Every now and again I'm asked if there are any directors whom I hate. With hate being such a strong word I would emphasize that I don't truly hate any directors. But then there are those days when it seems all your most irrational and primal emotions surface and everything you usually feel indifferent towards gets flushed out to one extreme or another. On those days, I might say I hate Paul W.S. Anderson (1)(2).
Paul W.S. Anderson is a director so lacking in basic understanding of not only film theory and construction, but also basic human emotions. For those not familiar with him or may have misread those middle initials, I am not talking about Paul THOMAS Anderson. No, W.S. Anderson is NOT the director of such awesome films as Boogie Nights and There Will be Blood, but is instead the director of Mortal Kombat, Event Horizen, and most of the Resident Evil movies.
I must admit, for the longest time W.S. Anderson was just another director who made crappy movies to me. His was a name I should have forgotten. But after watching Resident Evil: Afterlife (why, WHY!?) it suddenly hit me: W.S. Anderson hasn't a single original thought in his brain. All he does is ape the styles of better directors and copy scenes from better movies and repurposes them for his own liking. Seriously, if Anderson where a Pokemon, he'd be Ditto. It's actually insulting how little thought he puts into his films.
It basically boils down to the fact he is constantly trying to recreate better films. For the first half of his career he's trying to remake Aliens (seriously, go and watch Event Horizen and the first Resident Evil). But it was with Afterlife that I really noticed this strategy of his, because he changed which director he's trying to emulate: Anderson is now trying to be Zack Snyder. Not only did he blatantly rip-off Snyder's color-palette (if it weren't for the fact that Snyder's DP Larry Fong is amazing you'd probably never notice the difference) but Anderson has also snatched his style(3). Snyder is well known for his pioneering of the "ramping" technique, which has an action scene slow down for a moment only to speed back up for the impact. But the important thing to note is that Snyder knows when to use it, Anderson just starts using slow-motion because "it might look cool here."
Now understand, I don't have a problem with directors seeing a new technique and using it in their own films. That's how filmmaking evolves. But Anderson uses these new techniques (and some old ones) without any understanding of why they can be effective. Anderson is a director that is all style and no substance, only he wishes he actually had a style. This became more readily apparent when I saw Resident Evil: Retribution (again, WHY!?). The movie opens with a credits sequence in which we are shown the opening action scene in slow-motion AND reverse. My mind immediately thought of the well-regarded trailer for Dead Island (if you haven't seen it, go watch it now, the rest of this will make more sense). The Dead Island trailer consists of a family of three on vacation who are attacked by zombies. It shows the family running from the zombies in the hallways of the hotel, then seeking refuge in a room after the daughter is bitten. As Mom and Dad fight off the zombies, the daughter turns and attacks Dad, who proceeds to frantically send her crashing out the window and falling to her "death." But the big twist is that it's all in reverse. The trailer begins with the zombified daughter lying on the ground before flying back up to the room and attacking Dad. The rest of the trailer is (mostly) in reverse, ending with Dad reaching out to help his daughter up. The reason this in-reverse gimmick works is because of the beginning and end, they both tie into each other emotionally. None of this is evident in the opening of Retribution, it's all for show (4).
I've been trying to think of some kind of example, or paralel entertainers to explain W.S. Anderson's lack of style. The best I can think of is magicians (5). Take the acts of Penn & Teller or Chris Angel. Penn & Teller not only have clear personalities that allow them to create humor that compliments their magic tricks, but they also have a clear idea and theme to their show (6). Chris Angel, on the other hand, is all about his attitude. There is no idea behind his show, it's just the magic tricks. Yet W.S. Anderson is neither of them, he's just the kid who picks up magic as a hobby and never finds anything to do with it.
