Why is Paul W.S. Anderson such a polarizing filmmaker? Is he a bad filmmaker that is bad at the job of making movies, or is it more of a Rian Johnson situation where he came in and stomped all over multiple existing IPs and made nerds mad? I don't remember people hating Rian Johnson before he made Star Wars, and I don't remember people hating Paul W.S. Anderson before he made Resident Evil. I also don't remember the hatred for Michael Bay being super intense until he made Transformers. And I don't remember Zack Snyder hatred being super intense until he made Man of Steel. So... You gotta wonder.
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>make shit movies
>people dislike them
>make really shit movies
>people dislike them more
It's not rocket science.
In Michael Bay's case, people loved his Transformers movies, though. Even 2, which he called "crap". Yet there was this intense hatred for him and his filmmaking that might have existed in the The Rock or Bad Boys stage, but I don't remember it being as strong.
>people loved his Transformers movies
No they did not, WTF.
loved his Transformers movies
nta, I saw the transformers fans seethe, I saw the bay bad crowd shit on it but I also saw tonnes of normalgays who enjoyed them too.
So I can see where they're coming from.
>people loved his Transformers movies
no they didn't
I'm not gonna claim Michael Bay is a great director or something, but theres a reason he made big blockbusters while Paul WS Anderson was stuck making glorified B movies.
Also I remember everyone over the age of 20 hated the transformers movies, the praise in recent years is because zoomers like me watched them as kids and because marvel slop lowered the bar so much that transformers looks cool by comparison. And Michael Bay is right btw about the second one being complete shit.
>Also I remember everyone over the age of 20 hated the transformers movies
The only people I remember who hated the Transformers movies were fans of the original cartoon who would be... what, in their 30s? Even Roger Ebert of all people liked the first Transformers movie.
I remember everyones parents and all my teachers thinking they were dumb obnoxious movies and complaining abour how kids will like anything with giant robots and explosions.
Honestly, the odd thing about Transformers was Michael Bay taking his violence and sexuality from Bad Boys and transplanting it into films that people were going to interpret as kid's movies. I don't think Transformers 1-3 are really kid's movies. But audiences saw them that way.
We loved that shit as kids though. But yeah I watched it with a bunch of friends who hadn't seen them recently and they were shocked by how vulgar and violent they were. They also remarked it "explains a lot" about me that they were my favorite movies as a kid. Not sure how to interpret that comment.
There Will Be Blood was a masterpece
He's kind of like the AMD graphics card of film making.
Yeah sometimes he can turn in a good performance in certain situations, but overall he just can't compete and will always be the budget option.
Paul is a great director imo. He just happens to make the movies the studios want.
The biggest example is Resident Evil. The movie that Paul made is what Capcom had wanted. Had Paul pitched a movie faithful to the game then most likely Capcom would have rejected him. The songs he picks for his movies tend to be very awesome though; Mortal Kombat, and Resident Evil 1's soundtracks are amazing.
>I don't remember people hating Rian Johnson before he made Star Wars
Because he had not done anything objectively pure fricking evil prior to The Last Jedi.
>And I don't remember Zack Snyder hatred being super intense until he made Man of Steel
His worst reviewed film is still Sucker Punch which was before MOS.
Getting bad reviews doesn't necessarily matter, though. Critics didn't like the original Star Wars films at all. But it wasn't until the Prequels that George Lucas became a polarizing figure. It's not like he went from critically acclaimed to not critically acclaimed.
>Critics didn't like the original Star Wars films at all.
You are just making shit up.
Some contemporary reviews of Star Wars.
