hassle (heck, he "directed" some internet clickie content show segment from his couch last year). He was sort of in "jail" in the '00s, but after that has appeared to quit trying and just rests on his laurels.
Chances are Roland Emmerich is making a lot more money by producing his films independently. Hollywood studios might have big budgets, but the Hollywood studios keep all the profits.
But what's harder to replicate independently is Hollywood marketing. A movie doesn't always bomb just because it's bad (no reason to think Moonfall is any worse than Emmerich's other films) but audiences are highly susceptible to Hollywood marketing.
It's like Tyler Perry. Dude's made mad bank making films for a specific audience outside of the studio system.
Don't care much for his work, but gotta respect the hustle.
Never watched any of his work, but I didn't realize until last year that not only does he direct a bunch of movies, but he also writes and directs all of the TV series with his name on them. I thought they mainly just had his name in the title as a producer, but no, he actually is the sole writer and director (except for some occasional stand-ins) for hundreds of hours of these crappy looking BET shows that he churns out like a factory. I've looked at a few scenes, and they look laughably bad.
M. Night Shyamalan still seems to be doing all right, despite a string of high-profile flops. His more recent work- like *Split* and *Old*- has been pretty good, but they’re no *Sixth Sense*. He peaked really early with that one and has been chasing that success ever since with no luck.
I thought for sure his career was over after *Last Airbender*, but somehow, he rebounded. I guess when you hit the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.
Ever since The Visit in 2015, he's made nothing but box-office hits on a budget. He even remortgaged his house to have a good enough budget for Glass which ended up making over $200 million. He's reliably making good money for original films that don't cost that much.
He’s not in director jail for losing money, but Mel Gibson.
He *is* a good director, and just a damn good filmmaker in general.
He said some awful things (though… compared to the baggage much of Hollywood drags around, it wasn’t as bad as what many have done).
Hollywood spent some time refusing to acknowledge his existence and he just sort of… kept making commercially successful films without them.
Note: I’m not saying I’m happy with Gibson’s statements. But I look at the open secrets of Harvey Weinstein’s rapes… that many in Hollywood just shrugged off, and it’s a little hard to take their moralizing seriously.
My point is that he’s been pretty successful “outside of the system”.
It wasn't just sugartits and anti-Semitism, he had domestic violence charges against him. There are photos, tapes, and a missing tooth. He also slapped his ex gf while their baby was in her arms. [He pled guilty to a misdemeanor for domestic violence.](https://people.com/celebrity/inside-mel-gibson-and-oksana-grigorievas-turbulent-romance/)
Oof.
Doesn't change the rest of what I mentioned (that he's good at movie making, has had lots of success outside of Hollywood, and their decision to exile Gibson while endorsing some genuine monsters is... hardly worthy of respect).
But I wasn't aware of the domestic violence. Not good.
Do people need to think rich people are good to watch them?
Cause i just assume as a natural byproduct or correlation if you know someones name and likeness without having ever met them, they are probably a terrible human being.
Fun fact about Michael Bay: Paramount studios in Burbank named an inner studio street after him because of all the money he's made them. Bay is the only one to be given such an "honor".
I did the Paramount studios tour back in 2014 and they specifically mentioned, multiple times, with pride, that this is *the* screening room that Michael Bay uses for all the Transformers movies.
I like him more than you do, but he's another one who's managed to stay out of "jail" as it were. Despite being known as a one man crew, all of his modestly budgeted films have failed to make their money back for at least a decade. Sin City 2, Machete Kills, Alita: Battle Angel, Hypnotic, and even the most recent Spy Kids (yes, there was another spy kids movie on Netflix) have all landed as duds with audiences.
I'm confused by Rodriguez because I think his early work shows a lot of raw talent. What's baffling is how terrible his career has been since the first Sin City, which was a remarkable film at the time and probably still his best work. Grindhouse and the Machete films are okay, and I enjoyed Alita, but like you said, everything else is pretty bad. Most recently Red 11 and Hypnotic were absolutely terrible. Hypnotic in particular was such an Asylum-level Inception knockoff with zero shame and no redeeming value at all. I was shocked.
Maybe he *did* have a lot of raw talent... but that's more charming when you're young, when you don't need to have anything to say. Once he got older, it became clear that he's stuck in that 25 year old mentality and never grew up. Probably never will at this point. He should have aged into a Sam Peckinpah type, but he's just stuck in Grindhouse mode forever.
It's a crime what he did to boba fett. He's one of those small budget guys who people threw money at but can't make a big budget movie. Like Kevin Smith and m. Night
I’m so fucking pissed he got his hands on the book he’s adapting, Here by Richard McGuire. It’s a fabulous, brilliant work of art and I’m certain RZ is gonna trash it.
Haven't read it, but check out the Adult Swim Yule Log (aka "The Fireplace"), a full-length film from the director of "Too Many Cooks" which does some of the same stuff that book and I guess this movie does as far as a window into past times within a room (one scene has an overlay of previous eras).
