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The undeniable truth is that a film is only as good as its director. Need proof? The Star Wars prequels. There. Now pipe down.
Okay, so it’s become lazy
and a cliché in itself to attack those films, but the fact still remains that
very rarely do bad directors churn out decent films. George Lucas, for anyone
who has both eyes open, is the epitome of this rule. The Star Wars prequels are pitiful; badly directed, awfully written and,
with the exception of Samuel L. Jackson and, to a certain extent, Ewan
McGregor, woefully casted. I mean, who watched Hayden Christensen and thought
“yes”?
For all I inexorably
adore the Star Wars universe, which
is tantamount to dangerous obsession, it cannot be denied by anyone who has
watched the original trilogy that The
Empire Strikes Back is the greatest episode of the saga. Second place is up
for grabs, but for me, Return of the Jedi
pips A New Hope considerably. And
what do the top two have in common? Neither were written or directed by George
Lucas. Creating the story, as Lucas did, is one thing, but turning that into a
120-page screenplay and then a two-hour feature film, is quite another.
For those of you still
on the Lucas express, my final parting comment would be to keep an eye on A New Hope’s editing. A New Hope is appallingly directed, but
very well edited. To a certain extent, I can sympathise somewhat with Lucas’
struggle to create A New Hope. With
studio executives breathing down his neck and threatening to pull the plug
everyday of production, it’s a wonder anything got released at all. But the
fact still remains that the clear presentation of Lucas’ dreadful directing
abilities were saved by his editing team, who turned Lucas’ turgid, sluggish scenes into
zippy, vitalized episodes.
Worse than his
directing, however, is his writing ability, which, it must be said, has
considerably worsened with time. Clearly no-one told George that to develop and
explain the plot, you don’t have to have all of the characters standing in a
semi-circle explaining everything that has just happened and how this may, or
may not, have grave implications for the future.
Remove the unnecessary
diplomatic conversations (that do nothing to illustrate the fall of Anakin,
which is apparently the purpose of the prequels) and you can condense three
overly long, pathetic and empty films into one two-hour episode of a pod race,
a clone war, an Obi-Wan/Anakin lightsaber fight and a Vader suit being fitted.
Stars. Credits. The
End. Roll on the original trilogy. Goodnight, God bless.
Star Wars rant over, let’s move
on to other suitably terrible directors. Next on the list, Michael Bay. Now
there is absolutely, categorically, no excuse for liking Michael Bay or anything
he has ever produced. Absolutely none. I won’t even entertain the notion.
Michael Bay revels in his rightfully awarded mantle of the anti-christ of the
film industry. He is proof that millions of Hollywood dollars can’t always buy
you a decent film. Just because people paid, doesn’t mean they enjoyed it.
For those unfamiliar
with Bay’s staggeringly poor back catalogue, he’s responsible for the monstrous
Transformers films, Armageddon, Pearl Harbour, The Bad Boys
films and The Island.
For a filmmaker to spend more time at a computer in post-production than being involved heavily in character development in initial script meetings seems, and indeed is, ridiculous. No one enjoyed those films. Some might think they do, but they’re wrong. They have fallen victim to what the BBC’s Mark Kermode calls “diminished expectations.”
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| Michael Bay |
For a filmmaker to spend more time at a computer in post-production than being involved heavily in character development in initial script meetings seems, and indeed is, ridiculous. No one enjoyed those films. Some might think they do, but they’re wrong. They have fallen victim to what the BBC’s Mark Kermode calls “diminished expectations.”
His pornographic
sensibility, alongside his love for CGI explosions and robot fights (almost as
fetishised as Tarantino’s n-word obsession) is slowly destroying the film
industry. But I suppose Bay fans probably also like 3-D, so they’ll be in one
place when we hunt them down as part of the anti-3-D revolution – coming soon
to a multiplex near you.
But we can’t talk
about destroying the film industry without bringing in the veritable Adams
Family of putrid films: the Wayans Brothers. The list of their ranks seems to
grow everyday and is almost as horrific as their filmography. We have to hold
the Wayans responsible for the Scary
Movie franchise, Dance Flick, White Chicks and Little Man, amongst several other genuinely offensively bad films
that at least one member of the family has been involved in, either as director,
producer or writer.
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| Little Man |
It’s cheap, crass,
unfunny, lowest common denominator humour, which, if we’re not careful, could very
well be the norm for the foreseeable future.
If that’s the case,
the future has us all speaking Mandarin and laughing mechanically at films
involving a man’s head being superimposed onto a baby’s body in order to
validate breast-feeding jokes.
That doesn’t sound
like any future I want to be a part of.
