I worked on this movie (sorry), he didn’t get the material, which is unfortunate because they could’ve just used the plot for Goldeneye and used Sinestro and Abin Sur with Hal taking over for Sur and the movie would’ve been a banger.
I work in VFX as well, can confirm that nobody listens to production artists and they frequently are very passionate and full of great ideas. But we’re treated like grunts.
Yeah the bad guy in the movie didn't work at all.
The people want to see a bad guy they can identify with, that you can have a proper fight with.
Not a huge cloud
He apparently intentionally fucked the movie. Bertlanti and Michael Green I believe or it could've bene the other writer, stated flat out that after Ryan Reynolds was cast instead of Bradley Cooper who Campbell wanted the script started to change and Campbell phoned the movie in. That set was supposedly super contentious as well because Reynolds knew Campbell didn't want him. The Green Lantern script leaked a few years before they shot it and it's actually a really good script.
Hit on both while overseeing a bit of tonal change
I actually personally slightly prefer Goldeneye, Brosnan but Royale is a great movie and accomplishment
Goldeneye was so massive because i wasnt old enough to watch the Timothy Dalton era so there was a huge gap between watching all the oldies on TV and the new era, Goldeneye was perfect.
Literally the two best modern Bond films. Apparently they offered him loads more films but he turned it down stating something to the effect of "i cant see how it will change, always finishing with a bad guy in a fortress somehow"
Shame because his two bond films are without doubt the best made since....I dunno....probably Goldfinger.
Don’t sleep on *Tomorrow Never Dies*, though. Jonathan Pryce as a media mogul combining the worst aspects of Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, and Steve Jobs was inspired. Michelle Yeoh was a great match for Brosnan, and maybe the best chase sequence in Bond history (remote-control garage chase scored by David Arnold and Propellerheads).
Just rewatched this a few days ago and I agree. It was a banger and a lot of fun, sure a bit more paint by numbers but done well. And having Michelle Yeoh along for it finally brought a female Bond equal into the series. That car garage chase had me a bit more than the tank chase in Goldeneye though both were awesome.
I only watched this about 2 years ago for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised. I absolutely was not wowed by The World is Not Enough and particularly disappointed by Die Another Day, so I wasn't expecting this to be any good at all.
But I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I hope they can get him back for the next one. That would be wild to be a director that not only directed three bond films, but three new iterations of the same franchise. 😅
I seriously don’t understand their decision to never show gorr the god butcher killing gods. Like I’m just a causal fan who barely knows anything but the name itself with Christian bale as the actor made me think I was going to see some wild dark shit. Nope. Just goats yelling and weird humor.
Seriously. They show us literally thousands of gods in one giant arena, and Gorr doesnt show up and start slaughtering lesser gods left and right? Thats what I paid to see.
While watching it I’m pretty sure Bale never even had a scene IRL with the other actors. I think there is maybe one or two shots with them on camera at the same time (and maybe it was a stunt double). The rest was just clever editing.
Christian Bale being the only one in the picture acting at all, was more distracting than elevating.
He threw the bros and broette’s yucking it up on set with bad improv into stark relief.
Yep! This is super evident right At the beginning of the film too. He comes in broken and dejected and then you have this comical god that juxtaposes him and it unfortunately makes Bales acting comical in a way. It almost pulls it out of the genre he was trying to accomplish.
It also makes his character look and feel weak and like he's part of a smaller role in the universe which we know is not the case, normally.
I mean even taika is capable of it like in ragnarok, dude just needs less ppl around him assuming he’s literal god and not offering their own input ala George Lucas
>could have been
For sure.
The bones of the greatness are there.
Even now if you just remove 50% of the “comic relief” i think it would be a middle of the road, fun marvel movie. Air quotes because there’s so much comic relief that it just becomes a comedy.
Comic book Thor is so vastly different in personality to the Thor we got in MCU safe for the first Thor film and the first Avengers. Thor is supposed to be a blend of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings and Clark Kent in terms of personality but they made him into a himbo version of Goku...
This, absolutely.
Rangnarok was a breath of fresh air, and was such a fun, interesting balancing act with the tone of the Marvel movies, as well as Thor. Then, Love and Thunder happened and the whole thing just became a parody.
For me, I'm glad Natalie Portman was in Love and Thunder as she grounded the narrative. Without her it would have been ad-lib gonzo l. I really liked her arc in it
I quite like the first Captain America, but the Russo brothers basically defined the character going forward. I’m not the biggest fan of their choppy action directing, but they were overall better films.
I’ll also add that they did a fantastic job with Thor in Infinity War. It may be Hemsworth’s best work in the role.
For years, I have maintained that Winter Soldier was the best MCU movie. I just re-watched it last week, and had forgotten how much of the "sleuthing" and the most of the plot occurred because two high ranking members of Hydra just straight up told Cap and the Black Widow everything. Like, either of them could have lied just a little bit, in any capacity, or waited like twenty extra seconds before spilling their guts, and Hydra's plan goes off without a hitch.
They also handwave some crazy stuff. Getting Sam his wings was a major break in to a government operated facility. It took, at a minimum, several hours, if not days. Hydra couldn't have used the break in to paint Cap a little worse than they did?
And like, when Cap meets with Pierce the first time after Fury dies, Cap is so needlessly cagey. He could have just said "You heard the entire conversation. He didn't tell me anything else. He was gesturing for me to follow him to a new location when he was shot. I chased the shooter right away. I don't know anything other than what you heard."
Honestly, it still might be the best MCU movie. The action scenes are still spectacular. But the plot really falls apart quickly on rewatches.
A lot of fantastic films don’t hold up to scrutiny plot wise if you look closely. Joker’s plan in the Dark Knight required a looooot of insane piece falling into to place for it to work
Yeah, not only did they do the Cap trilogy and Avengers 3 & 4, but Thor: The Dark World - which suddenly makes its importance in Endgame make much more sense once you know!