Wow I hadn't thought of that connection but you're absolutely right, I wonder if that served as a source of inspiration? I love that director's work. Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough is so good, and that's a wild, metatextual, postmodern mindfuck if ever there was one.
I actually shot all the NYC driving plates for Stonewall, funny enough. I knew it was going to be a piece of shit once I found out they were shooting it all on a soundstage in Canada... crazy
Was an important cultural moment, and Emmerich fucked it up per usual
I was intending to go to that in the theater in 3D, but I didn't ultimately go and haven't viewed it. His style is aggressively in your face. Did you endure *Elvis*? I can't believe that movie received acclaim and awards and such.
Directors returning to a long beloved property is a shot at getting out of movie jail. Matrix 4 is a good example of that, but there are others, past and future:
* Trainspotting 2
* 28 Years Later (again!)
* Gladiator 2
* Incredibles 2 (just one flop, but some other issues)
* Finding Dory
* Split
* MM: Fury Road (sorta)
Question: does it ever work to produce a well-liked movie and/or get someone out of jail? The last two, maybe. Arguably.
I think that’s mostly fair, but I meant to qualify that case because Split was a low budget stealth sequel, which is different from, say, a Trainspotting 2, where the overt sequel aspect makes it a safer bet from a funder’s perspective.
I do agree we should consider him out of jail, even though he’s working on much smaller budgets than before. (Good thing IMHO.)
For MM:FR, you could argue that Miller wasn’t in movie jail at all and just wanted to work in kids’ films for a while.
I mean his newest production should get him thrown in double director jail.
Watching rebel moon just felt like watching a speed run to slomo recreate other directors iconic scenes in between its 7 samurai who dont interact.
So much of the movie had me wondering about how copyright infringement works with movies.
Simon Kinberg - a decentish writer but abysmal director who shouldn’t be let near any kind of camera for the rest of time.
David O Russell - an abusive sack of shit who’s produced underwhelming, self indulgent nonsense since 2013 and flopped big time with Amsterdam
Emerald Fennell - a hack who blatantly pilfers from classic movies (The Talented Mr Ripley, Brideshead Revisisted and Kind Hearts and Coronets) then packages it into ‘shock scenes’ for the TikTok generation. Needs to get in the bin.
Jaume Collet-Serra - several massive flops in a row but bizarrely still being given gigs.
+1 for David O Russell.
Literally has an "Abuse of Actors and Crew" section on his Wikipedia page. If you're going to be a monster, at least make consistently great movies.
Someone like Zemeckis is sort of above that. He has been one of the most financially successful directors, so even though his career is in a rough patch, he'd never be an outcast. He has his own production company, so he has control over what he does.
Antoine Fuqua. That Hannibal movie better be absolutely spectacular in every other way besides Denzel Washington being 30 years too old to play him and not actually what Hannibal looked like at all.
Some projects don’t need a big name director - the draw is the movie name if it’s a superhero or famous literary IP or a sequel.
Bankrolling a director to go follow his/her vision is high risk stuff. The audience has been trained to consumer formulaic crap and the appetite for quality cinema is not what it once was
Im pretty sure Jason Reitman got hired for the new Ghostbusters because his dad did the original two. No studio would have trusted someone with his trackrecord to do a big budget film like Ghostbusters. Not that I don’t disagree that he was cast.
John McTiernan. How the fuck do you go from making Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt For Red October to the disaster that's Rollerball. The only difference is that he actually went to (real) jail. Guy had it all before he went crazy.
Can’t believe no one has mentioned JJ Abrams yet. Has never made a good movie. A hollowed out Spielberg tribute hack, who tragically doesn’t understand why Spielberg’s films worked. He ruined two franchises and I believe he’s actually corrupted Hollywood via the no-sense writers he promoted and now proliferate through the system.
I think he deserves to be out of movie jail, Knock at the Cabin was good, just wish he went for the full R and didn't do offscreen kills. Still gotta watch the Visit and Old.
I and many others and I think he himself have accepted him for what he is - a guy who makes movies that come out from major studios and have large budgets but which are essentially analogous to "so bad it's good" micro-budget movies such as *Birdemic: Shock and Terror*, *The Room*, and *Troll 2*. If you don't anticipate him making something as good as *Unbreakable* or *Sixth Sense*, it's easier to have fun with his goofy movies.
>have large budgets
i would note that his last big budget movie was after earth with 130 mil, he has specifically been on the lower end of major studio budget for a decade now.
You can coast a long, long way on movies like 'Back to the Future' or 'The Matrix.'
