I wrote this spontaneously on my iPad, fairly irritated at this guy for being the final straw for me in an unending stream of the sort of comments I go on to criticize.
~~~
Have you ever even SEEN one Russell's movies? He's one of the few directors nowadays who has managed to make waves while retaining his independence for his ENTIRE career. He ABSOLUTELY deserves to categorize himself along with Arronofsky as a highly distinctive auterist director that is branching from a passionate niche to more mainstream material.
Just because a filmmaker dares show something more than absolute modesty by expressing interest in the fact that he's creatively engaged with the source material and bound to put an original spin on it rather than duty bound to make some derivative piece of fan service crap, that doesn't make him pretentious. In fact, it makes me way more interested in this project.
Have you SEEN Three Kings? That question goes to EVERYBODY that thinks Russell is in any way a Hollywood hack. Seriously. Have you seen it?
The games are perfectly good in their own right. Why would you want to go see something that could never be greater than its source material because of an overly slavish adaptation of an already cinematic game? Russell is one of the few remaining American auteurs. I'm more interested in what he comes with with having been inspired by the game.
The movie is gonna be happening, and nobody has seen the script, because there ISN'T ONE. Yeah, it's gonna deviate from the source material. God forbid something that surprises somebody, instead of neatly conforming with the lockstep filmmaking opinions of a demographic of pissed off gamers. But the fact that the source material is going to be reshaped for the film doesn't mean a thing about its quality. It just means that it is going to be different. The question is..
Do you have faith in David O. Russell? Most people attacking him don't have any real experience of him except as the director of the Fighter, and even then many of those people haven't seen the film. Many haven't seen a single film of his, and couldn't name more than one or two extemporaneously. But the strongest opinions about his worth of a filmmaker are being set by an entire population of people that know nothing of his filmmaking. The key is that he's expressing a creative opinion that veers sharply away from gamer hegemony, which has an extremely rigid view of what an Uncharted film should be, because it is so "obvious." And, you all don't like Mark Wahlberg, who is the director's favorite actor and another sign that Russell actually DOES give a shit about this film, even if it isn't the film that you expected or think you want.
But there's some serious potential to be had here if you'll get off your preconceived notions for five minutes and appreciate the idea that you might just possibly be surprised. All these people moaning that he shouldn't call it "Uncharted" are acting like the property's rights holders didn't corroborate with if not outright determine the hiring of Russell and his authority and intentions to change things.
He's the person they put their faith in. That doesn't mean that you should now. But acting like David O. Russell is some enemy to video game kind and deciding outright not to see the film, and to badmouth it, and him, at every turn, despite the script not even being completed yet, is incredibly childish.
If the movie is a piece of shit, then you'll at least have a reason to bitch and hate. But his track record is too good for that. Give it a chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment