A safe, successful pair of hands with no identifiable style: the enigma of Ron Howard
On paper, there’s absolutely no other outcome that can be arrived at other than acknowledging Ron Howard as one of the most successful filmmakers in modern Hollywood, but that only tells a small part of the story.
He’s got two Academy Awards to his name after A Beautiful Mind won him ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’, his filmography has accrued billions of dollars at the box office, he’s been constantly and gainfully employed for almost 50 years after making his feature-length directorial debut on 1977’s Grand Theft Auto, and he’s about as reliable as they come.
The actor-turned-filmmaker is also incredibly versatile and able to seamlessly pivot from genre to genre, whether it’s the fantasy comedy of Splash, the pyrotechnic bombast of Backdraft, the engaging biographical drama of Apollo 13, the high concept thrills of ransom, the palpable tension of Rush, and the spacefaring escapades of Solo: A Star Wars Story to name but a small few of his 27 films to date.
There are only ten directors in the history of cinema to have seen their cumulative back catalogue earn more in ticket sales than Howard’s, but unlike all of the names ahead of him, he’s done it without relying on at least two entries in the same franchise.
Some of the names to have won ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ in recent years include Christopher Nolan, Bong Joon-ho, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro, but it wouldn’t be too harsh to say Howard isn’t anywhere close to being an auteur on the same level. In fact, he doesn’t really qualify as an auteur at all.
All of those aforementioned names – and many more of the industry’s biggest directors, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, and Alfonso Cuarón to name just a few – have an easily identifiable style, aesthetic, or signature that makes their movies distinctly theirs. Howard doesn’t have that, but it hasn’t prevented him from accomplishing a great deal more than most.
Nobody ever looks at an isolated clip from one of his features and says, ‘Yep, that’s some classic Ron Howard right there’, because there’s no such thing. His filmography is eclectic without a doubt, but never at any point has he showcased any flourishes, motifs, techniques, or authorial stamps that have marked them out as being distinctly his, films that couldn’t possibly have been made by anyone else.
There’s a firm belief that a bad movie made by a great director often has more value than a mediocre one made by a competent journeyman, and it’s a sentiment that applies to Howard at large. His output is steady, reliable, workmanlike, proficient, and safe above all else, with risk-taking or upending formula having never been at the forefront of his thinking.
He’s very good at what he does, but what he does is middle-of-the-road fare that finds him adapting himself to the material, as opposed to the raft of lauded auteurs who repaint their productions in their own image. It’s worked out spectacularly well for him as a professional, but it’s made him an enigma in a sense.
Everyone knows who Ron Howard is, but nobody knows what ‘A Film by Ron Howard’ is supposed to be, because at no point has he ever shown an inclination to find out what happens when he colours outside the line of convention.