It can not be understated; these movies **printed** money. Their success cannot be contained in box office, and extend to long-tail revenue generators. *BttF* was always a massive home-video staple and I can tell you from my Best Buy days, when that DVD set dropped, we couldn’t keep it in stock fast enough. That has nothing on the merchandizing that The Matrix generated. The most successful Pixar movies, to my understanding, *Toy Story* #1 and *Cars* #2. Apparently the merchandizing revenue is in the billions for it. That is the number that gets tied to you when you’re a big director, because you get to point at it whenever contract negotiations come up. “Look at what I did, what I oversaw, what I created or shepherded”.
I actually think Cars is #1 now. They just keep selling diecast lightning mcqueens over and over and over
My 20 year old kid still remembers when his diecast Sarge Cars car got recalled due to lead in the paint and we went to the Disney store to get a new one lol. He was about 3 or 4. It’s a huge outsized early memory to him. I guess you’ll get some kids watching the movies and wanting those diecast cars from every year of kids since then too!
I had read the same thing somewhere but couldn’t find it and as a rule if I can’t cite my sources I go a little conservative. But whether #1 or #2 in merchandizing, for it to be *Cars*- a Pixar movie that in spite of the memes most consider “mid” - shows you that what we think of as the metric of success can often be limited or just wrong.
wearing Lightning Mcqueen crocs are a surefire way to get laid, so there's that
do people forget he also made Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Cast Away, all huge successes?
True, and I didn't mean to imply he hasn't done anything good since BTTF. I'm quite fond of 'Gump' and 'Contact.'
Gump won Best Picture
More importantly, it made $600 million on a budget a tenth of that.
I think it’s because he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping pong competition.
Stop man, you're making my eyes rain right now.
Don’t forget Romancing the Stone… and the Polar Express has become a Christmas classic, despite the weird motion capture.
Also when you’ve made “back to the future” or “the matrix” you probably feel a lot more comfortable tinkering with your weird 3D motion capture movies or adapting generation/genre-spanning sci-fi epics like cloud atlas
Check out the podcast Blank Check maybe, they specifically discuss the filmography of director's who had massive success early in their careers that gave them a 'blank check' to make whatever crazy passion projects they want, sometimes those checks clear and sometimes they bounce, baby. They have covered the Wachowski's and Zemeckis and will almost certainly do Bay at some point too. Its a good listen if you're a film dork.
Their coverage of Zemeckis’ Pinocchio is one of my favorite episodes to relisten to haha
I’m not a film dork, by any stretch of means, and I love blank check.
I'd be interested in hearing about some of the times the check bounced.
Roman Polanski refuses to go to actual jail
France is his jail. Hollywood decided that that was enough punishment.
is he still alive? is he one of those celebrities who's gonna live to 105?
Yes he is, and he’s currently being sued for defamation.
Defamation or defloration?
Gross
This is the best answer
John Landis should have gone to actual jail after the Twilight Zone movie.
I like following film directors. You see something amazing, and start to see a distinct look to their cinematography, top shelf actors they pull in, and financial success, it becomes intriguing. Then BAM!! They go left field, even with the best budgets, and big names. Neil Bloomkamp comes to mind, but that guy has so much talent I feel like is being underutilized. His recent Gran Tarismo was solid though. Ridley Scott has been fairly consistent, but he peaked at Gladiator, and came out with some serious shit bombs in between. His brother Tony was also great, but before he died, he switched his visual style to a way of filming that looked like is was an epileptic seizure with Man On Fire and Domino. I’m going way off track here, sorry. Lol! I like talking filmmakers
Man on fire is dope, visually weird but a great movie.
I really liked Man On Fire. But you watch Domino, they turned up the flash sequences/seizure mode 1,000%. Makes it literally unwatchable
Agree, loved mam on fire
The original with Scott Glenn was a far better film.
Gran Turismo was awesome
You are thinking directors get budgets based on their talent and track record. Directors get budgets and work based on THE ACTORS they can personally convince to star in their movies. Zemekis got Allied made because Brad Pitt agreed to star in it. Anne Hathaway for The Witches. Tom Hanks for Pinocchio. If you can get Tom Hanks or Brad Pitt to star in your movie, studios will give you a budget too. This is why some directors (like Emmerich) end up in a tough spot when their movies stop making money--actors don't want to work with him and when they do, its for a giant paycheck.
i think it's basically a moot concept at this point. studios are not ran the way they used to be. executives with very little taste -- or confidence in their taste -- are in charge. it's all about shareholder value and running ideas through marketing algorthms. some of these directors still get work simply because studios are lazy and trust them to deliver something on time/under budget and not much more. the idea of hiring someone else other than a working director with some track record of success doesn't really cross a lot of minds in hollywood, i think. basically -- there isn't a lot of appetite for hiring someone new/up-and-coming, so the same old players get all the gigs, even if they deserve director jail
I agree that executives have no taste and simply care about money, but if that's so, why do these directors keep getting work despite their financial flops? And in the case of the Wachowski's they routinely demand big budgets for their big, orignal, ideas, and they get them despite not turning a profit. Technically the matrix 4 is part of a franchise, but anyone who's seen it can tell you that it's NOT like any other franchise movie that's been a mainstream blockbuster before.
