See if a different director came onto Batman Forever, I'm inclined to think the first thing he'd have done is probably have rewrites done to the script. Although Akiva Goldsman does seem to be the opposite, one of those screenwriters who seems to make a bad script for even pretty good directors.

Depends on the director though. While I have my problems with the auteur theory, I do think a film with an "auteur" at the helm is far more likely to be distinctive or interesting than one which isn't. I don't think it's a coincidence that the two best Star Trek films were written and directed by Nicholas Meyer, who brings a Hitchcockian sensibility to his set pieces which none of the franchise's other directors have been able to match. Or that his scripts for II, IV, and VI are full of literary references and a sense of wit which isn't found elsewhere. It's why EON Productions almost always hires gun-for-hire directors and former editors, stunt men tired directors, etc. for the Bond films. They don't want anyone messing with the ingredients.

Stanley Kubrick might disagree.

But look how many films by mediocre directors are full of interesting elements which never cohere. Look how many sci-fi films directed by an undistinguished filmmaker have here an interesting set design and there and interesting ship design, etc. Look how actors like Depp ham it up in POTC surrounded by various interesting special effects or bits of choreography, all hanging together by the hand a directors who's never had so much leeway and money before and can't bring things together.

True, but there's a reason that many so-called auteurs work repeatedly with the same editor, DP, production designer, etc. The personal ideas and the mess which run through David Cronenberg's films are quite distinct, and so is his visual style (or occasionally lack thereof, he's not that interested in aesthetics, IMO.). Tim Burton has worked with a half dozen DPs, but all of his films have a distinct gothic atmosphere and design sensibility. Almost all of his films have different screenwriters, but they all center on outsiders and exploration.

I'd disagree completely "if anything." If you can't tell who did what on a film, then why does the director, DP, editor, etc. matter at all? You hear stories almost all of the time about titanic power struggles between directors and producers, films with multiple rewrites, etc, and you can usually tell when such things crop up. I don't think that the constant obsession with military hardware and short skirts in Michael Bay movies has anything to do with editors or production designers or costume designers. You pretty distinctly tell which parts of Superman II were directed by Lester and which by Donner, and they had completely different crews. It's foolish to claim that the director is the sole defining factor in a film, but in the case of Blade Runner, you can also tell which bits were designed by Mobeus, which pieces of the Bond films were designed by Ken Adam, etc. You can likewise watch a really had movie shot by an ace DP and says "this movie is terrible, but it looks really good." But it's often possible to tell which pieces come from whom, and the it's usually a properly talented director who can wrangle these pieces together into a cohesive whole in a way which makes the film distinctly his. This is of course to say nothing of directors who aren't themselves writers but who's work displays consistent themes and ideas-Kathryn Bigelow's tales of addiction and risk obsession, the numerous father figures who constantly show up in Spielberg films, the leftist political satire running through Paul Verhoeven movies, the scenes of voyerism and distinctive camera aesthetics which run through Hitchcock films (Hitchcock himself hated The Paradine Case interfered with by the producer), scenes of guilt which permeate Scorsese films, and so forth. Is the director the only deciding factor? No. But the best directors are always overseeing all of this, and when bad screenwriting, etc. comes into play, it's usually possible to spot where it comes from.

Re: Good Script, Good Acting, Bad Director?
 

and if you listen to the technical commentary, he's lazy. the boardroom scene (where Afleck calls out all the members) was supposed to be a big John Woo style shootout with squibs and effects (thats why all the board members are big and look like stunt guys), after the dialogue was shot, Kev decided it wasn't needed "and i can't out do woo" & we're just left with sound effects and a little blood splatter

Re: Good Script, Good Acting, Bad Director?
 

Apparently they needed Lucas to help do a CG animal, because the real animal didn't ship to where it was filming in time

Re: Good Script, Good Acting, Bad Director?
 

I think you forgot to put it in past tense there. Anyway, how would he have disagreed with that statement? Certainly, from directing Spartacus, Kubrick knew that simply being the director on a film wasn't enough to assert full creative control. He was writer or co-writer on nearly all of his films, so he knew the importance of that role, as well as producer on all his films past Spartacus, knowing the influence of that role. Kubrick asserted nearly full creative control on most of his films, but he knew from experience that just being the director wasn't enough to be able to assert that level of control.

Again, the point is whether one can point to any one aspect of a film and say that's solely the responsibility of the director. Looking at just the film itself, you can't. Cinematography and editing are at least more distinct roles with visible effects on the final film; one can say "that's a bad shot" or "that's a poor edit," even if one can't definitively say that those are the sole fault of the cinematographer or editor. Directing is more nebulous, you can't point to any particular thing on the screen and say "that's bad directing." The effect of a director is more on the whole of the film and all the roles everyone else in the production plays.

A director is like the conductor in an orchestra. Obviously it's an important role, and a talented one can leave their mark on an overall production, but you can't point to one particular note or instrument and say, "ah yes, that was solely because of the conductor."

That's part of the problem; you need to know of behind-the-scenes info to really start peeling apart what could've been the fault of the director, or the producer, or the studio, or the script, etc. For example, with Star Wars there are behind the scenes reports of Lucas failing to properly direct the actors. However, all the actors still delivered solid performances. If we didn't know the behind-the-scenes info, there'd be nothing on the screen of that particular film to indicate Lucas was bad at directing actors.

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Re: Good Script, Good Acting, Bad Director?
 

Not intending any disrespect or sarcasm, I just assumed that since he'd passed away, the past tense was a given.

Kubrick was known for micromanaging his films to the last fine detail. Nothing the frame occurs which he didn't know about or OK.

Yes, but he mainly took on those roles to further assert control as a director. I see what you're saying, but even in this case, you have to allow for the broad amount of sway various people are given. Steven Spielberg is much more likely to be allowed to do what he wants on a film and exert greater that John Just Got Out of Film School.

I disagree. Look at how crassly directed films by people like McG, Michael Bay, and Brett Ratner are. Their slightly leering attitude toward female characters, the rapid-fire cut action sequences, etc. Compare, for example, how Nicholas Meyer directs the set pieces in his Star Trek films, modulating them with Hitchcockian suspense, giving his battles a feel of 3-D space, giving them a nautical flavor, etc. Compare this to how many other directors who have equally talented editors, but don't have his flair and simply throw money at the screen. Or take John Woo, who worked on Face/Off with editors and a DP and second unit with whom he'd had no previous experience, but who's trademarks-slow-motion, two guns, a particular rhythm-are all present. I'd argue that watching a good sequence or set piece vs. a bad one is the definition of "good direction" of a film. The Empire Strikes Back is a better-directed film than the original. Both films had talented crews behind-the scenes, but it's clear that in creating atmosphere, staging sequences, working with actors, etc. Kershner was much more adept at utilizing and controlling these resources than Lucas was. The Mutara Nebula sequences in Wrath of Khan, for instance, is a much more well-directed sequence than the knockoff phazon rift sequence in Nemesis. They both operate under the same basic idea, the latter was even directed by a former editor, but it has none of the pathos of the former.

Though they come at things from the opposite end, I'd think of a director far more like a songwriter: they may not be the ones actually playing the instruments, but the song itself is recognizable me because of the DNA of the piece, and that comes down to the director. Look across the body of work of good directors and you'll notice many things-various themes which they continue to explore, various stylistic flourishes which they utilize, etc. Even some directors who aren't notionally writers themselves are selective in how they pick their projects and have scripts rewritten to match their ideas (Hitchcock, Spielberg).