You may have noticed I have a particular problem with Anderson's Resident Evil adaptations. However, I should specify I have a greater problem with the more recent ones. The first one is actually decent from a technical standpoint. If you'll allow me I'd like to be contructive for a moment, I'm not fond of simply shitting all over someone's work. The thing the first RE movie gets right is to essentially start anew. Instead of trying to follow the games precisely, they tried to capture the essence and mythology of the games (they failed, but one step at time). See, the stories of the RE games don't fit the model of a film story. They're too long and too much of it is told through text logs and diaries. The first RE movie made the story cinematic, that's a VERY good decision. There's some mystery, some tension, characters developing and rising to the occasion. Despite a good number of characters being killed off before you even learn their names, the rest of the movie does try to develop the remaining cast (again, they failed, but A for effort). For the rest of the movie, when someone died there was a little more weight to it. That's an important yet often overlooked aspect of horror films.
Yet the remainder of the RE films, Anderson's in particular, have completely done away with the model set by the first. Characters move in and out at a moments notice. Elements from the games are shoehorned in (names, characters, enemies, etc.) for NO reason whatsoever. With the fifth movie they brought back characters that died in earlier installments just to kill them again! They've gotten lazy in killing off any characters, really. For example, in Retribution we are introduced to an "infiltration team" that initially consists of FOUR characters. We are shown from the beginning there are only FOUR of them. But then, during their first (and pretty much only) action scene, a FIFTH member of the team is shown being killed by a chainsaw (another pointless shout-out to the games). I'm not kidding, a fifth member shows up to be killed in a single shot of a single scene. I'm willing to bet someone on the production said "we've gone a bit long without someone dieing, lets just throw something in real quick, no one will notice." I did, because I know how to count.
Then there's the aspect of the constant cliffhanger endings. I once had a conversation with a classmate (not a film person, just a normal person with normal interests) about the RE cliffhangers. He said that he hated the fact that the new one (at the time, I believe it was the second movie) ended in another cliffhanger, claiming that because he didn't get a proper ending he would be forced to see the next one. I told him he should just forget about it, it just wouldn't be worth it. It's not simply that what Anderson and company follows up with is always underwhelming, it's the fact that they are making EVERYTHING up as they go. This isn't speculation, it's a fact, Anderson has admitted to it. The result is that nothing can significantly connect from installment to installment.
But, apparently we don't care about ANY of that. The newest RE movie made a PROFIT of $156,000,000 (rounding down). Why, why do we go to these movies? They offer us nothing!(7)
Footnotes
1. There are, of course, many bad directors out there and I've seen many of their films. Some people might point out Uwe Boll or Brett Ratner. I specifically disregard them because they are not directors. Brett Ratner literally doesn't understand what a director's job is ("rehearsal is for fags" - Brett Ratner) and Uwe Boll is just a fool veying for your attention. Boll's defense of his "directorial" skill actually consists of: "fight me like a man, critics, I'll show you how good a director I am." That's the same as saying: "of course I'm a great painter, watch how far I can throw this rock!"
2. And I'm sure some of you might be thinking to yourselves, "what about Michael Bay?" Honestly, I have a little bit of respect for Bay. As insulting and intellectually devoid as his films can be, at least he has his own style that makes you say "that's a Michael Bay film." And in truth some of the things he accomplishes can be considered impressive from a technical standpoint... he might not have a good reason for doing such things, but they're impressive nonetheless.
3. There's also a sequence in Retribution that is the exact same sequence from Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead, the opening zombie attack. Suburban house, surprise attack, escape to the outside and see the whole world's falling apart. Only thing is that Anderson's version runs about twice as long, becoming incredibly slow for what should be a quick, tense scene. Seems even when Snyder is making a REMAKE he can still be more original than W.S. Anderson.
4. They don't call it "movie magic" for nothing!
5. Don't try to tell me Anderson hasn't seen that trailer, he makes film adaptations of video games. He's come across it once or twice.
6. Their salute to the U.S. Constititution is particularly striking. Turns out they don't fit in the "anti-government" clique quite so clearly.
7. I actually feel a bit bad after writing this. Like I said earlier in the piece, I don't like just shitting all over someone's work, but this is what this became. Just be clear this is a critique on W.S. Anderson's WORK, not the man himself. These are merely critiques I have had of his work stewing in a brain for a while now and just had to get it out so that I don't need to actually speak or think about it anymore. I have never met the man and so cannot speak of his character. I would never direct such bile towards a person without knowing them.
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