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| J.J. Abrams, the producer of Morning Glory |
This Friday sees the release of Dark Phoenix, the final film in the main X-Men series (though we still have that New Mutants spin-off movie next Spring) as well as the first movie directed by Simon Kinberg. It may sound strange to have Kinberg, a man who has primarily worked as a writer and producer up to this point, direct a $200+ million budgeted blockbuster if he's never directed anything before, but that's actually quite common in Hollywood, which has seen plenty of instances of filmmakers making their directorial debut on big-budget blockbusters. For this week's In Laman's Terms, let's look back on some of these instances as well as what kind of directorial career these directors have had since their big-budget debut.
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| J.J. Abrams (left) directing Tom Cruise (right) on the set of Mission: Impossible III |
Abrams was already a notable name back in the mid-2000s thanks to his work on TV shows like Alias and Lost when he took the directorial reins on the third Mission: Impossible movie. For this entry in the long-running series, Abrams brought lots of shaky-cam and a grittiness to the proceedings that separated his Ethan Hunt adventure from prior installments in the series. Though Mission: Impossible III was a box office disappointment, it still received the highest marks of any Mission: Impossible movie up to that point from both critics and audiences. This likely aided Paramount Pictures' decision to bring him onboard to direct a Star Trek reboot. Since then, Abrams has directed four other movies, including this December's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and he has remained a producer on all subsequent Mission: Impossible movies.
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| Jan de Bont (left) on the set of Speed with Keanu Reeves (right) |
By the early 1990s, Jan de Bont had been a longtime cinematographer in Hollywood, working on projects as varied as the infamous film Roar to the original Die Hard. In 1996, he added blockbuster director to his resume by helming Speed, a feature that took a simple premise (there's a bomb on the bus!) and made a widely beloved motion picture and box office juggernaut out of it. de Bont's directorial career kicked off in style with Speed and his follow-up movie, Twister, was also a major moneymaker, though the tumultuous production cast a shadow over the whole affair. His follow-up projects, which included widely derided films like Speed 2: Cruise Control and The Haunting, kept coming up short at the box office and he hasn't directed anything since Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life in 2003.
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| Stefan Fangmeier (right) on the set of Eragon |
Remember Eragon? Despite knowing about these books and this movie for years, I only just learned last year that the dragon in this series can talk and is even voiced by Rachel Weisz in the movie adaptation! That blew my mind and similarly mind-blowing is that visual effects artist Stefen Fangmeier made his one and only directorial credit with this feature (not counting his Second Unit Director work on Galaxy Quest), which, like many mid-2000s fantasy movies, tried to be the next Harry Potter but ended up being simply the next The Seeker: The Dark is Rising. Fangmeier has returned to the world of visual effects since Eragon's disappointing box office performance in 2006, which has, among other assignments, seen him working on the visual effects used for the dragons on Game of Thrones. None of them are voiced by Rachel Weisz, as far as I know.
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| This is the only photo I could find of Carl Rinsch on the set of 47 Ronin |
Commercial and short film director Carl Rinsch was actually Ridley Scott's first choice to direct Prometheus before Scott took over that project. Rinsch proceeded to make his feature film directorial debut on 47 Ronin instead. The Keanu Reeves blockbuster had a tortured blockbuster that saw it constantly shifting its release date (originally planned for a Thanksgiving 2012 bow, it eventually got buried in Christmas 2013) and apparently booting Rinsch from the project entirely in its last year of production. Even if you didn't know about all the behind-the-scenes drama, the choppy final product tragically lacking in a cohesive vision makes it clear something screwy was going on in the production. The film eventually bombed terribly and it isn't surprising, after having such a bad experience helming a blockbuster, that since 47 Ronin, Rinsch has returned to directing short films and commercials.
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| Elle Fanning (left) and Robert Stromberg (right) on the set of Maleficent |
Speaking of tumultuous productions (anyone noticing a pattern here?), Maleficent certainly had one of the roughest productions for any of these live-action Disney remakes. Under the direction of two-time Oscar-winning visual effects arts and production designer Robert Stromberg, Maleficent went back for extensive reshoots meant to overhaul its first act that were overseen by The Blind Side director John Lee Hancock. Unlike 47 Ronin though, Maleficent actually ended up beating the odds and became a big box office hit, grossing well over $700 million worldwide. Since Maleficent, Stromberg has worked frequently as a director of virtual reality short films and TV episodes while also still working in the visual effects field.
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| David Fincher providing guidance to a prima donna on the set of Alien 3 |
We haven't had a truly great Alien movie since Aliens and, unfortunately, the directorial debut of the filmmaker responsible for masterpieces like Zodiac and The Social Network was the start of this downward trend. Like many of the films on this list, Alien 3 was plagued by production issues that ended up resulting in a subpar film that Fincher himself is the first to disown, as he did in a 2009 interview where he proclaimed "No one hates [Alien 3] more than me." It's not hard to see why Fincher wouldn't be pleased with the project given how divorced it is from the rest of his filmography, save for Benjamin Button, there's no Fincher directorial effort that feels less like a David Fincher movie than Alien 3. Thankfully for Fincher, Alien 3 has garnered a cult following in the years since its release while 1995s Se7en rightfully catapulted him to the status of acclaimed filmmaker.
All images used in this article belong to their respective copyright owners.
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