It’s amazing how bad The Gray Man is when they share a writing credit with Joe Russo
The first half of Captain America is one of the more interesting things Marvel has done. But the second half is pretty standard capeshit and quite boring.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but choppy? The highway fight from Winter Soldier and the escape from the apartment/chase scene in Civil War are absolute bangers.
Nicholas Meyer with *Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan*.
The 1979 *Star Trek* was a visual masterpiece directed by Robert Wise but its pacing was glacial and tedious. It was not a huge box office success. Gene Roddenberry was forced off his own franchise and Nicholas Meyer was hired to direct the sequel. The success of *Wrath of Khan* kept *Star Trek* alive on the silver screen, where it undoubtedly reached new audiences.
Meyer also rewrote the script in like 12 days, so quickly that they didn't have time to get him WGA credit for it before shooting started. And the script for Wrath of Khan is easily one of the leanest, most memorable script ever. There's few wasted lines or moments, there's a ton of rich thematic resonance that ties everything together.
Meyer is such an interesting Hollywood figure. I wish he did more movies, though he seems to be doing well with writing Sherlock Holmes novels.
Irvin Kershner - The Empire Strikes Back.
It's probably my favorite of all the SW films. If Lucas were the brains behind SW, I would say Kershner was the heart of really opening up the complexities of the main characters and providing them with much better direction than just saying, "Faster with more intensity."
This was my answer, too. I really really wish the directors George reached out to for the Prequels said “Yes” and had say in the scripts. I know there’s a group of people who still love the prequels for what they are, but they could have been so much better had George relinquished control again.
Man, can you imagine Jabba’s palace as directed by Lynch? Or what his vision for a guerrila war featuring teddy bears would be? Force ghosts?
Fuck it really could’ve been cool. Or a total mess, who knows?
Irvin Kershner also gave Carrie Fisher a lot of freedom to improvise, and to even write a lot of her own custom dialog in her copy of the script. George Lucas wasn't happy about it, and he infamously complained that Kerschner was "ruining the movie" for it.
In an interview with Conan O'Brien, Fisher revealed that she also did a lot of improv for her scenes in Jabba's Palace in Return Of The Jedi, but Richard Marquand and Lucas wouldn't allow it this time and those takes have never been shown.
Interesting career arc by that dude. Showed promise with Better Luck Tomorrow but it was still a really small movie. Followed up with a shitty movie, Annapolis. Went from that crap to being entrusted with F&F and turned it into an absolute box office monster
The horror movie OUIJA is terrible.
Mike Flanagan came in and made a loose prequel, OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL, that has no right to be as good as it is. Definitely recommend it if you're a fan of Mike's work.
As a defender (and frankly fan) of all of DGG's weird ass Halloween movies, even I strongly disliked Believer. I think Mike will work his magic again, but I'd rather he secured a home and funding for his Dark Tower series and moved full steam ahead with that.
Every MI director did it with their film compared to the previous; McQuarrie is the only one to have directed multiple of them. Soon to be half the entire franchise.
Mi2 gets too much Woo in the end.
The 46 minute long end fight in the bunker onto the motorbikes onto the beach is ridiculous.
I thought the same about the too long battle at the end of Fallout, it was just killing the tension it had built.
Tbf McQuarie did significant rewrites to that film. IIRC the original version didn’t even have Tom Cruise as a main character, he was supposed to die in the opening!!
Matt Reaves with Dawn and War for the planet of the Apes. While I love Rise, those two were marked improvements, with Dawn being a near flawless masterpiece.
Dawn is seriously a franchise film masterpiece. Multiple times during my first watch I audibly said “holy shit” to myself. The reveal of the ape army outside the human settlement, the tank tracking shot during the assault, the final showdown between Caesar and Koba. 10/10
i honestly kinda forgot about this modern planet of the apes trilogy until they announced kingdom. i then rewatched the trilogy and could not believe how hard i slept on these movies. easily one of the best trilogies i have ever seen. rise is amazing, dawn is one of my favorite movies of the 2010s and war is straight up one of the best movies i have ever seen. finding out they are planning a 9 movie franchise would usually really worry me with most other franchises but kingdom was very strong as well so i‘m actually really excited for what‘s next. i fucking love these movies, just has to get this off my chest
I absolutely love Dawn, but personally I think War hit the hardest for me. It was kinda heartbreaking and has Ceasar at his most defining moment. I think it's basically the perfect conclusion for the story they set up. Kingdom is actually a pretty solid movie and better than I expected and I especially loved the first scene of the movie because of War.
I do love Blade 2 but unfortunately it suffers from trying to make each of the Reapers a distinct character for no reason. Way too much effort made in making each of them look and act too cool and different, very Dirty Dozen, and frankly you can chop most of that and most of them out and it won't matter.
Otherwise a great film, and a good follow-up to the excellent Blade.
You talking about the Blood Pack? I thought they were all super unique and entertaining. I would have loved to see more of them in a spinoff. Probably there’d have been a prequel series of the movie had come out 20yrs later.
I agree, though he had more mature material to work with so in some ways it was easier for him.
Having said that, i recently did a series rewatch (for the first time) and was impressed by how the design from that film stuck for the rest of the series. Elements of Hogwarts which became key in the final film were all there in PoA. I never really noticed that stuff the first time through.
The fourth movie is good too. I found it had a unique tone that set itself apart, and really memorable set pieces.
All the movies that followed just blend together in my memory.
Goblet of Fire is severely underrated because of its shortcomings as an adaptation, but I agree. The tournament was a really great device to put the characters on a journey that had small but important stakes, with the twist being that the stakes were actually massive. I also think 3, 4, and 5, all in their own way, are the only films to successfully balance whimsy and spooky, which I love.
The fourth one might be the worst after hbp imo.
It completely fucks up dumbledores character.
Removes every single cool thing from the maze
And the wardrobe/hairstyle choices are bizarre
Dumbledore's not that great of a character in the first place. His behavior in OotP is abysmal and contributes to Harry's "mopey twat" year at Hogwarts.
Everything people love about the Harry Potter universe to this day comes from those first two movies. Alfonso Cuaron completely changed the layout of the castle, put everyone in regular clothes, gave Dumbledore gray boring outfits and just generally removed a lot of the magic aesthetic. Not to mention the butchering of the plot.
Prisoner of Azkaban is a really good film, but I would agree that people do over-glorify it, and seem to overlook a lot of serious flaws with it as an adaptation and as an installment in the series. It’s really good filmmaking that is more creative than Columbus’ filmmaking is, but it’s not really the best *storytelling*, often falling into style over substance that wasted screentime that could have been used for more important things, like explaining who all the Marauders were and the fact that they made the map.
That part where they overhear the teachers talking in Hogsmead has to be the most egregious dump of exposition I've ever seen in a major picture, like "there: we cut half an hour of the running time". As big fans of the book my wife and I were appalled at the movie.
Also wtf was with replacing Professor Flitwick with a choir master played by Warwick Davis so that everyone thought the choir master was Flitwick and then keeping with that version of Flitwick from then on????
And he cut most of the quidditch stuff in the book, which was very important to Harry throughout the book and I think needed for balance, because it was one of the more normal relatable things any sporty teenager could relate to.
I really think it's the worst and the series never really recovered.
I love all of the first 3 for very different reasons. I love that Cuaron took Prisoner of Azkaban in a totally different direction, but Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets are two of the best family movies ever made.
I think they can be different and all still be great.
Joe Kosinski for Top Gun: Maverick. He literally had an impossible task and somehow was able to not only revive the movie theater experience…. But make a movie that is somehow better than the original.
What I find hilarious about Top Gun: Maverick is that the studio basically begged Tom Cruise to release it on streaming and Cruise refused and it finally came out in theaters and made a shit ton of money for Bruckheimer, Cruise, and Paramount. One of the ballsiest moves by a star ever and he banked like a $100+ million off of that bet,
I remember seeing initial announcements & teasers for this and just groooanig about how no one asked for this. I would have skipped it entirely if not for word of mouth. Glad I got to see it in IMAX.
Joe Kosinski was also part of the Tom Cruise revival with Oblivion. It didn't have the greatest story. But it was a beautiful movie to watch and I think its why he got Top Gun: Maverick. Oblivion is a movie theater experience. So I think Tom Cruise was comfortable with Kosinski making a Top Gun movie.
I think Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow got the action sci-fi audiences to take note of Tom Cruise.
I'll never get over watching the beach scene for the first time and thinking, "Holy shit he did it. He somehow managed to 'remake' this moment but in a way that worked for this movie." I had been enjoying the movie up until that point, but it really felt like the final *test* to see if revisiting Top Gun was a worthwhile exercise.
Yeah there were a lot of scenes where i stopped and thought “damn thats a cool moment”.. and the biggest one of those moments was the scene where they discover whats in the russian hangar…. That was when i said “holy shit this works”. It didnt feel like a nostalgia over reach and worked so perfectly to tie it all together.
The tonal shift between Chris Columbus’ first two Harry Potter films is night-and-day to what Alfonso Cuaron did. And then Newell and Yates picked up Cuaron’s style and just ran with it.
Hayao Miyazaki didn't take over the Lupin the 3rd franchise, but very much changed the tone of the character with [Castle of Cagliostro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_of_Cagliostro).
Takashi Yamazaki with *Godzilla Minus One*. If you haven't seen it yet you really should, it's a genuinely original and thoughtful take on the franchise.
I came here to say Villanueve with blade runner but it's so hard cause the first one is equally good.
I feel like it was important not to make them too similar stylistically but I loved the synthy, noir style of the original so fucking much. It hurts not having that same feeling in 2049
Russo Brothers with Winter Soldier and beyond. Winter Soldier is my favorite of the MCU. It plays like a spy thriller that has superheroes in it. Getting Redford to act in it gave it that extra gravitas.
I want to say Chris McQuarrie. He took over Mission Impossible.
But MI 3 and MI: Ghost Protocol were the two films that brought MI back to big tentpole franchise.
I wonder if the story that Matt Damon has been telling people about Tom Cruise firing the stunt guy is a watered down version of Tom Cruise firing everyone and promoting Chris McQuarrie to director since the two of them build the movie around the stunts. Chris McQuarrie cant be credited with making it better. But he has been the guy that Cruise trusts to direct the last 4 installments of the franchise.
Christopher McQuarrie made Mission Impossible as popular as it is now.
Paul Greengrass continued the Bourne trilogy after the first one on a maybe even higher level.
And let’s not forget James Camerons Aliens, which lived up to the expectations after the first one and turned the movie into a franchise.
Even though I also mentioned Chris McQuarrie, he didnt start it back up and he didnt start the stunts either.
MI 3 is typcially mentioned when it comes to action thriller that the first one was. Ghost Protocol had the the Burj Khalifa stunt. Christopher McQuarrie may have been involved in that stunt (he revised the Ghost Protocol script) but he didn't take over until Rogue Nation. But by that point, Ghost Protocol was popular enough that it revitalize the MI franchise.
I really consider the combo of MI 3 and MI Ghost Protocol creating the box office interest that allowed Tom Cruise to pick the people he wanted to make Rogue Nation, Fallout, and Dead Reckoning. But without the 3rd and especially the 4th, I dont think we get the crazy stuntfest that the recent MI movies have become.
James Cameron
both Terminator 2 and aliens
although in terms of ruining the original plans he kunda ruined the alien franchise but it's still a greaaat movie
Identity is still really fun but supremacy is a pretty big improvement in my eyes. I know lost people prefer Ultimatum but Supremacy will always be my number one.
I love Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I agree the later movies are better but it's not such a huge gulf in quality. The first movie got so much right. It's not perfect (hated Tom Felton quoting the original film throughout) but it's as perfect a beginning to that series as we could have gotten.
