Solo [Official Info] Phil Lord and Chris Miller NOT directing Solo

Well, not by my personal definition, but in Hollywood deal-making terms. Both were box office and critical successes that returned large profits from relatively modest investments. Many were particularly impressed by Lord and Miller's ability to do this with 21 Jump Street as, prior to their film's release, it was (for obvious reasons) not thought of as being a property with a lot of potential.

 

I can't agree with your premise. This kind of anonymous-sources-in-the-trades PR war happens all the time and, in any given instance, either side (or neither) can be more or less "in the right". Again, everyone in this story is a seasoned professional with a vested interest in the continuation of their careers in the industry. To withhold judgment on any of them is not intended as a slight or an indictment of anyone else. What really happened is known to the parties directly involved and everything that's reached the public (from all sides) is spin.

 

I sure did. Is there some significant failure on Lord and Miller's resume that I'm not aware of?

 

Sorry, TCF-1138- I was responding to unrelated posts from separate posters.

 

That's exactly what (I thought) I did...

 

I disagree.

 

Well, it isn't really a matter of opinion.

 

everything's an opinion IMHO

 

Yes both those movies were box office successes and L/M did a very good job with them. However both movies at the same time were just meant to be silly stories not intended to be taken all that seriously. That is a lot different from a Star Wars movie that has arguably the most fanatical group of fans in the movie going industry. Who will disect every single ounce of the movie a thousand times over for the next ten/twenty/thirty years.

The Han Solo movie was probably about ten levels higher than anything L/M had ever done before. They would of had to do things differently than they did with anything else they had made. They were given an opportunity to prove they could make this type of movie and by all accounts they failed miserably at it.

 

Ok. Thank you. It seems like an odd thing to do when responding to completely separate comments that are only related by the overall topic.

 

Stephen Galloway @ THR opines that the age of the auteur director is dead.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/stephen-galloway-star-wars-firing-death-director-1016908

 

with the thinking that both films were critical successes we can say the new Transformers movie is a critical success or bay watch kind of setting the bar kind of low aren't we?

 

It's questionable if these Hollywood popcorn blockbusters ever had "auteurs".

Producers like Kevin Feige effectively ghost direct those big Marvel super hero blockbusters and it works well for them.

 

By all accounts? I count one account (of two, total).

The age of the auteur director is doing just fine thank you, but Mr. Galloway needs to learn the really basic lesson that the realm of blockbuster franchise sequels has never been the place to find it.

 

Not giving directors total creative freedom is really necessary when you are dealing with these long running franchises that will have multiple upon multiple of installments all meaning to take place in the same universe. Directors need to abide by what has come before and what will come after in these situations. The directors that don't want to deal with that need to just stick with smaller scale one off stories.

As John Campea put it in one of his latest vlogs directors in these large franchises are becoming more and more like tv show directors than they are your traditional movie directors. People directing episodes on tv shows need to link things up with what the tv show has done in the past and what the tv show will do in the future. They can't do whatever they want just because they have a vision that they think is cool and people will like.

 

I still Think young Directors get a chance with star wars the vetting process has to get tighter they have to do there research. despite everything that is said about RO Gareth Edwards finished the picture and the film was one of the best star wars films IMHO. So far no bad news with Rian Johnson and The Last Jedi!

back to film successes I loved both Muppets 2011 and Muppets Most Wanted thought they were both great Epic Films but they did horrible at the box office so a critical success they were not just in this Muppets Fanboys mind they were!

 

I agree with the sentiment of the article in the sense that there will always be conflict between studios wanting to make money and directors wanting control their films entirely. That is nothing new. However, in the current state of the industry where these huge franchises and sequels are everything, studios are going to be historically risk-adverse in order to protect their investments.

However, I really think that ideally, Star Wars should be a safe-haven for auteur directors like this, and fertile ground for experimentation (that's what these anthology films were pitched as in the first place!). Lucas understood this clearly, and so should Kathy Kennedy. After all, Star Wars was the ultimate "auteur-istic" Hollywood film back when it was first made. It was this ridiculous amalgamation of so many weird cinematic elements that made it completely different that anything at that time. Alan Ladd Jr. didn't understand the movie at all, but it got made because he believed in George and thought he was extremely talented. There isn't enough of that kind of trust and risk-taking in the industry right now (or within the Star Wars franchise it seems, which I believe is a point the article is trying to make).

George worked his balls off his entire career to get to a point where he didn't have to listen to studios and he could just do whatever the hell he wanted with his movies (for better or for worse). It does seem a bit of a shame, IMO, that the nu-Star Wars is seemingly regressing back to what George fought so hard against.

 

dr strangelove while that may be true to a point that the franchise is going back to what Lucas was fighting against in the beginning I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. As we could see as the years past Lucas didn't always have the best ideas and in a lot of ways Star Wars would have turned out better (especially the PT) if he was more willing to listen to people a bit more and take others advice.

 

L&M should have been given control over a SW film with minor secondary characters/new characters to really explore and do their thing is. That is what they would do best in. Same for any director who wants artistic freedom. And I think it could have worked and been refreshing for the SW universe as a whole.

But not with a character that is so big already and needs to be contained due to his current storyline and personality. Those needs to stay with a director willing to work within constraints.

 

I think a lot of the audience would've been more interested in that movie, anyway, regardless of who was directing or how much control they were given, so... win/win.

 

Perhaps the issue is simply experience? L&M not having a background on large scale productions like this?

Generally my feeling is that comedy blockbusters have over the last 15-20 years increasingly shifted away from more conventional blockbusters in style. They've tended to become IMHO more like very high budget versions of SNL sketchs(from which many are obviously sourced) which more focus on cast improv and less similar to conventional blockbusters. Something like the original Ghostbusters for example I think builds its setting and story in a more conventional way that Feig's remake simply doesn't even attempt to follow. I suspect this might actually make switching from comedy to conventional blockbusters more difficult.

Another issue as well for me is that Marvel really do have the benefit of a very strong cast indeed, more specifically I think they've got a very charismatic group of leads who naturally work well in a looser style.

Of course in the end the proof is in the pudding, hard to make definitive judgements about a lot of the points being raised before we've actually seen the film. Look at Rogue One for example were the talk was all that Disney were demanding it be made more family friendly for the reshoots, something which obviously turned out not to be the case.