The movie Ron Howard called his most dramatically challenging: “It all came together”
There aren’t many forms of cinema to which Ron Howard hasn’t lent his hand since making his feature-length directorial debut in 1977, and it’s all been entirely by design.
While Howard is far from being an auteur when he’s never established a signature style or aesthetic to make his films easily identifiable, there’s no shame in becoming Hollywood’s steadiest pair of hands. He’s never met a challenge he was willing to back away from, and he’s found huge success as a result.
Only ten directors in history have seen their filmographies earn more at the box office than Howard, and when those names include Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Michael Bay, and Ridley Scott, he’s in the esteemed company of populist cinema’s most famous purveyors.
Whether it’s winning Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ on A Beautiful Mind, stepping in at the last minute to steer sci-fi blockbuster Solo: A Star Wars Story over the finish line, traipsing around Europe with Tom Hanks in the Da Vinci Code trilogy, or taking to the track in biographical racing drama Rush, versatility has always been the name of the game.
Fact or fiction, fantasy or frolic, romance or drama, the seas or the skies, there’s nothing Howard can’t—or won’t—do. However, he faced one of his biggest professional challenges when he sought to transform a headline-grabbing real-life incident into a moving drama, with extra pressure placed onto his shoulders by the fact he wasn’t a native son.
2022’s Thirteen Lives dramatised the Tham Luang cave rescue when 12 members of a local football team and their assistant coach became trapped in a partially flooded cave system, instigating an international rescue operation that finally freed them from their predicament after more than two weeks.
The film had a big-name director and recognisable stars in Viggo Mortensen, Joel Edgerton, and Colin Farrell, but Howard didn’t want to go to Hollywood. He wanted to “help this version of the story reflect a Thai perspective as much as you possibly could,” with his mantra being, “I’d love it if Thai audiences watched the movie and kind of forgot that a foreigner made it.”
“I don’t know if I’ve achieved that or not, but that was the litmus test in my mind. That was the target,” he explained to A.Frame. “I’d gotten that wrong early in my career and gotten it better as I’ve gone along of directing scenes and characters not in my own language.” The response was a largely positive one, with Howard equally focused on the dramatics as he was the respect and reverence.
Looking back on Thirteen Lives, Howard was confident he achieved everything he set out to do. “I think it all came together to be one of the most technically, culturally, and dramatically challenging films I’ve ever made.”
The movie may have never seen the inside of a theatre after releasing exclusively on streaming but having directed 29 features so far, the biggest seal of approval is that his rescue drama can comfortably take its place among Howard’s upper tier.