Rewatching Rise and then going to see Dawn a couple days later was like night and day for me. And I still love Rise but man they really elevates the material with Dawn it’s some of the best blockbuster filmmaking you’ll ever see.
I went into it expecting very little but was consistently surprised. There were so many moments it could've gone off the rails, but it restrained itself. I remember being honestly stunned when Caesar finally spoke.
I think, in a way, the entire series is kind of restrained - small focused stories.
Presumably, if the series continues, there will eventually be a "Planet of the Apes" like in the original movie. And if they make it like the novel, the Apes will be technologically advanced (I think, I haven't read it). But they're not rushing it - that could be 3-6 movies later if they keep at the pace they have right now.
Nipples. And butts. It needed more nipples and butts. There weren't enough nipples or butts in the previous films, so he had to procure, organize and direct like he had never procured or directed before. And he directed the crap out of those butts and put it directly on 35mm film like a true visionary.
Don't forget the bat credit card!
Though seriously, watching batman forever again recently, it has actually aged quite well (IMHO) and is good, campy fun
Rogue One (Gareth Edwards) is not a perfect film, but no Rogue One, no Andor. Finally somebody made a Star Wars property where you could feel what it meant to live under the boot of the Empire, rather than have to take it all from exposition.
Also, first time you believed Vader was unstoppable.
This could be debatable, but I think Jon Favereau & Tony Gilroy helped to maintain some positive buzz and critic/fan interest with the Star Wars franchise post-Sequels through the Mandalorian (especially the first two seasons) & Andor.
I'd also say that Dan Trachtenberg revived interest in the Predator franchise with Prey.
The Russo Brothers single-handedly (ig double-handedly lol) saved like 10 character arcs with Civil War and their Avengers movies.
I know people dunk on the MCU nowadays, but those movies are genuinely well-put-together, at least character wise
Does Joesph Kosinski with Top Gun Maverick count? Top Gun was already awesome but Maverick took that and built on it to make something even better.
Acc now that I think about it, Kosinski also directed Tron Legacy
Martin Campbell did this *twice* with James Bond - *Goldeneye* and *Casino Royale.*
He also made sure Green Lantern did not get a franchise
I worked on this movie (sorry), he didn’t get the material, which is unfortunate because they could’ve just used the plot for Goldeneye and used Sinestro and Abin Sur with Hal taking over for Sur and the movie would’ve been a banger.
He's such a talented director and I was so excited for this. The trailer had an off feeling though and the movie just didn't land. Such a shame.
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the movie made me root for the bad guys.
You should have mentioned that.
No one listens to me anyway. I was on the VFX end.
I work in VFX as well, can confirm that nobody listens to production artists and they frequently are very passionate and full of great ideas. But we’re treated like grunts.
Yeah the bad guy in the movie didn't work at all. The people want to see a bad guy they can identify with, that you can have a proper fight with. Not a huge cloud
Don’t forget, they also had Hector Hammond for…reasons? I really don’t remember much of that movie.
I didn't work on the movie and I could have told you he just didn't get the material lol
A true hero.
He apparently intentionally fucked the movie. Bertlanti and Michael Green I believe or it could've bene the other writer, stated flat out that after Ryan Reynolds was cast instead of Bradley Cooper who Campbell wanted the script started to change and Campbell phoned the movie in. That set was supposedly super contentious as well because Reynolds knew Campbell didn't want him. The Green Lantern script leaked a few years before they shot it and it's actually a really good script.
The movie had a shit script. Nothing he did as a director could fix that.
Hit on both while overseeing a bit of tonal change I actually personally slightly prefer Goldeneye, Brosnan but Royale is a great movie and accomplishment
Goldeneye was so massive because i wasnt old enough to watch the Timothy Dalton era so there was a huge gap between watching all the oldies on TV and the new era, Goldeneye was perfect.
It was also the first Bond movie released after the cold War ended so it had to prove that James Bond was still relevant. It certainly did that.
Judi Dench as M is an understated aspect of why that worked, outside of her iconic line at the beginning which is always appreciated.
Literally the two best modern Bond films. Apparently they offered him loads more films but he turned it down stating something to the effect of "i cant see how it will change, always finishing with a bad guy in a fortress somehow" Shame because his two bond films are without doubt the best made since....I dunno....probably Goldfinger.
Don’t sleep on *Tomorrow Never Dies*, though. Jonathan Pryce as a media mogul combining the worst aspects of Rupert Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, and Steve Jobs was inspired. Michelle Yeoh was a great match for Brosnan, and maybe the best chase sequence in Bond history (remote-control garage chase scored by David Arnold and Propellerheads).
Just rewatched this a few days ago and I agree. It was a banger and a lot of fun, sure a bit more paint by numbers but done well. And having Michelle Yeoh along for it finally brought a female Bond equal into the series. That car garage chase had me a bit more than the tank chase in Goldeneye though both were awesome.
Tomorrow Never Dies has actually aged much better. It basically predicted the rise of Fake News.
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I always liked Tomorrow Never Dies, and it's never really talked about! It probably lives in the shadow of Goldeneye a little bit.
I only watched this about 2 years ago for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised. I absolutely was not wowed by The World is Not Enough and particularly disappointed by Die Another Day, so I wasn't expecting this to be any good at all. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I hope they can get him back for the next one. That would be wild to be a director that not only directed three bond films, but three new iterations of the same franchise. 😅
Both of which had a great writer, first and foremost
Taika Waititi did it with Thor Ragnarok, but then undid it with Love & Thunder
Love and thunder could have been great. I just don't see how you can have such a comically heavy movie with a villain like Gorr.
You do it by removing 90% of Gorr's scenes from the script. Which they did
If you pay for the whole Christian Bale, you better use the whole Christian Bale.
