10 directors who always make the same movies
It’s a director‘s job to make something thoughtful, original, and not defined by clichés and overused tropes, but it’s harder to deliver than some might expect.
While not every director is also a screenwriter, it’s important they have a say in how their stories are told, for conventionality doesn’t always just come down to plot and can be about the types of character arcs, themes, and subtextual commentary that are incorporated within a story. The worst of modern cinema often comes from directors who have no identity of their own, and seemingly abide by the wishes of a committee that doesn’t care about the art of filmmaking in the slightest.
A truly great director who nurtures diversity in their work, where Steven Spielberg is considered to be perhaps the best director of all-time because he’s made a classic horror masterpiece in the form of Jaws, an amazing adventure franchise, Indiana Jones, an all-time great blockbuster, Jurassic Park, a brutal military epic, Saving Private Ryan, an intensely moving historical drama, Schindler’s List, a futuristic neo-noir, Catch Me If You Can, a thoughtful revenge thriller, Munich,, a musical remake, West Side Story, a speculative work of sci-fi, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and a semi-autobiographical story about his own childhood with The Fabelmans.
Not saying that every director needs to reach his status, but they should at least try to resemble him in order to avoid being completely forgotten or disappearing without a trace.
10 directors who keep rehashing their movie projects:
Renny Harlin<br>
Renny Harlin isn’t a director who has been heard of very often in the last three decades, and for a good reason. He directed a pirate adventure epic with Cutthroat Island that was such a flop that it killed an entire studio. Harlin’s films are almost entirely action-based, but his defiance of any semblance of logic makes them gruelling to watch. While Tony Scott and John Woo are also directors who have worked heavily in the action genre, their films at least had personalities and could be distinguished from one another.
Even the best films in this guy’s filmography have significant issues, regardless of whether they have some occasional inadvertent entertainment value. Clearly, Harlin is obsessed with Die Hard, as he both directed the disappointing sequel Die Hard 2: Die Harder and the Sylvester Stallone vehicle Cliffhanger, which could essentially be described as Die Hard on a mountain.
Roland Emmerich<br>
Although Roland Emmerich’s style of big, unabashedly silly disaster films once had some charm, he’s reached a point in his career where his work has just become embarrassing. Early Emmerich films like Independence Day and Universal Soldier were fun because they were products of the ‘90s that really should have stayed there, but his attempt to make modern disaster spectacles in the style of ‘90s films has resulted in massive disappointments like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Moonfall, and White House Down.
There’s no better indication that Emmerich has lost the magic than 2016’s Independence Day: Resurgence, the long-anticipated sequel to his most successful film. While the first film was a fun ensemble adventure that coasted on the personalities of stars like Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum, the sequel was a dour, ugly, and depressing mishmash of underwhelming special effects that proved once and for all that the director should retire.
Judd Apatow<br>
Judd Apatow is unquestionably one of the most important producers in the history of comedy, as he helped to launch the careers of many great directors and artists, wherein modern comedy classics like Bridesmaids, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Superbad, Pineapple Express, and The Big Sick needed him as a producer to grant them legitimacy.
That being said, his films as a director tend to tell the same exact story about a man-child having to grow up and accept responsibilities. While this was charming with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, it got pretty obnoxious by the time he cast Amy Schumer in Trainwreck and Pete Davidson in The King of Staten Island. Hopefully, his upcoming new film starring Glen Powell will show that he is aware of the clichés in his work and allow him to do something that doesn’t pull from a formula.
David Yates<br>
David Yates’ identity as a director is almost hard to determine because he has spent his entire career devoted to one franchise; it was after successfully directing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that he was signed on to direct the next four films in the Harry Potter series. Although he took a brief break to make the underwhelming The Legend of Tarzan film with Alexander Skarsgård, Yates returned to pick up his collaborations with JK Rowling by directing all three films in the Fantastic Beasts trilogy.
The ironic reality is that the best of the Wizarding World’s films is still Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which was directed by Alfonso Cuarón, not Yates, and since it doesn’t seem like the latter is currently involved in any capacity with the upcoming Harry Potter television show, he might actually have to do something new.