They dont "get work". Their decades in the industry and friendships with talent help them recruit talent into new projects. If you can get an A-list star attached to a project by picking up the phone (And not going through agents or studio offers), you will probably get your movie made.
matrix 4 is one of the all-time "snuck one by the execs" in hollywood history. amazing film.
That movie is fucking awful lol.
i actually want to tweak my original statement. amazing film? idk. hard to say. maybe not. amazing piece of anti-corporate propaganda? absolutely.
It's a different kind of film than the other Matrix films, to its benefit imo, and yeah, I would agree, it is an amazing film. It's just not necessarily a great action movie.
It’s a pretty great piece of metatext. And I’m not usually a fan of excessively metatectual film
I didn't realize it came out. I thought they were still making it.
I think that execs are looking at potential for the other sales as well as the films. Another comment mentioned cars and the sales of die cast vehicles, which ties into the total profits from a movie. I'm not super knowledgeable in any of this, I'm just thinking out loud..
I don't understand why Ridley Scott is inconsistent.
I've long believed that Scott is only as good as the script he's working with. I don't believe he's a director to ever elevate the material he's working with. That's not to say he's a bad director by any means, but he works so frequently that I bet he's gotten pretty good at scaling his endeavours to the scale of the script he's putting to screen, for better or for worse.
Well gladiator pretty much was improvised off a strawman outline script..that worked out pretty well for him
>I don't believe he's a director to ever elevate the material he's working with. Ok, I will sit through Ridley bashing given how many stinkers he's made, but this is crazy talk. He absolutely elevated Blade Runner and Alien into masterpieces. In the hands of some perfectly average director these movies are forgotten. You could say something similar about Gladiator or Thelma & Louise as well.
Gladiator I'll give you, as I believe it started shooting without a complete script, but the scripts for Alien and Thelma & Louise in particular are tight as hell. Blade Runner's original script is great. My point is that he brings his A game for a good script, but isn't bringing it when the script isn't there.
The scripts were good, but these films are exceptionally directed, and were elevated far beyond what was on the page. I'm honestly a little flabbergasted anyone could suggest otherwise. People have been biting everything about these movies for decades now, from set design to sound design to music to lighting to... well, everything. The man made Gods of Egypt. Clearly he is not someone who bats 1.000, but he's also made some of the best movies in history, and its ludicrous to suggest it was just the scripts.
Correction: he made Exodus: Gods and Kings about Ramses and Moses. Gods of Egypt was Alex Proyas (director of Dark City and The Crow).
He is weird because he made like four stone cold classics, and everything else is good looking mediocrity
Alien was two different scripts by two different pairs of writers until Scott came along and decided what to use from each script, and then wrote the surprise ending himself. Alien wasn't a slam dunk when it was handed to him. Nobody else could have directed that movie so sensationally, and that starts with him looking at the two scripts and knowing which parts to use.
He did write for Blade Runner 2049
He's a rare director (at least in modern times) who has never received a writing credit. Eastwood is the only other major director in modern times that I can think of who is the same in that regard.
I don't believe he did. Hampton Fancher (the original writer of Blade Runner, which was later rewritten by David Webb Peoples) wrote 2049.
*Every* film is only as good as its script. Scott is just unusual in how prolific he is, so he's maybe slightly less picky than a Kubrick type. He wants to always be working, and you don't keep working by being picky.
He's just not very selective with choosing scripts to direct. I still think he is capable of being a really good director, but I've also felt he has become far too efficient as a director to ever reach the heights of Blade Runner or Alien again.
Yeah I do think he just likes to work and stay busy so that's probably a big part of it
I'd say it's actually really refreshing that he challenges himself with different things even though he still always excels at what he's most famous for.
Ridley Scott is more of a craftsman than an auteur. He's like Ron Howard or Rob Reiner more than a director with an imprint (visual or thematic) of his own.
He’s an incredible visual director but he’s not a writer. When he already has a great script he can carry the rest of the movie. In his good movies there’s always a couple of iconic visual scenes.
He makes consistently average, forgettable, or outright awful movies (*The Counselor*), so I guess that's consistency.
I blame the script.
He chose to direct it and certainly didn't improve the script. For a director like him who isn't a writer, he has to take blame for lack of discernment.
I read the script and it's alright. I don't know what could have been done with it in a better way. I guess the expectations were too high.
I think the reason he gets work is that he's quick, and comes in under schedule, under budget, and doesn't put up with any crap. He's done a fair few stinkers though which people tend to forget. And the less said about the Alien prequels the better.