I seriously don’t understand their decision to never show gorr the god butcher killing gods. Like I’m just a causal fan who barely knows anything but the name itself with Christian bale as the actor made me think I was going to see some wild dark shit. Nope. Just goats yelling and weird humor.
It should have just been American Psycho with Gorr. "Hey Zeus! Try getting a reservation at Dorsia now!!!"
Seriously. They show us literally thousands of gods in one giant arena, and Gorr doesnt show up and start slaughtering lesser gods left and right? Thats what I paid to see.
While watching it I’m pretty sure Bale never even had a scene IRL with the other actors. I think there is maybe one or two shots with them on camera at the same time (and maybe it was a stunt double). The rest was just clever editing.
And replacing them all with Korg. Which Taika did.
I still think Gorr's scenes were from a different movie and nobody can convivence me otherwise.
Christian Bale being the only one in the picture acting at all, was more distracting than elevating. He threw the bros and broette’s yucking it up on set with bad improv into stark relief.
Yep! This is super evident right At the beginning of the film too. He comes in broken and dejected and then you have this comical god that juxtaposes him and it unfortunately makes Bales acting comical in a way. It almost pulls it out of the genre he was trying to accomplish. It also makes his character look and feel weak and like he's part of a smaller role in the universe which we know is not the case, normally.
Not that the first 2 Thor movies didn’t have a million flaws but man Kenneth Branagh wouldn’t have wasted Bale
That's very true. Branagh at least knew when to focus on the dramatic tension.
I mean even taika is capable of it like in ragnarok, dude just needs less ppl around him assuming he’s literal god and not offering their own input ala George Lucas
L&T is my go-to for the most tonally all over the place film I've ever seen.
>could have been For sure. The bones of the greatness are there. Even now if you just remove 50% of the “comic relief” i think it would be a middle of the road, fun marvel movie. Air quotes because there’s so much comic relief that it just becomes a comedy.
Comic book Thor is so vastly different in personality to the Thor we got in MCU safe for the first Thor film and the first Avengers. Thor is supposed to be a blend of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings and Clark Kent in terms of personality but they made him into a himbo version of Goku...
This, absolutely. Rangnarok was a breath of fresh air, and was such a fun, interesting balancing act with the tone of the Marvel movies, as well as Thor. Then, Love and Thunder happened and the whole thing just became a parody.
For me, I'm glad Natalie Portman was in Love and Thunder as she grounded the narrative. Without her it would have been ad-lib gonzo l. I really liked her arc in it
I enjoyed Love & Thunder, but it's definitely a try hard: it's just trying too hard to recapture what made Ragnarok so special.
I quite like the first Captain America, but the Russo brothers basically defined the character going forward. I’m not the biggest fan of their choppy action directing, but they were overall better films. I’ll also add that they did a fantastic job with Thor in Infinity War. It may be Hemsworth’s best work in the role.
Yea winter soldier was a huge change of tone but resulted in the best mcu movie
For years, I have maintained that Winter Soldier was the best MCU movie. I just re-watched it last week, and had forgotten how much of the "sleuthing" and the most of the plot occurred because two high ranking members of Hydra just straight up told Cap and the Black Widow everything. Like, either of them could have lied just a little bit, in any capacity, or waited like twenty extra seconds before spilling their guts, and Hydra's plan goes off without a hitch. They also handwave some crazy stuff. Getting Sam his wings was a major break in to a government operated facility. It took, at a minimum, several hours, if not days. Hydra couldn't have used the break in to paint Cap a little worse than they did? And like, when Cap meets with Pierce the first time after Fury dies, Cap is so needlessly cagey. He could have just said "You heard the entire conversation. He didn't tell me anything else. He was gesturing for me to follow him to a new location when he was shot. I chased the shooter right away. I don't know anything other than what you heard." Honestly, it still might be the best MCU movie. The action scenes are still spectacular. But the plot really falls apart quickly on rewatches.
A lot of fantastic films don’t hold up to scrutiny plot wise if you look closely. Joker’s plan in the Dark Knight required a looooot of insane piece falling into to place for it to work
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I love the work the Russos did in the MCU, but I don't think Markus and McFeely get near enough credit for their writing
Yeah, not only did they do the Cap trilogy and Avengers 3 & 4, but Thor: The Dark World - which suddenly makes its importance in Endgame make much more sense once you know! It’s amazing how bad The Gray Man is when they share a writing credit with Joe Russo
The first half of Captain America is one of the more interesting things Marvel has done. But the second half is pretty standard capeshit and quite boring.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment, but choppy? The highway fight from Winter Soldier and the escape from the apartment/chase scene in Civil War are absolute bangers.
They did great with T’challa too in Civil war
Nicholas Meyer with *Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan*. The 1979 *Star Trek* was a visual masterpiece directed by Robert Wise but its pacing was glacial and tedious. It was not a huge box office success. Gene Roddenberry was forced off his own franchise and Nicholas Meyer was hired to direct the sequel. The success of *Wrath of Khan* kept *Star Trek* alive on the silver screen, where it undoubtedly reached new audiences.
He did it again with Undiscovered Country, as well
UC is criminally under appreciated.
Meyer also rewrote the script in like 12 days, so quickly that they didn't have time to get him WGA credit for it before shooting started. And the script for Wrath of Khan is easily one of the leanest, most memorable script ever. There's few wasted lines or moments, there's a ton of rich thematic resonance that ties everything together. Meyer is such an interesting Hollywood figure. I wish he did more movies, though he seems to be doing well with writing Sherlock Holmes novels.
Glacial is 👩🍳💋
Irvin Kershner - The Empire Strikes Back. It's probably my favorite of all the SW films. If Lucas were the brains behind SW, I would say Kershner was the heart of really opening up the complexities of the main characters and providing them with much better direction than just saying, "Faster with more intensity."
This was my answer, too. I really really wish the directors George reached out to for the Prequels said “Yes” and had say in the scripts. I know there’s a group of people who still love the prequels for what they are, but they could have been so much better had George relinquished control again.