Shawn Levy<br>
Shawn Levy has the reputation of being one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, which makes it all the more unfortunate that his films simply aren’t very good. Pretty much every Levy film can be boiled down to a story about a goofy adult who has to take responsibility by performing some sort of task that connects to either their children or childhood itself, which is the case in every franchise he has helmed, such as The Pink Panther, Night at the Museum, Cheaper by the Dozen, as well as his collaborations with Ryan Reynolds, in the forms of Free Guy, The Adam Project, Deadpool & Wolverine.
Although breaking free from his work with Reynolds is probably in Levy’s best interest, the fact that he has already wrapped filming on a new Star Wars film has begun to spark serious concern for fans of the galaxy far, far away.
Zack Snyder<br>
There is no director who defines style over substance better than Zack Snyder, who has frequently shown no ability to understand the complexities of the projects he’s adapting. The only good films that he has made are those where he was simply lifting directly from existing material with no changes, as was the case with Dawn of the Dead, 300, and Watchmen. However, Snyder has become so obsessed with slow motion, overdone religious themes, bleak CGI environments, and stylised violence that it’s hard to determine the differences between them.
Moreover, his efforts to start the DCEU were so unsuccessful in understanding the essence of the universe that the franchise had to be started from scratch by James Gunn. In fact, the first two films in the Rebel Moon series that Snyder directed for Netflix were so poorly received that the streaming service refused to greenlight any subsequent entries in the saga.
Anthony and Joe Russo<br>
Anthony and Joe Russo have had a career together that almost single-handedly proves that it was Kevin Feige who was responsible for any successes in the early part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as the duo themselves have directed only four great Marvel films with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.
Everything they’ve done since has been generic, incompetent rip-offs of better material, such as Cherry, which was an uninspired PTSD drama, The Gray Man felt like a parody of better action films, and The Electric State is both one of the worst films of the 21st century and completely disrespectful of the original graphic novel. There’s really no excuse for how incompetent the Russos are when considering just how expensive their films have been, so it is safe to say that there should be significant concern for what they have in store with the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday.
Gareth Edwards<br>
Gareth Edwards is a director who seems to keep failing upwards because his films are profitable, even if they all seem to have the same issues: he knows how to stage an amazing third-act set piece with incredible use of CGI, but he also crafts stories that play into shallow family dynamics and unnecessarily muted tragedy.
Edwards has now directed three major franchise films with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla, and Jurassic World Rebirth that are overstuffed with too many characters and subplots, and don’t truly become entertaining until their final thirds, and while Rogue One may have been the best-reviewed of the three, it’s because screenwriter Tony Gilroy came in to save the film during reshoots. Edwards’ most ostensibly ‘original’ film to date has been the sci-fi action-adventure The Creator, which borrows liberally from The Terminator, Blade Runner, District 9, and Ex Machina.
Dennis Dugan<br>
Adam Sandler has been accused of using his career to get work for co-stars like David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Kevin James, but he’s done much more to help the director Dennis Dugan earn any semblance of credibility. The shorts-loving actor has made a lot of comedies that people enjoy, but Dugan is responsible for nearly all of his worst films, including I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Just Go With It, Jack and Jill, and both Grown Ups films.
What’s sad is that Dugan’s films are so bad that it’s treated as a revelation whenever Sandler works with someone else and turns in a great performance, as was the case most recently with the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems and Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly. It’s fairly telling who this pithy excuse for a filmmaker is relying on to elevate his work, as the films he made without Sandler (including 2020’s Love, Weddings and Other Disasters) are virtually unheard of.
Jon M Chu<br>
There are some talented directors who started their careers making music videos, such as David Fincher and Spike Jonze, but it becomes more problematic when directors who only know how to make stylised concerts try to approach narrative features, for it results in films that have little coherence.
Jon M Chu essentially made feature-length music videos with Jem and the Holograms and the Step Up films, and an extended video game commercial with GI Joe: Retaliation. He has somehow been handpicked by Hollywood to direct musicals, even though In the Heights was a film that barely scratched the surface of the thornier source material, and his failings surrounding Wicked became so evident when the second chapter was released that it may have finally clued critics into the fact that he is a hack.