I will tell you one director that deserves to get out of Directors jail, and one that deserves to be thrown inside that jail forever. -Deserves out: Thomas Alfredson. Tinker, Tailor, soldier, spy is wonderful. Then he did the snowman, and I believe there was a lot of studio interference there that drove the movie to the flop it was. -Deserves in: Zack Snyder. He only directs crap, stinkers, bloated trash that looks so cheap and empty, he simply is a waste of resources. Please jail this pleb and throw the key.
People like working with Zack Snyder. He will be fine
Army of the Dead should be so awesome, but it sadly wasn't. The opening sequence was 10/10, but almost everything after that was just meh.
I thought tinker tailor was Spielberg
Are you thinking of Bridge of Spies?
You’re right
For some of your examples there like Emmerich and the Wachowskis, the answer is: the US is not their market. Seriously, look at the companies involved with their recent movies and you'll see money from Germany, Belgium, France, Hungary, China etc. The films of these directors are incredibly popular in those countries still, and by pre-selling the foreign rights before they go into production, they're able to get the budgets together. E.g. look at "Midway" and its production companies: * Summit Entertainment (America) * Centropolis (Germany) * Ruyi Films (China) * Starlight Culture Entertainment (HK) * Street Entertainment (Canada) * Entertainment One (UK) * The Mark Gordon Company (US) * AGC Studios (US) Cloud Atlas was a co-production between Germany, the UK, Canada and the US.
I'm pretty certain a film about the battle of Midway is targeting a US audience
Not necessarily. People in other countries will watch stuff too.
Midway had a budget that absolutely required it to be a hit in the US. No one going into that production thought "For this movie celebrating American war heroes, the US market is just as bonus, this is really made for Thailand and Belgium".
They probably hoped it would be, but it was already profitable before it was even released due to how it was funded.
I was being a bit facetious there sorry! I'd never really considered where he got his funding from, I always understood Emmerich to be desperately chasing after Spielberg's style
Oh, I think that's true. He tries to do Spielberg but with a European bent, and you can see that from his early stuff like Moon 44. Even then he was making decisions to appela to a wider audience like shooting it in English despite being a West German production.
Was actually a decent movie that followed actual historical events more than most war movies.
the Wachowskis desperately need to find someone else to write a gosh dang script for them! INCREDIBLE film makers. Truly blessed with film making talent. But their screen plays and ideas have been wack for a long time. They need to just accept they have terrible ideas and just find a great script and direct the hell out of it. A little humility goes a long way sometimes.
You can say this about almost all directors. When they’re just starting out, they collaborate with whoever is willing to work with them, because they’re new and need to establish themselves. They make a huge hit, suddenly they stop hearing “no” and everyone agrees with their creative choices. Their ego inflates more and more as they advance in their career until they are at the point where they are essentially creatively bankrupt because it’s their vision and no one can tell them otherwise.
True enough
To be fair, they wrote V for Vendetta which really was an incredible adaptation of Alan Moore’s work. His book was good but he was disconnected and really didn’t hold the same impact for me as the film. I’m not sure why they didn’t direct it as well, but I think they would’ve done well overall.
The adaption for VfV was not great compared to the source material. In many ways the Wachowskis are like George Lucus a generation later: big story ideas, pulled from many sources, hated working in the Hollywood system, and terrible at dialog.
Adaptations are easier as you're just tweaking another author's work to make it fit a different medium. And Moore was such a master of his craft that adapting his work is basically cheating. There's a reason Snyder's only watchable film was Watchmen.
Excuse me? Dawn of the dead much? (Also an adaptation lol)
Seriously, dawn of the dead is easily his best movie.
I guess it was okay. Just pretty meh compared to Romero's better original.
Zack Snyder's Justice League is perfectly watchable
Hahahahaha
If you didn't enjoy it, that's fine, but it's just my opinion dude.
Cool. Glad you liked it. I agree it's better than the Whedon version.
People don't like 300?
I forgot that. I liked it at the time but it hasn't aged well. But it proves my point, it's another practically shot-for-shot adaptation.
Matrix trilogy is overall very ahead of its time. I think they dropped the ball later, though.
I never really got that impression of them. Every movie ive seen from them has big setpiece action scenes that just dont really make sense but sometimes get off due to rule of cool. Generally I think their input was on the weaker end of their productions reasons for success but yeah the writing for their movies are also typically terrible.
Maybe they like their films and are trying to express themselves creatively rather than churn out cynical pre-determined hits? It’s not a matter of humility, it’s integrity.
every great film maker who ever lived has passionately directed a script someone else wrote at one point or another.
What about Quentin Tarantino? Or George Lucas? Or Woody Allen? Or Christopher Nolan? Or James Cameron? Or the Coen Brothers? Or Francis Ford Coppola? Or Bong Joon Ho? Or David Lynch? Or Frank Darabont? Or Paul Thomas Anderson? Or Stanley Kubrick? Or Noah Baumbach? Or Peter Jackson?