>There's no breather in the picture, no lyricism; the only attempt at beauty is in the double sunset. It's enjoyable on its own terms, but it's exhausting, too: like taking a pack of kids to the circus ... It's an epic without a dream. But it's probably the absence of wonder that accounts for the film's special, huge success. The excitement of those who call it the film of the year goes way past nostalgia to the feeling that now is the time to return to childhood. - The New Yorker
>Strip 'Star Wars' of its often striking images and its highfalutin scientific jargon, and you get a story, characters, and dialogue of overwhelming banality, without even a "future" cast to them. Human beings, anthropoids, or robots, you could probably find them all, more or less like, that, in downtown Los Angeles today... O dull new world! - New York Magazine
>The only way that 'Star Wars' could have been interesting was through its visual imagination and special effects. Both are unexceptional. ... I kept looking for an 'edge,' to peer around the corny, solemn comic-book strophes; he was facing them frontally and full. This picture was made for those (particularly males) who carry a portable shrine within them of their adolescence, a chalice of a Self that was Better Then, before the world's affairs or - in any complex way - sex intruded. - The New Republic
>Why is Paul W.S. Anderson such a polarizing filmmaker? Is he a bad filmmaker that is bad at the job of making movies, or is it more of a Rian Johnson situation where he came in and stomped all over multiple existing IPs and made nerds mad?
They are one and the same.
Viciously demonizing, degrading and raping what your core audience loves is factually a form of bad filmmaking.
The direction of RE-Extinction was 50 fricking times better than the best Anderson RE
Russell Mulcahy is a very talented director, but he has directed some BAD movies. Scorpion King 2 isn't some kind of flawed but interesting movie. It's absolute dogshit.
RE Extinction is a good movie, but behind the scenes Paul W.S. Anderson took control of the movie in post-production to totally re-edit it. This recutting is supposedly (according to the editor they brought in to do the recutting) a major reason why the film didn't suck.
>RE Extinction is a good movie, but behind the scenes Paul W.S. Anderson took control of the movie in post-production to totally re-edit it.
The cinematography and how everything was filmed to begin with was vastly vastly better than Andersons style especially in 2 regardless of how it was edited or re-edited.
>This recutting is supposedly (according to the editor they brought in to do the recutting) a major reason why the film didn't suck.
Source?
>The cinematography and how everything was filmed to begin with was vastly vastly better than Andersons style especially in 2 regardless of how it was edited or re-edited.
Anderson didn't direct RE2. That was Alexander Witt. Anderson was busy doing Alien vs Predator, and was minimally involved in the second film aside from writing the script. He was more involved in 3, although he was prepping for Death Race. Basically he flew out to visit the set sometimes and generally kept a tab on how things were going. 3 bears many of Russell's hallmarks, but you can feel Anderson's invisible hand. Much like how you can feel George Lucas in Empire Strikes Back despite a different director bringing a fresh take. The thing that strikes me about 3 is that Russell is a much better director of actors than Anderson.
>Source
The editor Niven Howie talks about it in this interview. The interview is mainly about RE5 and the studio meddling on that film (which got Howie removed by the studio), but he talks about how he got started on the RE films, and he was brought in to recut 3 because they didn't like Russell's director's cut that he had prepared with his own editor.
https://letterboxd.com/ifccenter/story/resident-evil-retribution-an-interview-with/
>Anderson didn't direct RE2
Damn. Yeah that makes sense. The action scenes in 2 were notably lesser than AVP or even RE1.
I don't hate him but he's a David Ayer type, someone who is very comfortable in a niche of making slop tier showy movies that excel based on how strong the script or collaborators are.
If Paul wanted to make another movie like Event Horizon or split paths, I could find time in my day to watch it similar to something like Fury but he's very much a director you pre-screen movies with using a trailer and then decide if they go into the "watch with friends while drunk" type of director.
I mean, isn't David Ayer a bit of an example of a filmmaker who suddenly became WAY more polarizing after Suicide Squad? Oh, sure, he had people who hated him for Fury, but it didn't have much traction.
I would say not really?
Fury was an uptick from him, End of Watch was very grim as far as his movies go but is positively received by some (somehow) and Sabotage is just as grim and one note.
As bad as suicide was and as disastrous as its edit and scripting are: At least it ain't Bright.
Getting involved in capeshit vidya toyslop is a mistake anyway, you'll always make someone mad, but one track directors with one vision seem to be appealing for them.
how do you make a bad resident evil movie? that takes some serious talent to frick that up.
Well all the games outiside of re4 are shit, so I guess it's not that hard.
>Rian Johnson situation where he came in and stomped all over multiple existing IPs and made nerds mad
I don't even give a shit about star wars, he just wrote a terrible story full of contradictions