ZEMECKIS, DENZEL, AND A CRASHED PLANE

Sounds like an interesting project. Hoepfully he stays the course and does not return to Mo-Cap horror.

Zemeckis is over, sadly. At best this will be a toothless mediocrity.

Who the hell greenlit that budget??? The bean counters must have switched to counting shrooms.

Have to confess here that I've never really gotten the hype about Zemeckis. BTTF is an absolute classic, Romancing the Stone and Roger Rabbit were fun, but the rest of his filmography just leaves me cold. Never liked Forrest Gump, find his mo-cap films glossy but kind of pointless, and he in general comes across as a good-to-excellent director who for some reason keeps getting promoted as some All-Time Heavyweight Filmmaker.

He always gets included in these 'Future of Film' panels with Cameron, Spielberg et al but always looks slightly out of place. Sure, the mo-cap stuff is/was revolutionary, but the films he's actually made with it aren't exactly classics (Well, except maybe to those people who had an insatiable desire to see Ray Winstone with a six-pack, but I suspect that's something of a niche market)

Dunno. Maybe it's just one of those personal taste things, but it just seems to me that the guy's reputation outstrips his actual output.

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Originally Posted by Workyticket 

Have to confess here that I've never really gotten the hype about Zemeckis. BTTF is an absolute classic, Romancing the Stone and Roger Rabbit were fun...

For me, those bought A SHIT-TON of goodwill. As did John Carpenter's THE THING, etc etc. As an artist myself, I hope against hope that certain directors' best work aren't waaaay behind them. I know it's near impossible to catch lightning in a bottle twice (see Ivan Reitman), but my film-loving heart wants to be optimistic and root for these creative types, especially the ones that influenced me so much, nostalgia or no.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by DARKMITE8 

For me, those bought A SHIT-TON of goodwill. As did John Carpenter's THE THING, etc etc. As an artist myself, I hope against hope that certain directors' best work aren't waaaay behind them. I know it's near impossible to catch lightning in a bottle twice (see Ivan Reitman), but my film-loving heart wants to be optimistic and root for these creative types, especially the ones that influenced me so much, nostalgia or no.
 

 

 Oh, I'm totally with you on that - as an artist myself I feel exactly the same way (Like you, I'll always give Carpenter a chance for example) As far as Zemeckis goes, I love those movies I mentioned dearly as well. If he can knock it out the park again I'll be as happy as anyone. What I was getting at was how BZ is promoted; as good as he is, he's regularly put forward as this giant of the industry alongside your Spielbergs and Camerons while not having the name recognition or critical/commercial track record of those guys (At least since Gump)

OK, you can argue he's been a trailblazer as far as mocap goes, but none of his CGI films have really hit it big; it's been guys like Spielberg and Cameron who have come along at a later date and improved the use of the technology and made the big hits out of it. If anything, I'd say that Zemeckis is kind of in this no-man's land of filmmaker status; he's not exactly a cult director, yet despite making a lot of high-profile films he doesn't sell tickets on his name alone either (At least to the mainstream moviegoing public) or has a particularly idiosyncratic directorial style. You generally don't hear young directors citing Zemeckis as their inspiration for taking up filmmaking.

Again, I know this might sound like I'm hating on BZ but that's honestly not the intention. He's a good director with moments of brilliance, but he's not quite on THAT level. It always feels like his name's thrown in there because he was the first to try the mocap thing on a large scale as opposed to the actual quality of the movies he's made with it. 

All that said, I'm really interested in seeing what he does returning to live-action.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Workyticket 
as good as he is, he's regularly put forward as this giant of the industry alongside your Spielbergs and Camerons while not having the name recognition or critical/commercial track record of those guys (At least since Gump)

I think that may have to be a bonus of being a Spielberg protege, no? ROGER RABBIT and BTTF Trilogy were both exec-produced by The Beard, well received and attained certain classic status. I'd ride in Spielberg's side-car as long as I could, if he'd let me.