While the reigning school of auteur theory may argue against
this, directors don’t always have complete control over their work. Sometimes,
it’s down to studio interference like with Walking With Dinosaurs; sometimes,
it’s down to a rotating list of creatives attached to a single film that can
lead to a major case of too many cooks in the kitchen like with Jane Got A Gun;
and sometimes, it’s down to just poor planning. A lot of work goes into every
single film I have covered so far and will ever cover on this blog; even the
worst pieces of crap I’ve talked about involved dozens, hundreds or even
thousands of people working together. There’s all sorts of room for error in
that kind of situation, from stunt work that goes hideously wrong to constant
re-writes in the middle of production that put the story out of whack.
Then
there’s what went into today’s film, which is objectively unfinished. I feel
somewhat bad for even writing about this in the first place, but as I’ll get
into, the production issues aren’t nearly enough to excuse how… baffling this
turned out.