This is broadly not necessarily wrong, but a few points. First of all, pattern recognition. It's clear from the prequels what many of the skills at which Lucas does not excel are. Beyond this, looking at the body of work of particular filmmakers gives you broader ideas. If, for instance I see (as I have) several Michael Bay movies cut by talented ACE editors who've worked on other films which are much better, and then see five or six movies directed by Bay which utilize a particular cutting style, I come to the conclusion that he is the one who has final says and wants this particular style on his films. If I see a film written by the screenwriter of Transformers which doesn't feature endless scenes of military hardware, then watch several Bay film which do, I'm inclined to believe that he's the unifying line here. You are of course right that the director isn't the only factor in any film, but he's usually both the most important one and the strongest one. As for various other elements, astute film viewers will of course be able to sort out the pieces-I'm the kind of person who watches who editors, DPs, etc. are. And of course some production designers, screenwriters, etc. have things of their own which run across films. But I don't think I'd watch a film simply because it was shot by Bill Pope or edited by Chris Lebenzon. But I would choose to watch a film because it was directed by James Cameron or Steven Spielberg. Conversely, I would watch a Paul Verhoeven film which was stylishly directed even if it has a rotten Joe Eszterhas screenplay. Yes, the elements are separate, and as the great Harold Bloom once opined, cultural criticism is a mug's game. But broadly speaking, you can generally identify which pieces of a film are attributable to which creative parties. Even looking at actors and actresses who give good performances in bad films-Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Gary Oldman, Greg Kinnear, Emma Thompson, etc., you can see that some can overcome a bad director, but usually aren't enough to redeem a bad film. You separate the pieces and examine them, but the director is, or should be the unifying factor. There are of course many stories about films with troubled productions, but the vast majority of the time, even in the pre-Internet age, when the director had a fight with the producers or any issues troubled productions, it was usually pretty highly publicized.

While I don't necessarily disagree with this (Star Wars is too much of an open wound for me, so I haven't seen it in a long while with the more critical eyes), many critics have in fact argued that this isn't the case, and that the film used its special effects to mask bad acting, poor screenwriting, etc. Again, it also comes back to pattern-recognition-other Lucas films contain bad performances, other ineffective aspects, etc. Why then do we attribute the successful elements of Star Wars to other parties? In my opinion, there are several reasons. First of all, many who've come to dislike Lucas in the following years (And good Lord knows, I have) have wanted to attribute the success of the film to other factors-a better editor, better actors, more input from other parties, etc. While this may be partially true, I think a larger aspect of this comes out of changes in Lucas himself as well, and the changes it brought about in his art. Even further than this, are Lucas' difficulties in working with the actors stories the actors themselves have told, if so which ones, and are they corroborated by anyone else? Laurence Fishburn dislike his performance in The Matrix and argues that Wachowskis didn't know how to work with actors. But because of the Wachowskis chose to put their film together, I don't see this. I don't doubt Fishburn. But trust the tale, not the teller, all we can judge is the film itself sometimes. Richard Donner says that the Salkinds on the Superman films were incredibly difficult to work with. I can, of course, choose to believe the Salkinds story that Donner himself was difficult to work with too, though obviously my sympathies are much more inclined to align with Donner. But the final verdict is in the film itself. When they fired Donner and replaced him, the quality took a huge nosedive. This therefore in my mind corroborates Donner's version of the story.

Even then, there are some actors, as mentioned above, who are good enough to overcome bad directors. By contrast, there are some directors who are able to use actors in certain way. Casper Van Dein, for instance, is a wooden actor, but in Starship Troopers, Paul Verhoeven perfectly exploits this by casting the actor as an Aryan-style poster-figure. Was the actor in on this joke? While based on listening to the audio commentary, I'm inclined to think yes, even if he wasn't it's beside the point. By constructing the film the fashion in which he does, Verhoeven, who as director is simultaneously controlling many elements of the film, cuts the film and construct the story in such a way that this performance serves a larger particular purpose within the film.

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It's "past tense", not "last tense," and if it was always a given, it wouldn't be needed. Grammar is important.

For most of his films, yes. The influence of the director is one of guidance and veto power though, not of doing everything themselves. Kubrick took on more than the role of director, such as screenwriter and producer, because he knew how limited the role of being just the director was. So nothing happened without his knowledge or acceptance, but likewise nothing happened solely by him in his role as director.

Again, the question is whether there's something on screen that can be attributed as solely the responsibility of the director, and just by what's on the screen for a specific film, you can't say.

Yes, directors can have a variable amount of influence on a film, and I'm not denying that directors can and often do have influence on a film. But that's what it is: influence. They influence all other aspects of the filmmaking process, but they don't actually do anything that shows up on screen themselves.

A "leering attitude toward female characters," is somewhat vague, but that could easily be blamed by the script. Do those directors create a "leering attitude" in the script, or do they pick scripts that already contain those elements? Or do they hire screenwriters to rewrite existing scripts to those sensibilities? And rapid-fire cutting is obviously an aspect of the editing. Are the director's pushing the editor to that, or did they hire editors who are already inclinated to that style? Or maybe the directors themselves are merely serving the wishes of the producers that hired them in the first place?

Also, those examples are ones where you have to look at trends in a director's films, looking at multiple films from a director to try and pinpoint commonalities, then attribute those commonalities to the director, perhaps incorrectly. Watching one particular film from one director, with no knowledge of their other work, nothing on the screen screams "this is the sole result of the director."

Except most of the time, what makes a good sequence or set piece boils down to the editing. I'd already mentioned the first Star Wars, which had a disastrous first cut.

Nope, bad analogy. The songwriter/composer is like the screenwriter on a film; laying the basic structure for others to perform. There's a reason why many of the great classical composers were also conductors; they knew the importance of controlling the performance of the piece they wrote. It's also why there's so many singer/songwriter combinations, as the only way to control the song you wrote is to perform it yourself.

Yes, pattern recognition can help suss out a director's influence on the films they've worked on, if you're looking at the body of work as a whole. However, it's a process of elimination; as you point out to suss out the director's influence on the editing you have to see both films by the same editor under different directors, as well as the same director with different editors (if that's even the case). Even then, you still can't remove the editor's responsibility on any one particular work, even if you can make a strong case for the director's influence.

This assumes the director had a problem with the producer's influence, which maybe they didn't. For example, you blame Michael Bay for the editing on his films, but I've never heard of his editors complaining about the editing style on his films. Michael Bay's first few films were with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, one of few producers who seem to have visible influence on the end product.

Also, bad stories can stay hidden for decades. Some people just want to keep their head down and keep doing work instead of pissing off powerful people, and indicating to other powerful people that they publicly bad-mouth the people they work with.

Again, inference, behind the scenes tales, comparison with other films... this is all needed to really suss out what a director's influence on a particular film may have been. This is all because, while an incredibly important role and powerful creative voice, there's nothing in a single finished film, in and of itself, one can point to and say "the director solely did that," because there's nothing on a film production that a director does solely themselves.

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First off, Batman Forever IS good. The big problem with it is that Schumacher didn't reign in Tommy Lee Jones. In fact, he seemed to have no understanding of Two Face at all. But the rest of the film is good. It would have been even better if WB had let Schumacher include the subplot of Bruce being affected (again) by the death of his parents. Obviously Batman and Robin is pure shit.

As for Whedon's comments on Alien: Resurrection, if you were given the chance to write a script for one of your favorite franchises, and you think you've written something really interesting and cool, and then some guy comes in and messes around with it to the point that you're watching it fall apart in front of you, wouldn't you be pissed about it? I actually have a soft spot for Resurrection, but you have to watch it as a Jeunet film and ignore the fact that it says "Alien" on it to enjoy it.

Re: Good Script, Good Acting, Bad Director?
 

I know, I was an English major, I was typing on an iPhone and missed a key.

