Bitter Remarks From Stephen Sommers
Lately, Stephen Sommers has earned harsh words. Plenty of critics and bloggers have attacked a few recent quotes from an interview in Variety and I join the chorus. His words are antiquated in a way; they have been expressed by many less-than-talented filmmakers on many prior occasions, but they deserve to be confronted. First of all, I should explain that Sommers is the director behind Deep Rising, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. He has yet to make a good movie.
- “I don’t think the mainstream critics are relevant here, they have criticized themselves into irrelevancy. Transformers 2 got the worst reviews in the last decade, and it is the biggest hit of the year. More people will see that than any other movie. On my movie, it became so clear to us. Why not make those reviewers pay their $15 like everyone else?”
- “I make the kind of movies critics love to hate. They love dark and depressing movies. If you make those, you expect they will love you, you need them to love you. The kind of movies I make? They don’t enjoy commercial or popular movies.”
- “It’s like Michael Bay said, they don’t have a fun gene. These critics remind me of my 78-year old mother. She liked the movie, but it was a little fast for mom.”
Before I get into those quotes, allow me to offer one that I do like from the article: “It is funny when the studios tell me, ‘the movie is the star! You’re the star.’ I suspect what they’re saying is, ‘we don’t want to pay a star.’” That I do believe, and I do sympathize with Sommers over that. Now, regarding those attacks on critics. The job of a critic is to judge a film (based on his or her hopefully vast knowledge of the medium) and provide some guidance to the audience. Those who genuinely care about movies read what the critics have to say; those who prefer to make out with their boyfriend in the darkness of a movie theater go to see a Stephen Sommers movie (it’s not difficult to focus on your date and follow the story at the same time).
Critics are relevant if you care about film as a medium; if you only care about the dollars, then, no, critics are not relevant. As for not screening certain flicks for the media… sure, go ahead, but the only message studios are sending critics and the audiences is that they know their product is crap. Sommers says critics love to hate his movies. That may be true (read my negative reviews of his work), but we don’t exclusively love “dark and depressing movies”. We do have a “fun gene”. When a really talented filmmaker like Steven Spielberg (or, to pick a younger one, J.J. Abrams) makes a hugely entertaining popcorn movie we’re there to celebrate it. We love good action movies. I still get goose bumps from watching Bruce Willis fight Alan Rickman in Die Hard ; I love watching Nicolas Cage and John Travolta switch identities in Face/Off; and I still admire that shocker of a scene where Doc Ock introduces himself to Tobey Maguire by throwing a car at him in Spider-Man 2, just to mention three outstanding adventures from the last three decades (there are many others). Why can’t you do something like that, Mr. Sommers?
The YouTube clip shows a sequence from Deep Rising that’s better than the movie as a whole.
film movies
Published by Stefan Hedmark 2009-08-14 15:53
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