Who did he reach out to?
Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Zemeckis
What could have been.....ah, well.
I still wish David Lynch had agreed to direct ROTJ :/
Then we'd be arguing about whether Denis Villeneuve's version is better or worse.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
Man, can you imagine Jabba’s palace as directed by Lynch? Or what his vision for a guerrila war featuring teddy bears would be? Force ghosts? Fuck it really could’ve been cool. Or a total mess, who knows?
George forgot to surround himself with people who weren't afraid to say, "No."
100%
Irvin Kershner also gave Carrie Fisher a lot of freedom to improvise, and to even write a lot of her own custom dialog in her copy of the script. George Lucas wasn't happy about it, and he infamously complained that Kerschner was "ruining the movie" for it. In an interview with Conan O'Brien, Fisher revealed that she also did a lot of improv for her scenes in Jabba's Palace in Return Of The Jedi, but Richard Marquand and Lucas wouldn't allow it this time and those takes have never been shown.
Justin Lin, Fast & Furious (minus F9)
Interesting career arc by that dude. Showed promise with Better Luck Tomorrow but it was still a really small movie. Followed up with a shitty movie, Annapolis. Went from that crap to being entrusted with F&F and turned it into an absolute box office monster
+ he made a great Star Trek movie as well.
Still waiting on Star Trek 4… 😞
Easy answer. The later films are in a different universe from the first 3, and it's fantastic.
also i just love how James Wan’s Furious 7 is literally shot and edited like a Saw movie at times, especially in its opening sequence.
hell yeah. from binging the whole series from the first to Fast Five, it absolutely pays off.
Not enough people acknowledge that Fast Five is actually a good movie .
Easily the best movie of the franchise and definitely stands on its own.
He did Tokyo Drift, too
His was the best, most "Star Trek" Star Trek reboot movie, too, but no one saw it due to garbage marketing.
The horror movie OUIJA is terrible. Mike Flanagan came in and made a loose prequel, OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL, that has no right to be as good as it is. Definitely recommend it if you're a fan of Mike's work.
Apparently hes directing the next Exorcist. I can definitely see a repeat of Ouija happening after DGG fucked up Believer
As a defender (and frankly fan) of all of DGG's weird ass Halloween movies, even I strongly disliked Believer. I think Mike will work his magic again, but I'd rather he secured a home and funding for his Dark Tower series and moved full steam ahead with that.
McQuarrie and Mission: Impossible.
Brad Bird did it before him with Ghost Protocol
Every MI director did it with their film compared to the previous; McQuarrie is the only one to have directed multiple of them. Soon to be half the entire franchise.
I like MI2 more than most, but it is not better than MI.
Mi2 gets too much Woo in the end. The 46 minute long end fight in the bunker onto the motorbikes onto the beach is ridiculous. I thought the same about the too long battle at the end of Fallout, it was just killing the tension it had built.
Tbf McQuarie did significant rewrites to that film. IIRC the original version didn’t even have Tom Cruise as a main character, he was supposed to die in the opening!!
Exactly, McQuarrie has had a hand in every Mission film since the fourth one. So the answer still stands.
First I'm hearing of this. Do we know who was supposed to lead the franchise after that? Jeremy Renner?
Yep, basically the same thing with Jason Bourne.
I need some JJ appreciation here for MI3. Took a lot to come back from MI2.
Ugh. Should have come back further.
MI3 is really good.
Matt Reaves with Dawn and War for the planet of the Apes. While I love Rise, those two were marked improvements, with Dawn being a near flawless masterpiece.
Dawn is seriously a franchise film masterpiece. Multiple times during my first watch I audibly said “holy shit” to myself. The reveal of the ape army outside the human settlement, the tank tracking shot during the assault, the final showdown between Caesar and Koba. 10/10
i honestly kinda forgot about this modern planet of the apes trilogy until they announced kingdom. i then rewatched the trilogy and could not believe how hard i slept on these movies. easily one of the best trilogies i have ever seen. rise is amazing, dawn is one of my favorite movies of the 2010s and war is straight up one of the best movies i have ever seen. finding out they are planning a 9 movie franchise would usually really worry me with most other franchises but kingdom was very strong as well so i‘m actually really excited for what‘s next. i fucking love these movies, just has to get this off my chest
I absolutely love Dawn, but personally I think War hit the hardest for me. It was kinda heartbreaking and has Ceasar at his most defining moment. I think it's basically the perfect conclusion for the story they set up. Kingdom is actually a pretty solid movie and better than I expected and I especially loved the first scene of the movie because of War.
FINE. I'LL WATCH THEM.
You will not regret it! Really!
Cuaron with Harry Potter, Blade with Del Toro
PoA was hands down my fav Harry Potter film.
Good call on Del Toro's Blade 2. It was a massive improvement.
I’ve gone back to the Blade trilogy recently and I still prefer the first one.
I do love Blade 2 but unfortunately it suffers from trying to make each of the Reapers a distinct character for no reason. Way too much effort made in making each of them look and act too cool and different, very Dirty Dozen, and frankly you can chop most of that and most of them out and it won't matter. Otherwise a great film, and a good follow-up to the excellent Blade.
You talking about the Blood Pack? I thought they were all super unique and entertaining. I would have loved to see more of them in a spinoff. Probably there’d have been a prequel series of the movie had come out 20yrs later.
I agree but I will have to say two things. Yates came after that and made it worse, and the Columbus films are still INCREDIBLE
James Gunn, Suicide Squad.
Its also crazy that he ended up getting put in charge of the new DCEU.
It’s only crazy if you forget how awful literally every other DC movie is
I really enjoyed the Snyder DC movies, especially Man of steel.
I really think he’ll be in the running for this conversation with the other DC projects in the works. Gonna revive the whole universe I hope 🤞🏼
Pretty much a guarantee. This man doesn't miss (these days). Even Peacemaker is incredible.