Up to a point maybe, yes, but when a new film comes out, it's almost always praised by critics as the debut of a "promising new director."

Granted, but everyone who actually does things has to pass through them. And even then, that's debatable-a guy like Guillermo del Toro designs every last bit of his movies and hangs around the design team, the FX team, etc.

No it couldn't. Kurtzman and Orci's other scripts don't have the level of misogyny present, nor is it likely that they scripted the camera to follow a short skirt as a tracking shot. Add into the the stories about Bay's personal attitudes and the fact that such things show up in his films over and over and don't in the screenwriters' other films, and there you have it.

Depends on a lot of things. In Bay's case, I think he does add these things. Beyond this too is the consideration of the type of film which we're talking about-the kind of thing focus-grouped and reedited and rewritten all to hell in a desperate attempt to please everybody. Yes, this could be used to justify some of the problem and excesses inherent in the scripts (and explain Bay's style of filmmaking, as this is the kind of enviroinment in which he came of artistic age), but going by the rest of his ourvre, you see a pattern.

Again, you can usually tell. Nowadays, of course, it's easier since some DVD-ROMs contain scripts etc. and you can see how little resemblance they sometime bear to the filmed dialogue and structure. Even some extremely obsessive perfectionists like Kubrick or Cameron who actually do their own writing frequently abandon what's in final shooting scripts.

Given that all of Bay's film's are cut in such a way and that the editors have worked on other films where their work appears better and they have ACE credentials, I'm fairly certain it's the latter. Even then, many directors hitch their wagon to particular editors precisely because they develop an artistic rapport- Eastwood and Cox, Spielberg and Khan, Scorsese and Scoonmaker, etc. Yes, a film is made by many people, but there is simply too much of the personality of a director on a film to say that they aren't usually the major influence, and when said director usually isn't the major influence, you can usually tell, as the elements of the film seem more interesting as disparate pieces than as a cohesive whole.

They often are, but that's why Jerry Bruckheimer or EON productions are careful to hire former editors, music video-bred filmmakers etc. as they are the creative forces behind films looking to make specific kinds of movies. In a perfect world, what a producer will do is service the director and get the director all of the necessary resources to make the film the way he wants. I doubt that ever has or will happen. As you pointed out, this is why many directors themselves shift over to their role as producers, or form artistic partnerships. Kathleen Kennedy clearly knew that what she wanted from Jurassic Park was an action adventure film which Spielberg would be able to deliver. Spielberg conversely probably took on as a role as producer on Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan to ensure that he would be able to have such artistic sway. But even then, when a talented director battling against a producer-the Superman films, etc.-you can isolate the elements of what came from whom. This depends on the viewer too. Many film fans or critics will be far more discerning in how they look at film and how they isolate specific element than the average viewer. Is the director always or ever the only influence on a film? No, but he's usually the consistent and the one most likely to tie all of the pieces together.

Why would attributing such commonalites to the director be wrong? They are usually the causal link.

I don't entirely know if you can even make this case though-look at films where the editing was taken away from the director and you see how different the film is when the director wasn't involved in the editing process. You can even then see the direction he would have liked to have taken the film oftentimes before it was push in a different direction. Editors assemble pieces, often brilliantly, but they aren't themselves the ones involved from the beginning the way directors are and know which direction to take the film.

Granted. But there are directors who themselves have scripts rewritten to suit their particular interests and idea, allow actors to improves certain scenes, move sequences around, come up with on-set ideas, cut dialogue, etc.

I'm not saying that the editor doesn't matter, but when the same editor works on a good film and a bad film, and then you further isolate how good or bad the director's films are, you are putting together enough pieces to draw conclusions.

Some have a problem with the producer, some don't. Again, this is case-by-case.

One of the few? I'm not entirely sure about this-there are plenty of producers who are know for specific styles of films and hire the editors accordingly. Compare to this to a movie with a phalanx of producers because the director independently funded the film and had to secure resources from many places. You won't like see Avi Lerner produce a film which doesn't have an explosion or a fight in it.

