The Gilded Age: Ridley Scott's Prometheus and More Frustrating Films from New Hollywood Directors
4. Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005) and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Without a doubt the most successful member of the New Hollywood clan, Steven Spielberg made his name marrying fear, domestic drama, and wonder with special effects-driven spectacle to become the single most populist director of the last four decades. His early science fiction pieces Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. hinted at the more profound dramatic director he would become in the '90s with Schindler's List, while other sci-fi thrillers like Jurassic Park and Minority Report upheld Spielberg's reputation as a box office king. Although he courted criticism in the past for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Hook, and The Lost World, it wasn't until 2005 that Spielberg really stumbled with the frequently boring War of the Worlds, starring an unlikeable Tom Cruise and a cheap Shyamalan-approved conclusion. Although Spielberg bounced back with Munich, his repeated visits to the extraterrestrial well landed him in even hotter water in 2008. With Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spielberg not only failed on a narrative level with gimmicks like nuking Harrison Ford inside a fridge, he pulled a George Lucas and introduced us to Indiana's bratty young adult son, played by Shia LaBeouf. Hayden Christensen must have been busy.
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3. Francis Ford Coppola’s Jack (1996)
I have this theory that sometimes directors are contractually obligated to make movies for a studio that they don’t want to make. So instead of actually directing these movies, the director invites his DP to make the movie as practice. Or maybe the gaffer and key grip take a crack. Yet the director’s name is the one attached to the movie at the end of the day. I think Francis Ford Coppola’s Jack supports this thesis. I hoped to use a clip of Robin Williams’ 10-year-old character Jack farting into a coffee can and making small explosions using matches, but alas, that video was not available for use as a demonstration of the creative gifts of the man who directed The Godfather. Is it no small wonder he’s stuck to making wine lately?
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2. George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005)
When you think about it, it’s kind of a fluke that the original Star Wars trilogy was the success it was. Lord knows Carrie Fisher feels that way, and is still struggling to understand how she ended up taped to so many bedroom walls in the '80s. The original trilogy was often hokey and peppered with trash compactor serpents, Ewoks, and bald Sebastian Shaw, and yet it became the international phenomenon it is. But after years passed and George Lucas returned to direct a new prequel trilogy featuring everybody’s least favorite Gungan Jar Jar Binks and a little kid named Anakin, suddenly Star Wars was on a whole new plane of silliness. Apart from contributing some good and bad ideas to Spielberg’s Indiana Jones series, Lucas seldom involved himself in many other creative endeavors beyond his beloved Star Wars series. Perhaps if he had allowed himself more time away from Naboo, Lucas could have gained some much needed perspective on how to write romantic dialog exchanges.
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1. John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars (2001) and The Ward (2011)
When you think of any director whose recent work doesn't match the quality of his early work, you're obligated to think of John Carpenter. This is the director who introduced us to Michael Myers and a synthesizer, made us afraid of ice cream trucks, and turned Kurt Russell into a dystopian John Wayne. After 1993's In the Mouth of Madness, Carpenter seemed to just run out of steam, hitting a particularly low point with Ghosts of Mars, aka Assault On Precinct Mars, a red-sand regurgitation of his 1976 classic. Carpenter waited nine years before making his next movie, the asylum horror The Ward starring hysterical females in peril. Carpenter has spoken out about struggling with burnout, leading us to wonder if he's really got anything left at this point.
Michelle Welch is a freelance writer who has also contributed at The A.V. Club and PopMatters. She tweets her pop culture ramblings as @stayfrostymw.
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Comments
War of the Worlds had "a cheap Shyamalan-approved conclusion"? You might want to direct that criticism at H.G. Wells.
Hear, hear, Greg. Couple of facts. Scorsese and Hitchcock also made their share of turkeys. Hitch? Under Capricorn, Topaz, Torn Curtain, Stage Fright, The Paradine Case, Marnie, Family Plot, Rope, etc. Scorsese? New York New York, Bringing Out the Dead, Gangs of New York, and (personally) most of Shutter Island. Lucas vetoed script after script after script of Crystal Skulls, so I lay the blame for that one at Lucas' feet, not Spielberg. And Coppola? He directed Jack as a way to get out of debt. And if winemaking is so unimportant why does he make about $80 million+ a year making it? As I've said elsewhere, Scott's a "team playing", do-whatever-the-suits-want visually talented hack.
Hey! Don't mess with Rope! Rope is great. Stage Fright is also not bad. It's just that one gimmicky plot device that makes it not up to typical Hitchcock levels of greatness.
Really? Terrible movie. The killers are so offensively swish too, thus making the film practically unwatchable.
They may be considered "offensively swish" now, but back then it was not so widely known.
And Jimmy Stewart was fantastic in it. I loved the interplay between him, John Dahl and Farley Granger.
I freaking love Rope, no matter how much hate it gets. Wasn't it shot with almost continuously running film?
I agree - don't mess with Rope. That is arguably one of his best due to his experimenting with directing the movie as a play and only cutting when the film ran out.
