X SHOULD have directed Y
 

Ever watch a movie that you thought COULD or SHOULD have been better if someone else had directed it?

• Name the movie.
• Name the execution problem.
• Name who SHOULD have directed it and why.

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I would LOVE to see The Happening redirected. I thought that the underlying concept was definitely intriguing and that some its scenes at the beginning could have carried significantly more weight if M. Night Shyamalan wasn't too busying trying to jerk himself off. He was going for a muted feel that honestly drained the movie of all impact and climax that it could and SHOULD have had. Not to mention he was unable to direct a believable performance from ANYone in the cast. The Happening SHOULD have been more gritty, violent, disturbing, and much more of an actual horror movie. I HATED the movie score and think that it would have benefited from less. It was FAR too over-produced.

The Happening SHOULD have been directed either by:

• David Bruckner and Dan Bush, the directors of The Signal. The Happening has a similar feel to it and I think that they would have made it more gritty, violent, and shocking. Not to mention, they know how to handle horror-comedy, so I think they would be able to interlace that into The Happening nicely.
  
  or
  
  
• Danny Boyle, who directed 28 Days Later. Boyle is good at portraying panic and disarray and I honestly think that he would have brought a much-needed horror element to The Happening.

Death Wish (1974)

Removed from Michael Winner's hack directorial hands and placed in the control of a Donald Siegal(preferrably), Sam Peckinpah(preferrably), Ted Post or Walter Hill(2nd stringers), this film could have become the classic urban crime noir film that would have propelled Charles Bronson into the A list of world film stars, rather than pushing him ever deeper into grade B action flicks. Winner chose to stay in the moment(early 70s angst) rather than push the boundaries and make this the bloody urban nightmare it could have become.

I thought it was pretty good as it was.......but I definitely agree on Peckinpah....would have loved to see that.

Would have liked to see Tim Burton direct Spawn. I may be one of the few who didn't hate the movie....but TB would have put a nice touch on it.

Good call! The Spawn movie was pathetic. Or Mimic, too. He would have made a GREAT Mimic.

...

So one of the more recent It Could Have Been Better films I have seen was Teeth. It wasn't bad, per se; I loved the concept (woman coming into her sexuality and its physical - not metaphorical horror), but I feel as though director Mitchell Lichtenstein was trying to pull it in too many directions - Shock, Dark Comedy, Social Commentary, Feminism, Anti-Christian, Schlock - But didn't necessarily excel in any of them...

I wonder what Teeth would have been like if Takashi Miike (Audition, Visitor Q and Gozu fame) had taken a swipe at it:

• He definitely would have added more absurdity (and we might even show the teeth)
• The comedy would be dark, very dark
• The sex/violence scenes would be more explicit and schlocky
• There would be more incest
• She would follow a more explicit hero path

I would LOVE to see Teeth done by Miike, to think about it...

Peter Jackson should have directed War of the Worlds.

why ? he tries to stay as close as the source material as possible. He has no problem putting lesser known actors in the leads and the more established actors in supporting roles.

he has a grand scale view of things

and i need someone to make a proper fucking version of War of the Worlds !!!


it isnt a religious vehicle
it isnt about America
it didn't take place in modern times for chrissakes.

turn of the century england... english actors .. do it right !!!

Ooooo.

Very VERY good call.

Though I think about his King Kong remake and how......... unnecessary it was.

hell no - King Kong introduced the story to a ton of new people.
i thought it was brilliant, and very necessary ... until the point where Jack Black fumbled that last line.

but the movie was so awsome .. i can forgive that.

How about Russ Meyers directing Charlie's Angels?


boobs galore

big giant boobs ... and a bunch of mean stupid people.

I'm half way through a russ meyer biography right now - god he was a useless piece of garbage as a person ... wow

I actually found it kinda boring... Really over- and unnecessarily-done.

But Jackson IS a brilliant director, though.

...

It's too bad that Kubrick wasn't alive to follow through with A.I. There were scifi sudo-philosophic elements that I thought were absolutely brilliant (i.e. What is the true difference between Man and Machine? or The creation of a true tragic hero - a creature/child that will ultimately outlive the one thing/person it was CREATED to live for). There were some great dark elements to it, but the end was absolutely abysmal.

I would have LOVED to see Kubrick complete A.I. ALONE. No Spielberg.

• The movie would have ended tragically (as it should have - I can identify the exact point where it SHOULD have ended). Spielberg's shit cheese ending would have been GONE.
• It would have been much, much darker (more social and civil unrest between humans and the humanoids)
• It would have been much much more raw

Or so he liked to claim in the King Kong doc. I don't recall hearing one lick of Max Steiner's classic score in that film.

Figured you for a Roger Vadim fan!:rolleyes:

i thought it was 100% pure movie magic .. the creatures, the dinosaurs ..the big monkey ! if i had seen it as a kid it would have been the film that would have addicted me to movies - not indy, not star wars - this would have been my fanboy dream.

the book ... the book is the source i'm talking about.
He did an amazing job with Lord of the Rings.

as far as king kong goes ... why would you reuse anything origional in a remake ? thats a little too close to the source.

According to Jackson, in the Kong doc, he professed his lifelong love for the film, and intended to remake it as close to the source film as possible. And for the most part, he did. The plot, characters and scenes are almost identical. But Steiner's score is also intrinsic to the original, and not including even a chord of that score in the remake was an insult to the great composer. But aside from that, the original Kong had punch and pacing that the remake didn't even come close to capturing. The finale on the Empire State Building was excruciatingly long and overplayed. I will take that old fashioned 1933 movie over the Jackson(or any other remake of it) version, anyday.

Good God I couldn't disagree more.

Lird of the Rings is so far from Tolkein it should be renamed Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings.

What about giving Christopher Nolan a shot at that?

i've read lord of the rings several times.

i completely understand every change that was made.
some books cant possibly be filmed verbatim - what may work in print doesn't necessarily work on film.

i feel the same way about Lynch's Dune and the Harry Potter films.

i'm an avid reader ... but i'm also very aware of how films are made and the choices that are taken when converting print to a movie. you cannot make a movie word for word from any book - at least not as large as LOTR or Dune..
They just wouldnt work - they'd be 25 hours long for one thing..

It had nothing to do with length or changes to charcter, etc.

Has to do with the underlying vision. IMO Jackson's was far different than Tolkien's.

Do you really think my reasoning was as shallow as that? I know how to read too, and do it frequently. I also know the process by which literature is adapted for the screen.

I still disagree with you.

Ridley Scott - Alien 3.

With all due respect to Cameron and his reworking for Aliens, Scott's vision for Alien was exceptional and brilliant. Developing the characters of Newt, Ripley, Hicks and the whole Alien saga in a new setting (preferably Earth) would have been quite a challenge, and Scott was the man to do it, with Alien still fresh in his mind.

I might have actually watched that....

I figured he w3as just a pervert who got to make movies, but I cant argue with his choice of subject matter.

Trust me, if you dont have a "thing" for big boobs, you cant quite grasp what a drooling retard they make you....

Die Hard 2 should have been done by John Mctiernen... The last one should have been his too, but it was WAY better than 2...

no, mr sensitive, i was just pointing out that I (not you) wasnt a casual fan approaching the movie.
I was showing where I was coming from.

I love the books and have reread them all many times since i was young ...
I think Peter Jackson perfectly understood Tolkiens vision (power corrupts, good vs evil ..the bonds of friendship, the end of magic - nature vs technology etc) It seemed to me that Jackson covered all that - he just chose to put extra focus on the bonds of friendship angle - especially near the end.

I understand why people who dislike fantasy in the first place would be bored by the rings (stolen pun) but honestly it's beyond me how a fan of the books wouldn't be delighted by what Jackson accomplished ... it floors me..

Ha- somebody should film Bored of the Rings!


I did like the first 20 minutes or so of the first film- I thought he captured the Shire beautifully. Once they left the Shire, it just all went to crap for me.

I thought it was a great trilogy.




still waiting for a sequel for "Lord of the G-Strings"

Dildo Saggins.....he he

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0323108/

Del Toro is making The Hobbit now. So, wait and see if he is faithful to the literary version. (though I would be inclined to say no, again)

As regards Jackson, he did a competent job blending his vision and ideas with Tolkien's works, IMO. Not great, nor faithful, but competent.

Filmmakers do have a habit of mixing their ideas with an original work. It is like an addition - their silent stamp on the finished product.

Kubrick & The Shining, anyone?

I'm very much looking forward to Del Toro's Hobbit. I expect him to be more faithful than Jackson was.

As they point out multiple times in all of the extra features in the special edition DVDs of the Lord Of The Rings: Things have to be changed, added and left out to translate a book to film, because the differences in the media demand it. A direct from-the-book translation would span several seasons of a TV series for Lord of the Rings. Books have the advantage of being able to take days weeks or even years to be finished at the reader's own pace.

A movie has to be able to hold an audience, and there was no way that they could have been made, in a watchable way at any rate, as an indy film (plus there are neither gay cowboys nor pudding) without a huge budget, and the only way to get said enormous budget is to make it pg-13 and accessible to a wide (IE, lowest common denominator) audience in order make it economically viable, therefore even be able to be made.

At least an attempt was made to keep the essential elements and characters the same. Jurrassic park takes 90% of the core of each character and tosses them right out the window. In the book, one o fthe most essential parts of the Grant character was that he LOVES KIDS, because they are the only people who share his passion for dinosaurs. In the movie, kids mean (ew...) commitment to grant. Icky.


I guess my point is that Peter Jackson did better than most (at least he was a life long fan of the series not just some big budget director who saw dollar signs (Speilberg)), and that a more faithful adaption would either be prohibitively long, or completely unwatchably boring.

I disagree with you as much as I disagree with Urge.

Once again- I'm completely aware things have to be collapsed and adapted.

HE just didn't present Tolkein's world, IMO. He presented Peter Jackson's world.

Well, he was a lifelong fan,so I guess that's okay. I don't care how many people say they thought it was great. I don't agree.