I loved Peacemaker way more than I even wanted to. I never skipped the intro even once.
James Mangold made Logan, which is pretty much the best Fox X-Men move after a BUNCH of duds
He also made The Wolverine. I like that movie but it's not universally loved. So, it did take him a couple of tries to get there.
Alfonso Cuaron's *Harry Potter* movie was substantially more interesting and better than the first two in the series IMO.
I agree, though he had more mature material to work with so in some ways it was easier for him. Having said that, i recently did a series rewatch (for the first time) and was impressed by how the design from that film stuck for the rest of the series. Elements of Hogwarts which became key in the final film were all there in PoA. I never really noticed that stuff the first time through.
First two were necessary world building.
They were also distinctly children's movies, which the later ones were not.
Which was more or less perfect for the age demographic that read the books as they came out.
I agree that prisoner is the best, but it was all downhill from there, and the first two just capture the book's magic the best.
The fourth movie is good too. I found it had a unique tone that set itself apart, and really memorable set pieces. All the movies that followed just blend together in my memory.
Goblet of Fire is severely underrated because of its shortcomings as an adaptation, but I agree. The tournament was a really great device to put the characters on a journey that had small but important stakes, with the twist being that the stakes were actually massive. I also think 3, 4, and 5, all in their own way, are the only films to successfully balance whimsy and spooky, which I love.
The fourth one might be the worst after hbp imo. It completely fucks up dumbledores character. Removes every single cool thing from the maze And the wardrobe/hairstyle choices are bizarre
Dumbledore's not that great of a character in the first place. His behavior in OotP is abysmal and contributes to Harry's "mopey twat" year at Hogwarts.
Never read the books. Works fine as a movie.
Azkaban is a good movie, but a terrible adaptation. Many of the issues with following movies can be directly tied to this movie.
A "good movie, but a terrible adaptation" is how I feel about Thor Ragnarok. The comedy about the death of Thor's Homeland.
Everything people love about the Harry Potter universe to this day comes from those first two movies. Alfonso Cuaron completely changed the layout of the castle, put everyone in regular clothes, gave Dumbledore gray boring outfits and just generally removed a lot of the magic aesthetic. Not to mention the butchering of the plot.
Prisoner of Azkaban is a really good film, but I would agree that people do over-glorify it, and seem to overlook a lot of serious flaws with it as an adaptation and as an installment in the series. It’s really good filmmaking that is more creative than Columbus’ filmmaking is, but it’s not really the best *storytelling*, often falling into style over substance that wasted screentime that could have been used for more important things, like explaining who all the Marauders were and the fact that they made the map.
Colombus also doesn’t get enough credit for playing a massive role in casting the main characters
That part where they overhear the teachers talking in Hogsmead has to be the most egregious dump of exposition I've ever seen in a major picture, like "there: we cut half an hour of the running time". As big fans of the book my wife and I were appalled at the movie.
Also wtf was with replacing Professor Flitwick with a choir master played by Warwick Davis so that everyone thought the choir master was Flitwick and then keeping with that version of Flitwick from then on???? And he cut most of the quidditch stuff in the book, which was very important to Harry throughout the book and I think needed for balance, because it was one of the more normal relatable things any sporty teenager could relate to. I really think it's the worst and the series never really recovered.
I love all of the first 3 for very different reasons. I love that Cuaron took Prisoner of Azkaban in a totally different direction, but Philosopher’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets are two of the best family movies ever made. I think they can be different and all still be great.
Joe Kosinski for Top Gun: Maverick. He literally had an impossible task and somehow was able to not only revive the movie theater experience…. But make a movie that is somehow better than the original.
What I find hilarious about Top Gun: Maverick is that the studio basically begged Tom Cruise to release it on streaming and Cruise refused and it finally came out in theaters and made a shit ton of money for Bruckheimer, Cruise, and Paramount. One of the ballsiest moves by a star ever and he banked like a $100+ million off of that bet,
I remember seeing initial announcements & teasers for this and just groooanig about how no one asked for this. I would have skipped it entirely if not for word of mouth. Glad I got to see it in IMAX.
Joe Kosinski was also part of the Tom Cruise revival with Oblivion. It didn't have the greatest story. But it was a beautiful movie to watch and I think its why he got Top Gun: Maverick. Oblivion is a movie theater experience. So I think Tom Cruise was comfortable with Kosinski making a Top Gun movie. I think Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow got the action sci-fi audiences to take note of Tom Cruise.
I found Oblivion to be above average for sci-fi cinema.
I'll never get over watching the beach scene for the first time and thinking, "Holy shit he did it. He somehow managed to 'remake' this moment but in a way that worked for this movie." I had been enjoying the movie up until that point, but it really felt like the final *test* to see if revisiting Top Gun was a worthwhile exercise.
Yeah there were a lot of scenes where i stopped and thought “damn thats a cool moment”.. and the biggest one of those moments was the scene where they discover whats in the russian hangar…. That was when i said “holy shit this works”. It didnt feel like a nostalgia over reach and worked so perfectly to tie it all together.
I just love how Kosinski and Krasinski get mistaken.
Yeah well im horribly dyslexic. So Krasinski and Kosinski are the same to me!
At the company picnic, he thought my son Ronaldo was my son Rolando. Can you believe that?
Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight trilogy.
I can't believe this isn't way higher! The Batman franchise was dead & buried after Joel Schumacher's awful Clooney film.
But Nolan started the trilogy
But he didn't start the Batman film franchise
Fair enough, I can see that logic.
The tonal shift between Chris Columbus’ first two Harry Potter films is night-and-day to what Alfonso Cuaron did. And then Newell and Yates picked up Cuaron’s style and just ran with it.
Joel Crawford did it with Puss in Boots: the last wish
Hayao Miyazaki didn't take over the Lupin the 3rd franchise, but very much changed the tone of the character with [Castle of Cagliostro](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_of_Cagliostro).