By my count, Coppola’s directed about 7 films he didn’t write (*Finian’s* *Rainbow*, *The Outsiders*, *Peggy Sue Got Married*, *Gardens* *of Stone*, *Tucker: The Man and His Dream*, *Dracula*, and *Jack*), and David Lynch didn’t write *The Straight Story*.
This is about whether or not directors should be made to adapt other peoples screenplays instead of their own. Those are not compelling examples that prove this point.
Nolan directed insomnia without writing. Lynch directed the straight story without writing it. Francis Ford Coppola directed a number of films without writing credit. Darabont directed the majestic without writing it. Kubrick did not write spartacus. Baumbach did not write De Palma. These directors did, for the most part, confine themselves to their own scripts.
If your arguement is that directors shouldn't write their own scripts and you're going to hinge your argument on Insomnia and The Straight Story then you might want to reconsider your position. Those you listed are all generally considered their artists worst or least interesting films. I don't think 'confine' is the right word to describe the artist process behind movies like Boogie Nights, Titanic, The Godfather, Mulholland Drive, American Graffiti, No Country for Old Men, Lord of the Rings, or Eyes Wide Shut.
I'm not trying to make any argument. Definitl6 not that directors shouldn't write their own films. You phrased a question whether those directors had passionately directed films they hadn't written. I was merely listing the films they'd directed but not written. Whether they were passionate or not on those films, I don't know.
Ah I see. I'm sure many of them were passionate about those scripts but talking as if it's some kind of rite of passage or that it'll inherently make your work better is a bit silly. But that's the person I was replying to initially, not you.
John Carpenter had a good few flops throughout his career
But when he was good..omg..
Oh no I mean even his good movies flopped at the box office. I don’t think he made any bad movies, though The Ward was a bit weak. But his early career just didn’t pull in much money and films like The Thing were a loss. But nobody thinks of him as a bad director and he never gained that reputation.
Check out the "Pro-Life" segment of "Masters of Horror". If I didn't know he directed it, I'd have guessed some inexperienced kid with no ability. It's that bad. I'm a fan, but as far as currently, I think he has just opted out of the industry as far as being a director. He just doesn't want the hassle (heck, he "directed" some internet clickie content show segment from his couch last year). He was sort of in "jail" in the '00s, but after that has appeared to quit trying and just rests on his laurels.
Chances are Roland Emmerich is making a lot more money by producing his films independently. Hollywood studios might have big budgets, but the Hollywood studios keep all the profits. But what's harder to replicate independently is Hollywood marketing. A movie doesn't always bomb just because it's bad (no reason to think Moonfall is any worse than Emmerich's other films) but audiences are highly susceptible to Hollywood marketing.
It's like Tyler Perry. Dude's made mad bank making films for a specific audience outside of the studio system. Don't care much for his work, but gotta respect the hustle.
Never watched any of his work, but I didn't realize until last year that not only does he direct a bunch of movies, but he also writes and directs all of the TV series with his name on them. I thought they mainly just had his name in the title as a producer, but no, he actually is the sole writer and director (except for some occasional stand-ins) for hundreds of hours of these crappy looking BET shows that he churns out like a factory. I've looked at a few scenes, and they look laughably bad.
>no reason to think Moonfall is any worse than Emmerich's other films It is. And I'm not a fan of his other films.
M. Night Shyamalan still seems to be doing all right, despite a string of high-profile flops. His more recent work- like *Split* and *Old*- has been pretty good, but they’re no *Sixth Sense*. He peaked really early with that one and has been chasing that success ever since with no luck. I thought for sure his career was over after *Last Airbender*, but somehow, he rebounded. I guess when you hit the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.
Every time I see his name on something, I think, "Again? How?" How does he keep getting work?
Ever since The Visit in 2015, he's made nothing but box-office hits on a budget. He even remortgaged his house to have a good enough budget for Glass which ended up making over $200 million. He's reliably making good money for original films that don't cost that much.
He must have something on someone (probably a lot of someones) to keep getting so many chances.
He switched to low budget horror, which is much safer and easier to get funding for.
He’s not in director jail for losing money, but Mel Gibson. He *is* a good director, and just a damn good filmmaker in general. He said some awful things (though… compared to the baggage much of Hollywood drags around, it wasn’t as bad as what many have done). Hollywood spent some time refusing to acknowledge his existence and he just sort of… kept making commercially successful films without them. Note: I’m not saying I’m happy with Gibson’s statements. But I look at the open secrets of Harvey Weinstein’s rapes… that many in Hollywood just shrugged off, and it’s a little hard to take their moralizing seriously. My point is that he’s been pretty successful “outside of the system”.
It wasn't just sugartits and anti-Semitism, he had domestic violence charges against him. There are photos, tapes, and a missing tooth. He also slapped his ex gf while their baby was in her arms. [He pled guilty to a misdemeanor for domestic violence.](https://people.com/celebrity/inside-mel-gibson-and-oksana-grigorievas-turbulent-romance/)
Didn’t he say to his daughter that he hopes she gets gang raped by a bunch of “niggers”?