Sometimes, yes. But sometime directors who've had these experiences raise a royal noise, in fact I'd argue more often than not.

Perhaps, but as the unifying element, you can usually say that it's a director with the strongest influence on bringing the pieces together. If I went to drive and incredibly expensive car but had no idea how to drive it, how to handle it, etc. then other drivers with lesser equipment could probably be me pretty handily. If I drive a Ferrari but face off against a driver with years more experience than I have, it's more than likely that you'll see a much great reflection of his talent behind the wheel than of my superior equipment. On a drifting course where I have an expensive car and am banging into walls, a driver with a lesser car an actual understanding of how the sport work is far more likely to beat me.

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True, but that's because they're largely buying into the auteur theory that the director is the most influential creative voice in a largely collaborative process. If you asked those critics whether they thought the director was solely responsible for the quality of the film, they'd likely say no. And if asked for a specific instance on screen in the film that they thought the director was solely responsible for, they'd likely be at a loss.

If he has a design team, then obviously Guillermo del Toro isn't designing "every last bit" himself. And the concept that everything has to pass through a director isn't even being debated: for most current films that's true. If you want to argue that a director is ultimately responsible for nearly the entire production, ignoring the possibility of being overruled by the producers or studio, then that's true. But they're never solely responsible for any single aspect of the production in their role as director.

I'm not saying it's necessarily wrong, although it could be if you haven't effectively eliminated any other potential source for the commonalities (i.e. same producer, same screenwriter, etc.). As you yourself wrote, they are likely "usually" the causal link, which means they're not always. However, the fact that one has to compare between films in order to infer a director's influence just illustrates that there's nothing in a single film, taken on it's own, that's the sole domain and responsibility of the director.

You actually just made the case for me, since my point was you can't just look at a work on it's own and infer the director's influence, and you only try to make a point by directly contradicting that and referencing knowledge of behind-the-scenes info for a film. One could also argue that in order to know how a director would've edited a film "taken away from them," you'd have to compare to other works by that director.

Back during the studio model, editors actually used to edit films without any input from the director, whose work on a film was finished once shooting ended. One could even argue that this could be a better way to edit a film, since the editor has no bias to the footage based on how difficult it was to get, etc. Spielberg has commented on how influential editor Verna Fields was on Jaws, with her mercilessly cutting footage of the shark that didn't work, while Spielberg kept arguing for more footage, sometimes a frame or two, remembering how hard each shot was to get. But she usually won such arguments, Spielberg claiming for the better of the film. Other directors have made similar comments on how having a "fresh eye" on the film, one not attached to the principle photography, is a valuable asset.

I think you're shooting your own argument in the foot here. If you're stating that there's many producers that exert a noticeable influence on their films, then trying to infer the director's influence becomes that much murkier, and claiming that the director is solely responsible for anything in the final film impossible.

This is impossible to determine. The number of directors who stay quiet about differences of opinions between producer and director is impossible to know, because they stay quiet. In any case, the point is that relying on behind-the-scenes info can be troublesome because we never know if we have all the pertinent info for pinning responsibility, or even if the info we have is accurate.

Undeniably. But the OP's question wasn't whether a director has unfluence, but whether there's a film that one could say the responsibility "really [falls] on the shoulders of the director, alone?" That's the question I was answering, and the point I was making.

This is just a horrible analogy for a director. As the driver of the car, you're clearly the one solely responsible for the driving. However, if we shift the analogy to maybe a race track with a racing team, the closest analogy for a director would be the crew chief, who overseas everything to make sure the race goes smoothly.

Re: Good Script, Good Acting, Bad Director?
 

Well that's a given to anyone with eyes, ears, and a brain. :)

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He died.

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Um, I know. That's what I meant when I said that he had passed away.