Paul WS Anderson

What makes Paul WS Anderson so irritating isn’t the fact that he is an outright awful director, because he isn’t: Event Horizon was kind of entertaining, and Mortal Kombat is fun in a goofy, b-movie sort of way. No, what makes Anderson so goddamn infuriating is that he is consistently, unabashedly, unforgivably mediocre.

I say that Event Horizon and Mortal Kombat were sort of fun, but that’s all they were: apart from some neat scenes of action and violence, both films are pretty significant wastes of time, as are all of Paul WS Anderson’s other films. This wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for the fact that he keeps screwing potentially awesome projects. Resident Evil could have been a terrifyingly Romero-esque zombie thriller, but Anderson turned the film into one big excuse for Milla Jovovich to have a slow-motion kung fu fight with a zombie dog. Soldier could have been a Kurt Russell ass-kicking extravaganza, but it had no plot to speak of (not to mention some incredibly underwhelming action sequences).

And most infuriatingly, Alien vs Predator could have been, and, by all rights, should have been, one of the greatest action movies ever made – and what did Anderson do? He screwed up the rules of the universe (chestbursters now take, like, eight seconds to incubate), allowed the studio to edit it down to a PG-13 rating, added an absurd quasi-love story between a human and a Predator, and, worst of all, only included about two fucking fight scenes between Aliens and Predators. Considering the fact that, you know, that’s what the audience came to fucking see, one has to wonder what the shit Anderson was thinking.

Anderson has now set his sights on ruining another potentially awesome project: the remake of the Roger Corman classic Death Race 2000.  One can only imagine how he’ll manage to screw it up.

Ed Wood

Calling Ed Wood a director we love to hate is admittedly something of an un-truth: we love to love the poor bastard, in all his filmmaking mediocrity. While his films are incredibly and undeniably bad, there’s a certain charm to them: that this man so believed in his own sense of skill that he made awful film after awful film after awful film, all the while making the exact same mistakes (in addition to sometimes coming up with some new ones).

Out of all the directors on this list, Ed Wood’s films fall most pleasantly into the “so bad they’re good” genre of filmmaking. Plan 9 From Outer Space may be one of the funniest unintentional comedies ever made, Glen or Glenda is a case study in awkwardness, and even if the anti-pornography film had developed into a thriving genre, The Sinister Urge would still be the weirdest entry in it. Literally everything about Wood’s movies was bad: the set design (the cardboard headstones in Plan 9 move noticeably when two cops fall down next to them), the directing (Wood shoots pretty much everything like a sitcom, full of three-shots and the rare close-up), and the writing (“We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future.”) are all horrible, but watchably so. Despite the fact that they weren’t filmed with this intent, an average Ed Wood film is about eight hundred times more entertaining than most of the crap released on a monthly basis.

George Lucas

People always rush to George Lucas’s defense with some iteration of the following phrase: “But he wrote and directed The Empire Strikes Back! Chastize him for screwing up the prequels all you want, but the dude was talented at some point!” Guys, I hate to break it to you, but this defense could literally not be more flawed. Not only did George Lucas not direct The Empire Strikes Back  (Irvin Kershner did), he also had no part in writing the screenplay (Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan handled that). Yeah, he technically wrote the story, but Empire’s best moments come about as a result of its fantastic screenplay (it’s rumored that Lucas detested Han Solo’s famous line, “I know,” and wanted it changed to something along the lines of “I love you too”), or kick-ass direction (Vader and Luke’s duel in the carbonite chamber).

The reality is that, while George Lucas is capable of adequately combining aspects of the Joseph Campbell hero quest, the American western, and the Japanese samurai film into one big smorgasbord of ripoff entertainment, he’s not actually that skilled as a filmmaker, as anyone who has watched Episodes I-III can attest to. Even on the special features, you can see Lucas directing Hayden Christiensen (an otherwise capable actor, as proved by films like Shattered Glass and Life as a House) into hamming it up: in the scene where Anakin confesses his unhappiness to Padme, Christiensen delivers a solemn, understated performance that immediately displeases Lucas. He essentially forces Christiensen into delivering his lines like a soap opera star: look at Padme, say a line, then look away, and say the next line in a laughably over-the-top, almost Caruso-esque tone of voice.