Oh come on.... You mean my post on an internet forum didnt change your opinion? Really?


I honestly dont know why I said anything, in retrospect. People's opinions are what they are, they are a reaction based on who they are, and they are about as easy to change as religious beliefs, and since they are opinions, there are no right and wrong answers, just majority rules.

Now I kind of feel like a douche... I guess its just in our natures (at least for the more Alpha types) to try and change everyone to our viewpoint.

Sorry about the tangent.

I don't mean to disrupt the Peter Jackson fan club gathering, but........:rolleyes:

Cape Fear (1962) would have been a much better Hitchcock vehicle, and would have elevated the film to classic status(and probably made it unnecessary for Scorsese to remake), rather than just a capable thriller. Thompson's direction was rather meh in spots, although the casting was perfect. Hitch had worked with Peck before, and would probably have only encountered minimal friction from headstrong Mitchum. Bergen might have had to go(not blonde enough). It would have been a nice follow-up to Psycho.

See, that is a problem every filmmaker will have to overcome. The source material and its fame. If they are, say, 80-85% faithful to the core stuff, it just would not be their vehicle, will it?

A good filmmaker will take the source into consideration, maybe do a 50% adaptation of it, but he will always add his sugar into the content. No matter how much close he comes to adapting the real source/inspiration/work, he has to have some part of the finished product for himself.

We still call it Kubrick's Shining, Jackson's LOTR, Lynch's Dune, Darabont's Shawshank Redemption, etc. (even Chris Nolan's Dark Knight, not Bob Kane's)

And I am sure by the end of it, we will call it Del Toro's Hobbit, not Tolkien's.

War of the Worlds definetely does need to be remade properly.



I'd say Uwe Boll's House of the Dead. It was a good game with an interesting story line. They could make a good film series out of it, better than Resident Evil or Darkness Falls. I can't for the love of me think who could do it well. Maybe Burton because it can be a bit Gothic and the action in the first to Batman films were suitable.

Oh jesus, you reminded me.


Resident Evil.... I would like to say ANYONE but Paul Anderson, but isuppose i should be more specific. Romero supposedly had a screenplay that incorporated more monsters from the game than 2. Needless to say, it probably would have excluded Mila Jovovich as the ass-kicking chick who really looks like she would lose a fight with a noodle. (she didnt even have muscles, come on....)


I would say David Fincher could do a good job, especially if he was a fan of the game.

I LOVE David Fincher as a director, but I think that Neil Marshall would do a fantastic job on the Resident Evil series. He did Dog Soldiers and The Descent, so it's clear that he can do some pretty damn good and threatening beasties (not to mention, he already has a hand on the horror genre). I think that he would have been able to make the Resident Evil series a lot more gritty, realistic, and bloody. I also think that he would have been able to cast a more suitable female lead (good call on that one).

...

I recently saw Choke and I have to say that I was honestly unimpressed. Clark Gregg purposefully directed a very muted, stoic character piece when, honestly, this was a pretty dark, macabre, and disgusting book (to be clear, I mean "disgusting" in the most endearing way; I LOVED the book). The movie itself was... Boring. It NEEDED to be more shocking and disturbing, especially in a sexually deviant sort of way.

Since David Fincher did such a fantastic job with Fight Club, I initially considered that he should have done Choke, but I am honestly not so sure. I think that he can handle action and violence, but in terms of sexual taboo and discomfort, it's not something that I've seen him do (not to say he CAN'T, but I just haven't seen it). Then again, I think that Fight Club was supposed to be more sexually explicit, but some pieces wound up on the cutting room floor ("I want to have your abortion," for one).

I wonder if perhaps David Lynch should have handled Choke. Though, it should be the Wild At Heart David Lynch, not the Eraserhead David Lynch... And I'm not sure he's at that point of his career anymore.

Or perhaps Lucky McKee should have taken a stab at it; he made an AMAZINGLY uncomfortable and macabre character study in May and perhaps he could have done justice to Choke. What we needed was to truly show how incredibly dark the main character is. Oh, and more gross sex. We definitely did NOT get that with Gregg's film.

Gotta be honest, if i had remembered Niel Marshall i probably would have gone with him. And for the record, I liked RE when I first saw it, but listening to the commentary ruined it for me. Michelle rodriguez and mila jovovich were obviously drunk, or just dipshits. either way i was disgusted and it changed how i saw the movie.

Larry Clark should have directed THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE
David Cronenberg hould have directed A NIGHTMARE OF ELM STREET
Larry Cohen should have directed THE BRAVE ONE
Paul Greengrass should have directed AVP
Guillermo Del Toro should have directed UNDERWORLD
Terry Gilliam should have directed DUNE

Dario Argent should have directed Giallo, oh wait...

(yes, i can see into the future. Beware peanuts when carried by chiuauas... You'll know when the time is right....)

yikes - not that one.

he'd probably cast Robin Williams as the Baron Harkonnen and he would have been doing his 'famous word associateion ad libbing'

the worms would have been puppets ..

everyone would have died in the end

sounds awesome! except for the Robin Williams bit

as soon as i wrote it - i kew you'd like the worms as puppets