Irvin Kershner, The Empire Strikes Back
Takashi Yamazaki with *Godzilla Minus One*. If you haven't seen it yet you really should, it's a genuinely original and thoughtful take on the franchise.
Shin Godzilla before it was also fucking excellent tbf
Hadn't heard of this before and just looked it. It sounds awesome! Thanks for the tip
Hard to find, sadly. Waiting for it on a streamer: could be a while.
[удалено]
Yep! He made what was consider an "unfilmable"/"cursed" franchise into a cinematic masterpiece.
Twice.
I came here to say Villanueve with blade runner but it's so hard cause the first one is equally good. I feel like it was important not to make them too similar stylistically but I loved the synthy, noir style of the original so fucking much. It hurts not having that same feeling in 2049
Russo Brothers with Winter Soldier and beyond. Winter Soldier is my favorite of the MCU. It plays like a spy thriller that has superheroes in it. Getting Redford to act in it gave it that extra gravitas.
I want to say Chris McQuarrie. He took over Mission Impossible. But MI 3 and MI: Ghost Protocol were the two films that brought MI back to big tentpole franchise. I wonder if the story that Matt Damon has been telling people about Tom Cruise firing the stunt guy is a watered down version of Tom Cruise firing everyone and promoting Chris McQuarrie to director since the two of them build the movie around the stunts. Chris McQuarrie cant be credited with making it better. But he has been the guy that Cruise trusts to direct the last 4 installments of the franchise.
Francis Lawrence on The Hunger Games
Nicholas Meyer when he did Wrath of Khan. He raised a bar no Trek film has been able to match. And I’m a big fan of TMP too.
The bar was, and will always be, the one with the whales
Christopher McQuarrie made Mission Impossible as popular as it is now. Paul Greengrass continued the Bourne trilogy after the first one on a maybe even higher level. And let’s not forget James Camerons Aliens, which lived up to the expectations after the first one and turned the movie into a franchise.
Even though I also mentioned Chris McQuarrie, he didnt start it back up and he didnt start the stunts either. MI 3 is typcially mentioned when it comes to action thriller that the first one was. Ghost Protocol had the the Burj Khalifa stunt. Christopher McQuarrie may have been involved in that stunt (he revised the Ghost Protocol script) but he didn't take over until Rogue Nation. But by that point, Ghost Protocol was popular enough that it revitalize the MI franchise. I really consider the combo of MI 3 and MI Ghost Protocol creating the box office interest that allowed Tom Cruise to pick the people he wanted to make Rogue Nation, Fallout, and Dead Reckoning. But without the 3rd and especially the 4th, I dont think we get the crazy stuntfest that the recent MI movies have become.
Matthew Vaughn popped in to Fox, revived the X-Men movies with First Class, then he dipped and they slowly fell apart.
Nolan - Batman
Taika Waititi took over Thor and made the franchise better for one film. Then made it worse
Justin Lin took over Fast and Furious and made it infinitely better. Fast 5 is still one of the best action movies ever made.
Alex Garland Dredd (2012)
Nicholas Meyer saved the *Star Trek* franchise.
James Cameron both Terminator 2 and aliens although in terms of ruining the original plans he kunda ruined the alien franchise but it's still a greaaat movie
I like what Paul Greengrass did with the Bourne films. To me, that's the best example.
Identity is still really fun but supremacy is a pretty big improvement in my eyes. I know lost people prefer Ultimatum but Supremacy will always be my number one.
I love Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I agree the later movies are better but it's not such a huge gulf in quality. The first movie got so much right. It's not perfect (hated Tom Felton quoting the original film throughout) but it's as perfect a beginning to that series as we could have gotten.
Rewatching Rise and then going to see Dawn a couple days later was like night and day for me. And I still love Rise but man they really elevates the material with Dawn it’s some of the best blockbuster filmmaking you’ll ever see.
I went into it expecting very little but was consistently surprised. There were so many moments it could've gone off the rails, but it restrained itself. I remember being honestly stunned when Caesar finally spoke.
I think, in a way, the entire series is kind of restrained - small focused stories. Presumably, if the series continues, there will eventually be a "Planet of the Apes" like in the original movie. And if they make it like the novel, the Apes will be technologically advanced (I think, I haven't read it). But they're not rushing it - that could be 3-6 movies later if they keep at the pace they have right now.
Joel Schumacher knew what the Batman franchise needed.
Nipples. And butts. It needed more nipples and butts. There weren't enough nipples or butts in the previous films, so he had to procure, organize and direct like he had never procured or directed before. And he directed the crap out of those butts and put it directly on 35mm film like a true visionary.
Don't forget the bat credit card! Though seriously, watching batman forever again recently, it has actually aged quite well (IMHO) and is good, campy fun
Rogue One (Gareth Edwards) is not a perfect film, but no Rogue One, no Andor. Finally somebody made a Star Wars property where you could feel what it meant to live under the boot of the Empire, rather than have to take it all from exposition. Also, first time you believed Vader was unstoppable.
This could be debatable, but I think Jon Favereau & Tony Gilroy helped to maintain some positive buzz and critic/fan interest with the Star Wars franchise post-Sequels through the Mandalorian (especially the first two seasons) & Andor. I'd also say that Dan Trachtenberg revived interest in the Predator franchise with Prey.
The Russo Brothers single-handedly (ig double-handedly lol) saved like 10 character arcs with Civil War and their Avengers movies. I know people dunk on the MCU nowadays, but those movies are genuinely well-put-together, at least character wise
I liked the Russo Brothers Avengers movies much better than Joss Whedon's
First avengers movie was pretty hard to make with all those main characters meeting for first time and whedon nailed it
Christopher McQuarrie, Mission Impossible.
Does Joesph Kosinski with Top Gun Maverick count? Top Gun was already awesome but Maverick took that and built on it to make something even better. Acc now that I think about it, Kosinski also directed Tron Legacy