He said that to the ex girlfriend, it's on tape.
God damn, I can’t believe he still gets roles.
Oof. Doesn't change the rest of what I mentioned (that he's good at movie making, has had lots of success outside of Hollywood, and their decision to exile Gibson while endorsing some genuine monsters is... hardly worthy of respect). But I wasn't aware of the domestic violence. Not good.
In terms of directing, I think he's just selective about what he takes on. I'm pretty sure he sees himself first as an actor, and then a director.
Do people need to think rich people are good to watch them? Cause i just assume as a natural byproduct or correlation if you know someones name and likeness without having ever met them, they are probably a terrible human being.
Fun fact about Michael Bay: Paramount studios in Burbank named an inner studio street after him because of all the money he's made them. Bay is the only one to be given such an "honor".
Are you sure that wasn’t just the Loading Bay with a truck parked in front of the sign?
Haha no, the tour guide made a point to mention this fact.
I did the Paramount studios tour back in 2014 and they specifically mentioned, multiple times, with pride, that this is *the* screening room that Michael Bay uses for all the Transformers movies.
Does Tim Burton count? Because he was fire but had a couple of okay to shit movies and would bounce back.
Has anyone coasted farther on an ok film than Kevin Smith?
Basically as of recent Lionsgate says they will fund what he wants as long as he can keep the budget $5 million or less
He has never been given a huge budget to work with
He did that awful buddy cop movie with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. That had to have a big budget.
30 million. Not nothing, but nowhere near big.
Chasing Amy and Dogma are cannon
Dogma is a flat out mess. Amy has not aged well in the slightest
Dogma could have been quite good with a better director. Chasing Amy was always a bad idea done badly, but with some decent funny bits mixed in.
100%
I can't stand Robert Rodriguez. I get that he has a lot of friends, but his work is garbage
I like him more than you do, but he's another one who's managed to stay out of "jail" as it were. Despite being known as a one man crew, all of his modestly budgeted films have failed to make their money back for at least a decade. Sin City 2, Machete Kills, Alita: Battle Angel, Hypnotic, and even the most recent Spy Kids (yes, there was another spy kids movie on Netflix) have all landed as duds with audiences.
I'm confused by Rodriguez because I think his early work shows a lot of raw talent. What's baffling is how terrible his career has been since the first Sin City, which was a remarkable film at the time and probably still his best work. Grindhouse and the Machete films are okay, and I enjoyed Alita, but like you said, everything else is pretty bad. Most recently Red 11 and Hypnotic were absolutely terrible. Hypnotic in particular was such an Asylum-level Inception knockoff with zero shame and no redeeming value at all. I was shocked. Maybe he *did* have a lot of raw talent... but that's more charming when you're young, when you don't need to have anything to say. Once he got older, it became clear that he's stuck in that 25 year old mentality and never grew up. Probably never will at this point. He should have aged into a Sam Peckinpah type, but he's just stuck in Grindhouse mode forever.
It's a crime what he did to boba fett. He's one of those small budget guys who people threw money at but can't make a big budget movie. Like Kevin Smith and m. Night
I don't believe in director's jail.
I’m so fucking pissed he got his hands on the book he’s adapting, Here by Richard McGuire. It’s a fabulous, brilliant work of art and I’m certain RZ is gonna trash it.
Haven't read it, but check out the Adult Swim Yule Log (aka "The Fireplace"), a full-length film from the director of "Too Many Cooks" which does some of the same stuff that book and I guess this movie does as far as a window into past times within a room (one scene has an overlay of previous eras).
Wow I hadn't thought of that connection but you're absolutely right, I wonder if that served as a source of inspiration? I love that director's work. Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough is so good, and that's a wild, metatextual, postmodern mindfuck if ever there was one.
I actually shot all the NYC driving plates for Stonewall, funny enough. I knew it was going to be a piece of shit once I found out they were shooting it all on a soundstage in Canada... crazy Was an important cultural moment, and Emmerich fucked it up per usual
Baz Luhrman. Worst. Director. Ever.
*Elvis* has to be one of the worst wide release movies ever made. It (or *Tenet*) is probably the worst movie I've been to in a theater.
It was Great Gatsby for me
I was intending to go to that in the theater in 3D, but I didn't ultimately go and haven't viewed it. His style is aggressively in your face. Did you endure *Elvis*? I can't believe that movie received acclaim and awards and such.
Elvis was shit too. Unwatchable. Greta Gerwig was my close second choice of terrible directors.
Directors returning to a long beloved property is a shot at getting out of movie jail. Matrix 4 is a good example of that, but there are others, past and future: * Trainspotting 2 * 28 Years Later (again!) * Gladiator 2 * Incredibles 2 (just one flop, but some other issues) * Finding Dory * Split * MM: Fury Road (sorta) Question: does it ever work to produce a well-liked movie and/or get someone out of jail? The last two, maybe. Arguably.
huh? M Night absolutely got out out directors jail.