Honestly, I don't think that the Ridley Scott films are that bad, Spielberg's worst is by far HOOK, and when are people going to admit that REVENGE OF THE SITH was pretty good, even better than the hokey Ewoked RETURN OF THE JEDI. The others on this list, stand guilty as accused..
The younglings?
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
"I have the high ground" followed by hilarious leg choppings.
Revenge of the Sith is TERRIBLE! At least The Phantom Menace had the pod race... the only good thing to come out of the prequels.
So no, ROTS is NOT better than ROTJ and never will be. Even with the funny little Ewoks.
Aside from "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and some terrible "love scenes" with Anakin and Padme, Revenge of the Sith is pretty damn good. It is not nearly as good as ROTJ though. ROTJ is great. I like the Ewoks.
I have NOTHING good to say about those Star Wars prequels. They are all equally worthless.
I don't know what you mean exactly by younglings, I'm 34 years-old and saw RETURN OF THE JEDI wwith my dad the day that it came out. Besides, age doesn't make you wiser, it just makes you old, look at Donald Trump. Further more, it's like, just an opinion man.
I'm talking about the scene in ROTS where Anakin kills "the younglings." It's hilariously bad.
Other than that, I'm not really sure who your post is directed to, or what you are talking about with the age thing.
Guess I'm just not a fanboy who memorizes stupid dialogue. It did sound as though you were attempting to make my earlier post invalid by implying that because of my youth I could not possibly have the taste to judge ROTS better than ROTJ. If not, why the quote, there is plenty of goofy dialogue to be found in all the STAR WARS picks for sure as they weren't written by Tarantino or Mamet.
Revenge of the Sith better than Return of the Jedi? Are you drunk or something?
First, excellent article. This was a great rundown.
For me, the big three offenders are Lucas, for obvious reasons, followed by Spielberg and then Ridley Scott. However, I contend that Spielberg hasn't made a good film since the near dual release of Jurassic Park and Schindler's List. Jurassic Park was the final film of the golden era of Spielberg and Schindler's List represents the best art film he has ever made. Everything since then has been downhill. It's really sad. Janusz Kaminski was the worst thing that ever happened to him (Lost World anyone? The lighting makes me want to puke!!).
As for Scott, he made a couple of great films early on, but everything since then has been incredibly bland. I always note that fifty years from now, people will still talk about all the Tarantino films... all the Pt Anderson films... all the Kubrick and Hitchcock films... but only two of Scott's film. He's made too many boring insignificant films.
And I actually really enjoyed Prometheus although I laughed frequently at all the stupid parts. It was still Scott's best film since Gladiator and maybe even Blade Runner.
- Jakey
I have a soft spot for Ridley's Black Rain. But again, it's more the style over the content.
That's a good call. It doesn't totally hold up, but it's an interesting take on the yakuza thing.
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I put the blame solely on having Damon (LOST) Lindelof on the creative team. The guy is almost as bad as that dreck-duo Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman.
^^^Spot on^^^
I agree too. Lindelof seems to be an "all set up and no pay off" kind of filmmaker. If we learned one thing from Lost, it's that Lindelof and the rest of that team threw everything they could into a pilot and then had to spend the rest of five seasons figuring out how to pay off smoky monsters, polar bears, French radio signals, etc.
Spoiler alert: They failed.
Now they pitched a movie set in the future where we are going to find out an alien race bred all us humans on earth and now we are going to go meet and talk to them to discover our origins. But then they had to go out and write that story with some sort of meaningful ending.
Spoiler alert: They failed again.
Well that is just your opinion. Lost didn't fail just because you didn't like it and neither did Prometheus. Some people just can't appreciate ambiguity, intrigue and mystery and need the realization that the answers will never be as good as the questions.
For what it's worth, every single one of the above films (with the possible exception of John Carpenter's later output) are significantly better movies than the three mentioned Ridley Scott examples. Ironically, Prometheus rips off much of Mission To Mars without that film's empathetic characters. Even The Next Best Thing is trying to be a realistic look at two friends torn apart and left with impossible choices (and kudos to Madonna basically casting herself as the third-act villain). Hook (Wow do I juggle being a filmmaker and a father?), War of the Worlds (Americans as homeless refugees), and Indiana Jones IV (What do I do when my best years are behind me?) are all personal statements from Spielberg and it's not WotW's fault that its social relevance immediately got upended by Hurricane Katrina. And all three Star Wars prequels are superior to 85% of what passes for big-budget popcorn cinema and their political parables make them every-more chilling by the day. Heck, even Jack boosts two great performances (Bill Cosby and Jennifer Lopez) in an admittedly flawed film.
I admit Prometheus falls short. However I don’t believe it is in the class you are setting it in (but hey you need an article, right?) Hannibal, Snake Eyes, and War of the Worlds are also, I suppose, just over your head.
I'm in the minority. I liked Hannibal and War of the Worlds. THere were problems with both, but I liked both overall.
Fortunately, I had almost gotten over stage fright some time ago.My shurest method to downsize my fear is this here: Ask others who like you to be part of the audience, or get them to be an audience for one or more exercise sessions. Their support will help let go of the stress of stage fright.
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