Does Hollywood Ruin Foreign Directors?

comingsoon.net

    Unless you’ve been living under a rock, odds are that you know there’s a film out in theaters this weekend called Ben-Hur. This film, a remake of the 1959 epic (widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made), was produced for $100 million by Paramount Pictures, and only made a whopping $22 million worldwide on its opening weekend. Ouch. For those paying attention, though, you may have noticed a very strange name under the “From director” card: Timur Bekmambetov, the director of Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Lesser known, though, is that he directed the really awesome foreign movies Nightwatch and Daywatch. So, what happened that took him from those cool films to these mediocre ones? Let’s find out.

     Before we begin this discussion, I want to make two caveats. The first is that when I talk about Hollywood, I am talking about the big budget blockbusters, not the more indie-style films you’d see folks like Werner Herzog (Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Grizzly Man) or Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant), among others, doing. Foreign directors dominate the indie scene, so it wouldn’t be fair to include them. Second is that by “foreign directors,” I’m not talking about English-speaking countries like Britain or Australia, places that are comparable to the United States. I’m referring to places like Germany, Russia, Japan, and similar nations. With that in mind, plus the fact that what is "good" and what is "bad" is highly subjective, let’s get into it. 

     Hollywood has been importing directors from other countries pretty much since the inception of its existence, but it wasn’t until more recent years that we started running into the problem that Bekmambetov and others have been facing. The years following Star Wars forced the Hollywood system to focus more on churning out blockbuster films, and that continued building until we got closer to the 1990s, where we see our first (and some might say best) example of a genius filmmaker-turned colossal wreck: John Woo. In his home country of China, John Woo created some of the most ingenious action films possibly of all time, including Hard Boiled, A Better Tomorrow, and The Killer. Honestly, just look at this scene here from Hard Boiled and tell me you don’t see the brilliance in it.

     So what happened when Hollywood lured John Woo over to America? Well, let me tell you what happened. Hard Target happened, and so did Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II (perhaps one of the worst action movies of the 2000s). All the artistry and intelligence that went into his films vanished, replaced with gimmicky slow motion, terrible stories and at times horrible direction. It was like Hollywood drained all the life out of him and took away what made him special in the name of pleasing American audiences, ruining his appeal as a director. Really, who has been talking about John Woo since 2000, except in terms like this? Has anybody? And the sad fact is that he’s not the only one, though I think there’s a more recent example here.

     I remember when I first saw Pan’s Labyrinth, the brainchild of Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, and how amazed I was by it. It was beautiful, it was scary, and it was incredibly heartfelt, all the traits that you want from a film like that. I knew that he was a big, up-and-coming director and that he had some projects after that with Hollywood, so I couldn’t wait to see them! Well, those projects were Hellboy 2, the sequel to Hellboy (which I found to be pretty boring), Pacific Rim, the most awesome dumb movie ever made, and Crimson Peak, which let’s not even get into that. What happened to him? Pan’s Labyrinth was so good, and so was The Devil’s Backbone! It’s not like these other films are terrible, since del Toro has such an eye for set design and direction, but there was just something missing. Did Hollywood ruin him, too?

rogerebert.com

Yeah it was boring, but I got a FANTASTIC nap during this film.

     One thing that throws a wrench into this idea is that there are foreign directors that continually get blockbuster work because they make money, even if in terms of quality their films suck. The poster child for this is Roland Emmerich, a German director and the gay, less obnoxious version of Michael Bay. While some of his films are fun (Independence Day, 2012), none of them are particularly good, with some being downright atrocious (Godzilla, Independence Day: Resurgence). However, because he makes money, he keeps getting the work. Is that why directors like Bekmambetov and Woo vanish every now and then? Well, it’s certainly the obvious answer, isn’t it? I mean, that’s why Michael Bay and Zack Snyder keep getting work even though they continue dropping critical turds, right? 

     Before going on to my conclusion, I do want to acknowledge the foreign directors who have made it big through the Hollywood system. Paul Verhoeven, the director classic movies like RoboCop and Starship Troopers, is definitely among them. Sure, he also has Showgirls, the Godfather of terrible movies, on his resume, but it doesn’t really matter when the hits he has totally balance it out. A more recent example is Alfonso Cuarón, who hit it out of the park with Children of Men and Gravity, making him an A-list talent with only two films, a feat very few have achieved. These are the exceptions to the rule, but they do show that it can be done!

imdb.com

If the guy (South African director) who did Wolverine Origins can do this gem, anyone can make it!

     Where was I? Oh yeah, we were figuring out what happens to these directors, but in order to figure that out, we have to look at another bothersome trend in Hollywood. Recently, the powers that be have decided to headhunt young and promising indie directors and hand them the keys to multi-million dollar films, which can lead to a giant disaster like Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four, or can be a huge success like Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic World. Because blockbusters themselves are starting to change (look at this entire summer), the way Hollywood handles them is changing as well. For reference, Steven Spielberg, one of the greatest directors of all time, was not given a  hundred million dollar budget until 2002. Think about this: Spielberg had already directed Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Saving Private Ryan, and Schindler’s List, but nobody trusted him with that kind of money until Minority Report came along! So what makes these little directors who’ve only made maybe two films so special?

     Here’s the secret, folks: they aren’t. Hollywood needs butts in the directors’ chairs, but that doesn’t mean that they have the power. Remember my little rant about how Warner Bros. treated David Ayer? Well, it’s even worse for some of these indie directors. Josh Trank, regardless of any personal conduct issues, had Fantastic Four yanked away from him and butchered by Fox in the late stages of the game because they got antsy, making that turd of a film a full-out disaster. Sony did the same to Marc Webb with The Amazing Spider-Man films, forcing him to try and create a cinematic universe just out of Spider-Man characters. You see, Hollywood is just doing the same thing it used to do to foreign directors, except now they have just shifted their attention to indie filmmakers. These are people that have no power within the system, so the studio can bully them around and force them to do what they want. Looking at this list, and other people from foreign countries who have fallen into this system, it’s not hard to believe that this is exactly what happens and that when they don’t make the money they get kicked to the curb and banished back to the indie scene. Is that really a bad thing, though?

wikipedia.org

I don't think ol' Alejandro thinks so.

     There was a time when it seemed like the only thing foreign directors could do to make a name for themselves in America was get into the Hollywood grind and cross their fingers. Now, a director doing an indie movie can make a name for themselves just by making a good film, even though it’s still difficult. But let’s be honest, this is probably the best place for directors like this, or to be in the industry in their own countries (can you really see Park Chan-Wook or Hirokazu Kore-eda trying to make Hollywood films?). Directors need to be allowed to have control over their projects so that they can exercise their full vision and create the best films possible anyways, so why give that control over to the big studios that only care about money? So, does Hollywood ruin foreign directors? Maybe, maybe not, but it is definitely an interesting question to ponder when thinking about the studio system in this country. At the end of the day, though, after this summer I certainly hope that we see some good movies, no matter who we get them from!

comingsoon.net

Please don't suck.

Hey guys, if you like this article please leave a comment or share this post so we can get the word out there! If you have any questions or comments you can find me at:

Twitter: @PresidentGlover

Instagram: _steveng_

Also, if you like this please drop by Amazon to pick up a copy of my book RED STEEL, available in both paperback and Kindle formats. Thanks for the support!