I'd say him and Joel Schumacher

Ah, but there's an enigma. oel's always struck me as the kind of guy who'll direct a paycheck film so he can finance his own projects without much interference. He dropped the ball completely with the last couple of Batman films, true, but as long as he still gets to make stuff like Tigerland, he's okay in my book.

Chris Columbus? You sir are fired!

I don't think Michael Bay is a hack director at all. Despite the movies he does being very cliche, his choice of camera angles and shots are sometimes very original and clever.

Joel Schumacer (sp??).... he totally ruined the Batman series.

I would agree with Brett Ratner. His films don't have one iota of creativity in them. There's nothing in his films that say "hey, this is a Ratner film!" and in general, there's little in his films that is good.

I'll defend Bay and Columbus though. Columbus has made some quality family movies, and HP, though nowhere as good as what Cuaron did, you have to give credit where credit is due...Columbus laid the groundwork for those movies, did some wonderful casting and made a couple competent films that paved the way for a great one. Bay, well most of his movies suck, but he most definately has a distinctive style. He's not a hack, I've no doubt he's churning out the movies he wants to see. He's got some impressive visuals to boot. But, his vision in general is of bad movies, but he's no hack. Neitehr is Lucas for that matter...assuming we're talking about people who just churn out stuff. You can hate the prequels all you want, but theyr'e hardly the product of an uncreative or by the numbers filmmaker, good or bad.

actually, both them were way to slow. See 3rd reply to the thread. ;)

:lol: Aint that the truth!

George Lucas

he's stolen a lot of his cleaver camera moves from old spielberg movies, and yet unlike spielberg, bay doesn't seem to understand that the reason they were so impressive in SS's films were because he used them as emotional punctuation.
Bay just bludgeons you over the head with one after the after, for no purpose other than they look cool in and of themselves.

with Lucas, you have the ability to compare what his filmmaking values were 26 years ago to what they are now.
gone is subtlety and its replaced by souless spectacle.
the escape from Bespin was wonderfully executed back in 1980- now we have to suffer thru the score and pace being butchered so that we can get some inane superfluous shots of a model taking off and landing.
he also jettisons a dramatic line reading that encapsulates the attitude of the character and situation perfectly, in favor of banal literalness.

face it, he was once a fine storyteller, now he's a hack.

There's no point in a debate in the "who stole what camera shots from whom "argument. We can trace this back farther than Orson Welles. The point is that when you turn on your TV and see a movie directed by Michael Bay you instantly know that its him. He has style, whether or not you like the style is irrelevent. He's not a hack director and often has music video directors imitate him.

Gus Van Sant.

1998's shot-by-shot remake of PSYCHO was the laziest project a director could undertake.

Uwe Boll.

i guess it all comes down to how we are going to define 'hack'.

I was tempted to nominate Uwe, but he seems genuinely passionate about his work, and believes in what he does; the kind of guy that if he wasn't getting paid, he'd do it for free.

However, he's an awful, awful, awful, awful, crap, shit, stupid, terrible filmmaker.

Peter Jackson.

Went the safe route and cookie cuttered one of the greatest works of literature of all time. Not to mention his other films...

Heavenly Creatures was a great film and I thought Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles were pretty damn funny plus I don't see how anyone could have made LOTR better. But thats just my opinion.

Joel Schumacher and Gus Van Sant are not hack by any means. They've all had their shit fests; but Van Sant still continues to take risky chances (Gerry and Elephant come to mind) as does Schumacher (Tigerland, Phone Booth, and Phantom of the Opera).

And I would like to say the following... ahem...

SCHUMACHER DID NOT RUIN THE BATMAN FRANCHISE. THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT KNOWN AS AKIVA (WHO HAPPENS TO BE A WORTHLESS ********ING DOUCHEBAG) GOLDSMAN RUINED THE GODDAMN FRANCHISE.

Thank you.

Uwe Boll? Hack.
Paul W.S. Anderson? Hack.
Brett Ratner? Hack.
Chris Colombus? Hack (whose dick did he suck to get Rent by the way?).
Lucas? Greedy and a hack.
Loved the mention of Harold Becker earlier in this thread.

What about Jon Turteltaub? Joe Roth? Martin Brest? Donald Petrie?

Let's not go for the "easy" targets. Let's pick out some truely fucking awful directors.

And please for the love of God, let that Peter Jackson comment be sarcasm.

The same can be said for the works of Edward D. Wood Jr.

Having music video directors imitate you isn't exactly a compliment.

Steven Spielberg!!!

:rolleyes:

Doris Wishman

Herschell Gordon Lewis

Despite the low budgets with which they were forced to work, they never, ever, rose above them and made art.

I don't know if I would categorize these guys as hacks. I think there is a big difference between directing all around bad movies and being a hack. To me, a hack is someone who is presented with somewhat good material and is unable or unwilling to make the material their own, or as you put it, "rise above it."

Hear that? Trying to adapt those books, a massive undertaking utilizing thousands of people, with millions of fans to please... is now the "safe route".

Oh, Chmiel - it's as much Schumacher's fault as it is Goldsman's, truth be told.

David Cronenberg
Roger Corman

There are lots of hacks, to be sure, but George Lucas is in a class of his own because he used to be good. When Star Wars I came out, I was so excited I prebought tickets and rushed my kids from school to the theater on opening day. And what did we see?

<img src="http://onfinite.com/libraries/104468/2cc.jpg" />

I don't think Lucas can ever recover his reputation after that, at least not with me because I couldn't leave that movie (one of my kids actually liked it, so out of courtesy, we had to stay and let him watch it.) George Lucas raped my parenthood. :mad: