I case all of you fine people on the Escapist's off-topic discussion forum forgot, a couple of months ago Bob "Moviebob" Chipman posted a video as part of his "The Big Picture" series, where he talks about things that he finds interesting or weird, in which he practically s*at all over Disnay/Lucasfilm's desision to get J. J. Abrams to direct Star Wars: Episode VII basically because he has "no vision".
That got me thinking as to where exactly does creative vision come from and who exactly can be called a "visionary". Because Moviebob's comments left me feeling like he forgot that technical direction isn't the end all be all of quality of film, and his commant on how there will be nothing memorable about the film just because he directed it is like saying a TV series is the most blandest thing ever because it was directed poorly. That is not to say that flat direction can't kill the fun factor of a film (Episode II was a good indicator of that) and make it lifeless and boring but Abrams' direction has always been anything but lifeless and boring, I'd even dare say that his 2009 reboot of Star Trek was the best directed Star Trek film since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, note that I said "best directed" not "best written".
I was always under the assumption that the writers are the real visionaries of filmmaking and the directors are just there to translate the vision onto the silver screen, sure there are different directorial styles and a certain level of skill when it comes to direction and it does ultimately comes down to a director's desision as to when a script is good enough to be produced, but in the end it's the writer that had the real idea, the real creative spark that made the film in the first place and it always bothered me how they would market a film on its director and not its writer when even the best direction doesn't mean anything if the script is awfull, even Steven Spielberg didn't stop Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from sucking just because he directed it. In fact Spielberg didn't make Indiana Jones, George Lucas, Phillip Kaufman and Lawrence Kasdan did (which were that film's writers), that film could've been directed by anyone else (as long as it isn't Richard Lester) and it wouldn't be all that diferent from the one that we've seen, sure it will look diferent and feel diferent but it won't BE diferent because Lucas would still have creative control over the project.
The directors in my opinion don't have vision (unless they're writers as well), what they do have is passion, the desire to make a work of art, a good driector like Francis Ford Copolla translated Mario Puzo's standard crime novel into an epic because he had passion that made up for Puzo's imperfect vision, while a bad director or at least a passionless one like Roger Christian can turn what is already a pretty visionless but still somewhat original and well intentioned novel into the disaster that was Battlefield Earth, you know he didn't care when decided to film everything on a dutch angle for no reason especialy when one of the scriptwriters J. D. Shapiro actually accepted his razzie for worst screenplay while Christian did not accept his for worst director.
Abrams does have passion, it just doesn't show very well. He has been quoted as saying that he trully loved the Star Trek (2009) screenplay and would envy whoever directed it (that was before he had accepted the directorial duties for that film) actually asking Spielberg himself if the script was worthy of Abrams' time. And in the end the reason why the Star Trek reboot still worked despite some shotty script writing is because Abrams wanted to make this movie and wanted to make the bast out of it and he did, it's just that there wasn't much to work with as we've already established the script wasn't all that good. The same thing goes for Super 8, which was a genuinely good film but it also had its problems in the writing department but for all intents and purposes Abrams is one of the better genre directors working today (minus his overuse of less flare effects).
In fact all of Abrams' failings can be traced back to sub-par writing, and yes he doesn't have much vision but he doesn't need to have vision in order to direct a Star Wars film, he just needs passion, he needs to want to direct a Star Wars film and he is a huge fan of Star Wars so the chances are he'll do his best, but unlike Star Trek (2009) where he only had Kurtzman and Orci's vision to work with, this time we have Accademy Award winning writer Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3, Little Miss Sunshine, Oblivion, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) writing Episode VII and he has the vision that Star Wars needs to be fresh and new again and Abrams has the passion to make the script into hopefully the best Star Wars film since the last good one (and no it's not Episode III).
But that's just me, I'm not saying Moviebob's an idiot, I'm not saying I'm totaly right about this, I'm just here voicing my opinion on the subject of vision. So what do you guys think about this, are the writers really the ones with the vision or am I just full of s**t? Let the debate begin... NOW.
That got me thinking as to where exactly does creative vision come from and who exactly can be called a "visionary". Because Moviebob's comments left me feeling like he forgot that technical direction isn't the end all be all of quality of film, and his commant on how there will be nothing memorable about the film just because he directed it is like saying a TV series is the most blandest thing ever because it was directed poorly. That is not to say that flat direction can't kill the fun factor of a film (Episode II was a good indicator of that) and make it lifeless and boring but Abrams' direction has always been anything but lifeless and boring, I'd even dare say that his 2009 reboot of Star Trek was the best directed Star Trek film since Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, note that I said "best directed" not "best written".
I was always under the assumption that the writers are the real visionaries of filmmaking and the directors are just there to translate the vision onto the silver screen, sure there are different directorial styles and a certain level of skill when it comes to direction and it does ultimately comes down to a director's desision as to when a script is good enough to be produced, but in the end it's the writer that had the real idea, the real creative spark that made the film in the first place and it always bothered me how they would market a film on its director and not its writer when even the best direction doesn't mean anything if the script is awfull, even Steven Spielberg didn't stop Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from sucking just because he directed it. In fact Spielberg didn't make Indiana Jones, George Lucas, Phillip Kaufman and Lawrence Kasdan did (which were that film's writers), that film could've been directed by anyone else (as long as it isn't Richard Lester) and it wouldn't be all that diferent from the one that we've seen, sure it will look diferent and feel diferent but it won't BE diferent because Lucas would still have creative control over the project.
The directors in my opinion don't have vision (unless they're writers as well), what they do have is passion, the desire to make a work of art, a good driector like Francis Ford Copolla translated Mario Puzo's standard crime novel into an epic because he had passion that made up for Puzo's imperfect vision, while a bad director or at least a passionless one like Roger Christian can turn what is already a pretty visionless but still somewhat original and well intentioned novel into the disaster that was Battlefield Earth, you know he didn't care when decided to film everything on a dutch angle for no reason especialy when one of the scriptwriters J. D. Shapiro actually accepted his razzie for worst screenplay while Christian did not accept his for worst director.
Abrams does have passion, it just doesn't show very well. He has been quoted as saying that he trully loved the Star Trek (2009) screenplay and would envy whoever directed it (that was before he had accepted the directorial duties for that film) actually asking Spielberg himself if the script was worthy of Abrams' time. And in the end the reason why the Star Trek reboot still worked despite some shotty script writing is because Abrams wanted to make this movie and wanted to make the bast out of it and he did, it's just that there wasn't much to work with as we've already established the script wasn't all that good. The same thing goes for Super 8, which was a genuinely good film but it also had its problems in the writing department but for all intents and purposes Abrams is one of the better genre directors working today (minus his overuse of less flare effects).
In fact all of Abrams' failings can be traced back to sub-par writing, and yes he doesn't have much vision but he doesn't need to have vision in order to direct a Star Wars film, he just needs passion, he needs to want to direct a Star Wars film and he is a huge fan of Star Wars so the chances are he'll do his best, but unlike Star Trek (2009) where he only had Kurtzman and Orci's vision to work with, this time we have Accademy Award winning writer Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3, Little Miss Sunshine, Oblivion, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire) writing Episode VII and he has the vision that Star Wars needs to be fresh and new again and Abrams has the passion to make the script into hopefully the best Star Wars film since the last good one (and no it's not Episode III).
But that's just me, I'm not saying Moviebob's an idiot, I'm not saying I'm totaly right about this, I'm just here voicing my opinion on the subject of vision. So what do you guys think about this, are the writers really the ones with the vision or am I just full of s**t? Let the debate begin... NOW.