The one movie genre John Carpenter can’t stand: “They’re not good, none of them”
Even though he spent the better part of his career being written off as a purveyor of B-tier schlock, which isn’t entirely inaccurate to a certain extent, John Carpenter is as influential as any filmmaker of his era.
Within the industry, he was always categorised as being a tier or two below the likes of Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, Richard Donner, and the Scott brothers, all of whom built their careers in the 1980s by making populist entertainment that stood the test of time. Looking at his filmography, though, it’s not hyperbole to put Carpenter on an even keel.
After all, Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, Starman, Big Trouble in Little China, and They Live are all either cult classics or genuine classics, and he made all of them within the space of 12 years. Another barometer of Carpenter’s influence is that few filmmakers have seen their back catalogue hoovered up, remade, and spat out as relentlessly as his.
Halloween launched a never-ending franchise, several of his other pictures have been the subject of remakes, and Hollywood continues threatening to add Christine, Escape from New York, and Big Trouble in Little China to that list. Few have ever mastered the art of cult cinema better than Carpenter, who took his cues from a combination of the western and sci-fi flicks he grew up watching to carve out his own niche.
His personal tastes are a lot broader than his work would suggest, with Carpenter naming Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Carol Reed’s The Third Man, David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound among his personal favourites, and he’s dabbled in horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and romance himself.
However, there’s one genre he’s adamant has never produced a single good movie, and there’s more than a hint of irony to it. Since retiring from behind the camera and limiting his contributions to the industry to the recording studio as a composer and soundtrack contributor, Carpenter famously spends most of his free time playing video games.
He’d never consider adapting one himself, despite toying with bringing Dead Space to the silver screen as a potential way to end his self-imposed exile from directing, and it would appear that one of the main reasons he’s refused to helm a video game adaptation of his own is because he doesn’t think any of them have ever been worth the celluloid they were printed on.
When the LA Review of Books pressed him for his thoughts on console-to-screen translations, his thoughts were short and succinct. “They’re not good,” he declared. “None of them.” He’s not wrong, and there’s a very good reason why it’s been known as one of the industry’s most cursed genres ever since the notorious Super Mario Bros ignited the trend with disastrous results in 1993.
Some of them have been successful, but compared to how many have been made, it’s still not an encouraging percentage. A few of them have been OK, a smattering have been watchable, but the majority have been woeful. Despite being an avid gamer, the genre has a lot of work to do in convincing Carpenter that it’s capable of churning out something even semi-decent.