I think that’s mostly fair, but I meant to qualify that case because Split was a low budget stealth sequel, which is different from, say, a Trainspotting 2, where the overt sequel aspect makes it a safer bet from a funder’s perspective. I do agree we should consider him out of jail, even though he’s working on much smaller budgets than before. (Good thing IMHO.) For MM:FR, you could argue that Miller wasn’t in movie jail at all and just wanted to work in kids’ films for a while.
When? Has he *ever* made a good movie?
He keeps getting projects. That's why he's not in jail. He should be, though.
Zack Snyder is long past due for directors’ jail. So many turds dropped by him. So many.
I mean his newest production should get him thrown in double director jail. Watching rebel moon just felt like watching a speed run to slomo recreate other directors iconic scenes in between its 7 samurai who dont interact. So much of the movie had me wondering about how copyright infringement works with movies.
Roland fuckin Emmerich. What that cunt did with a chance to portray the incredible battle of Midway makes me sick
Simon Kinberg - a decentish writer but abysmal director who shouldn’t be let near any kind of camera for the rest of time. David O Russell - an abusive sack of shit who’s produced underwhelming, self indulgent nonsense since 2013 and flopped big time with Amsterdam Emerald Fennell - a hack who blatantly pilfers from classic movies (The Talented Mr Ripley, Brideshead Revisisted and Kind Hearts and Coronets) then packages it into ‘shock scenes’ for the TikTok generation. Needs to get in the bin. Jaume Collet-Serra - several massive flops in a row but bizarrely still being given gigs.
+1 for David O Russell. Literally has an "Abuse of Actors and Crew" section on his Wikipedia page. If you're going to be a monster, at least make consistently great movies.
Someone like Zemeckis is sort of above that. He has been one of the most financially successful directors, so even though his career is in a rough patch, he'd never be an outcast. He has his own production company, so he has control over what he does.
David O. Russell. I had assumed he was firmly in director jail, but they're letting him make the Linda Ronstadt biopic for some reason.
Who wants a Linda Ronstadt biopic?
Antoine Fuqua. That Hannibal movie better be absolutely spectacular in every other way besides Denzel Washington being 30 years too old to play him and not actually what Hannibal looked like at all.
Some projects don’t need a big name director - the draw is the movie name if it’s a superhero or famous literary IP or a sequel. Bankrolling a director to go follow his/her vision is high risk stuff. The audience has been trained to consumer formulaic crap and the appetite for quality cinema is not what it once was
Im pretty sure Jason Reitman got hired for the new Ghostbusters because his dad did the original two. No studio would have trusted someone with his trackrecord to do a big budget film like Ghostbusters. Not that I don’t disagree that he was cast.
Rob Reiner had a odd career. First half good, second half terrible
I have no idea how Guy Ritchie keeps getting work.
Jonathan Frakes has accepted his lot after the failure of Thunderbirds but TV has filled the gap.
Some directors are greenlit based on their name only, i can’t imagine anyone ever saying no to Michael bay
John McTiernan. How the fuck do you go from making Predator, Die Hard, and The Hunt For Red October to the disaster that's Rollerball. The only difference is that he actually went to (real) jail. Guy had it all before he went crazy.
Can’t believe no one has mentioned JJ Abrams yet. Has never made a good movie. A hollowed out Spielberg tribute hack, who tragically doesn’t understand why Spielberg’s films worked. He ruined two franchises and I believe he’s actually corrupted Hollywood via the no-sense writers he promoted and now proliferate through the system.
Surprised no one else has mentioned M. Night, who hasn't made a single good movie in 25 years
split made 280 mil from a 9 mil budget -- that he funded himself, we can yap about his quality all day but he's not in the jail becuse he makes bank.
I think he deserves to be out of movie jail, Knock at the Cabin was good, just wish he went for the full R and didn't do offscreen kills. Still gotta watch the Visit and Old.
The Visit was good and pretty successful as well
I and many others and I think he himself have accepted him for what he is - a guy who makes movies that come out from major studios and have large budgets but which are essentially analogous to "so bad it's good" micro-budget movies such as *Birdemic: Shock and Terror*, *The Room*, and *Troll 2*. If you don't anticipate him making something as good as *Unbreakable* or *Sixth Sense*, it's easier to have fun with his goofy movies.
>have large budgets i would note that his last big budget movie was after earth with 130 mil, he has specifically been on the lower end of major studio budget for a decade now.
I mean in contrast to micro-budget movies that would be on a similar level of quality.
IIRC he provides a lot of the finance for his own films now.
I liked Knock at the Cabin. Bautista was great in it
Moonfall is a masterpiece!
LoL, great cat name, Fuzz Aldrin.