Picking on Lucas is almost too easy at this point, as anyone with eyes and ears can attest to how absurdly awful the new Star Wars films were: from the painful dialogue, to the absurd characters, to the ridiculous situations (come on – Chewbacca just happens to be the Wookiee who helps Yoda to safety?), Lucas has proven himself a filmmaker who has little to no idea what made the original Star Wars films great.

And by the way, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes” is – surprise – a fucking absolute.

Paul Verhoeven

Verhoeven is an odd one: on one hand, he’s made some truly awful films (Starship Troopers, Hollow Man, Showgirls), but on the other hand, it’s almost as if he knows they were bad. Starship Troopers functions just as much as an over-the-top satirical piece of neo-Nazi propaganda as it does an action film, and Showgirls revels so absurdly in its scenes of sex and nudity that its ridiculousness seems almost intentional.

Verhoeven has never really come clean about whether the shit factor of these films was intentional or not, but he’s been a charmingly good sport about their suckitude (he showed up, in person, to accept his Golden Razzie for Showgirls) and throughout the rest of his career, he’s made legitimately compelling cinema like Robocop, Basic Instinct, and Black Book. Granted, even the artiest of his films (Black Book) is filled with insane amounts of gore, but he nonetheless is capable of making entertaining movies. The mystique of Verhoeven* comes from trying to figure out whether what you’re watching is bad, but in a good way (Basic Instinct may be one of the trashiest films of the 90’s, but hell if it isn’t effective at what it sets out to do), bad, but in an intentionally satirical way (“The only good bug is a dead bug!”), or bad, but in a self-deprecating sort of way (“It must be weird, not having anybody cum on you.”).

While Hollow Man may make you want to tear your eyes out and Showgirls may turn you off of nudity forever, there’s always the possibility of something more behind every Verhoeven film – and that’s something most of the other directors on this list certainly can’t say for themselves.

Brett Ratner

I was going to put a "serious" clip from one of the Rush Hour movies here, but posting a video Jeremy Piven adlibbing "gay" dialogue is much more important to me than trying to prove that Brett Ratner sucks and Chris Tucker isn't funny. It sort of goes without saying.

The most irritating thing about Brett Ratner is that he seems to be constantly rewarded for his suckitude. After the horrendous Money Talks, he was allowed to film a slightly less horrendous version of the same story, Rush Hour. After Rush Hour, he screwed up The Family Man, then Rush Hour 2, then Red Dragon, then X-Men 3. Brett Ratner gives truth to one of Kevin Smith’s many quotes about Hollywood: “In Hollywood, you just sort of fail upward.”

And Jesus, why? Evidently, the dude is an incredible negotiator (he talked his way into NYU film school despite only having a C average), but even so – wouldn’t the average movie studio know that his films are, to put it bluntly, abysmal? Ratner’s entire career has consisted of hamhandedly ripping off other, better directors specific to whichever genre Ratner is working in at the time. The Family Man is one big Frank Capra ripoff, the Rush Hour movies may just as easily be called 48 Hours with a Beverly Hills Cop, In China, and he spends the majority of his time in Red Dragon trying (unsuccessfully) to ape Michael Mann’s earlier, vastly superior version of the story, Manhunter. And don’t even get me started on X-Men 3.

Ratner has proven himself a consistently horrendous director, and yet the guy gets the opportunity to make potentially incredible films with insanely talented casts (technically, Red Dragon should have succeeded on the strength of its actors alone). Why? Because, whether by audience stupidity or the divine intervention of a vengeful and evil God, the bastard’s films make money. And as if that weren’t enough, he evidently spends his off-time taking photographs of/having sex with gorgeous models.

What a dick.

Michael Bay

I was watching the special features of the Hot Fuzz DVD yesterday (before you ask, I've got a region-free DVD player), and Edgar Wright said something that made me think. He said something along the lines of, “Shooting a film gives you a new appreciation for the directors who do that for a living…shooting an action film gave me a new appreciation for directors like Michael Bay.” I paused for a moment, reflecting on this: it is indeed very, very difficult to direct action films, and though Michael Bay’s films have never been quite good, they’ve never been uniformly bad.

Then I remembered Pearl Harbor.

Full of contrived scenarios, horrendous dialogue, and disgusting historical inaccuracies (no matter how determined he might have been, Franklin Delano Roosevelt wouldn’t have been able to stand up just because he fucking felt like it), Pearl Harbor exemplifies everything wrong with Michael Bay’s directing style: he claims to give a rat’s ass about his characters, but in reality they serve only as catalysts for hugely explosive action sequences.

And while I’ll be the first person to admit that I enjoyed The Rock quite a bit, it has to be said that your average Michael Bay film is a hell of a lot heavier on explosions and boobies than plot or character. No matter how hilariously the film is referenced in Hot Fuzz, Bad Boys II may literally be the dumbest action film I have ever seen in my entire life. Not the worst, mind you, but the dumbest: throughout the film’s 147 minute running time (!!!), the average viewer will find all sorts of “entertaining” scenes catered to the lowest common denominator, including

-Martin Lawrence getting shot through the ass in slow-motion

-a car chase that somehow results in a boat exploding

-Martin Lawrence taking ecstasy and tripping out for about fifteen minutes

-a car chase where corpses are thrown at Will Smith’s car

-Will Smith, a regular Miami police officer, somehow having legal access to a high-powered submachine gun which just happens to be in the backseat of his car

-a Humvee chase where Will Smith and Martin Lawrence destroy an entire hillside full of houses

-corpse boobies

And that’s not even the half of it. One need only look at any of Bay’s other films for more examples of ridiculous, over-the-top action setpieces: it says something that out of the top five dumbest action scenes ever filmed (according to The Shiznit), two of them belong to Michael Bay films.

Uwe Boll

Where to start? Uwe Boll is the director that Paul WS Anderson is happy he didn’t become. In fact, his presence on this list should almost negate Anderson’s – though Anderson made mediocre popcorn versions of decent videogames, Uwe Boll makes unwatchable, horrendously shit versions of similarly-themed games. This is the guy who turned Alone in the Dark from a haunting horror film about a private detective to a Matrix-y shootemup with Tara Reid as a scientist. This is the guy who inserted actual game footage from House of the Dead into his film adaptation for no fucking reason. This is the guy who promised boxing training and equipment to any journalist who wished to fight him in the ring, and then refused to provide either once the journalists actually showed up, in addition to refusing to fight anyone with a martial arts background.

Uwe Boll is the worst living director today, and I don’t make that statement lightly. While he denies that his films are financed through a German loophole that allows failing films to somehow turn a profit, this theory has never been fully disproved. And like Brett Ratner, Boll somehow attracts casts far too talented for the work. Michael Madsen and Ben Goddamn Motherfucking Kingsley were in Bloodrayne? What in the blue fuck? Boll’s films are an affront to mankind, and that’s bad enough, but when he manages to drag people like Ben Kingsley and the guy from Das Boot down with him, it hurts the art of cinema itself.

It’s impossible to say anything about Boll’s films that one can’t surmise simply by watching them: poorly written, poorly acted (yes, he even manages to turn Ben Fucking Kingsley into a lousy performer), and horrendously directed, there is not a single redeeming thing about any film Uwe Boll has made in his life. Apart from the bit in the Postal trailer where he says, “this film was funded by Nazi gold.” Admittedly, that line is pretty funny. Still, the other 99.9% of his filmography makes the viewer feel like they’re being mentally castrated. 

I’d be tempted to call Boll a modern Ed Wood (many others certainly have), but that’d be an insult to Ed Wood: while one might be able to get some entertainment value from Wood’s films, an average Uwe Boll flick functions as but a terrifying, grotesque perversion of filmmaking. Ed Wood’s films are so bad they’re good: Uwe Boll’s films are occasionally so bad they’re good, but then they go back to being just plain bad. And then they get worse.

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