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Gareth Edwards, Rogue One, and the Case Against Hollywood’s Billion- Dollar Youth Movement. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of Twitter, it was the age of anonymous . When critics and historians write the eulogy for our peculiar era in Hollywood filmmaking, they may well resort to a Dickensian antithesis in explaining the story of British writer- director Gareth Edwards, who has somehow bypassed nearly all of the traditional hurdles standing between an ambitious filmmaker and a billion- dollar movie franchise. Edwards is the man in the director. I never could have predicted it this way. Edwards completed his first feature film, 2. Monsters was greeted with modest box- office success and generally positive reviews, prompting Hollywood to make a call that might once have seemed insane but now passes for a savvy decision. In 2. 01. 4, still several years shy of his 4. Edwards was handed the keys to the $1. Godzilla. Within a week of that film. Last week, Page Six reported that Disney. Though that report has since been refuted by a number of . One rumor, which later proved to be untrue, stated that seasoned screenwriter Christopher Mc. Quarrie would be working alongside Edwards on the reshoots. Responding directly to /Film, Mc. Quarrie shot down the rumor and took umbrage with the implication that Edwards would need a supervisor to hold his hand. It would seem not, at least in the media. All of the rumors surrounding the Rogue One reshoot, false or not, carry the same subtext: The greenhorn is in over his head. What on earth was Disney thinking? Disney was only thinking the same thing every other major Hollywood studio has been dwelling on. How did former indie filmmaker Marc Webb end up helming The Amazing Spider- Man, a reboot of a franchise that had already been successfully executed by seasoned veteran Sam Raimi? What about Colin Trevorrow, who scored a billion- dollar success with Jurassic World on the back of his low- budget sci- fi rom- com Safety Not Guaranteed? It all comes down to a studio culture that has shifted closer to Silicon Valley in recent years, forgoing traditional Hollywood conservatism for a different and altogether riskier set of values. With studios banking more heavily on their cash cows than ever, they can afford to take bigger gambles on the filmmakers they tap to milk those cows. When those gambles pay off — as they did with Trevorrow and his astounding $1. Jurassic World — they look like geniuses. And on those rare occasions when they don. The most glaring cautionary tale involves last year’s case involving. Trank was all of 2. That film, which captured the dark side of superhuman powers in a way that was surprisingly human, rightfully established Trank as one of the more intriguing options to helm Fantastic Four, another story about teenagers learning to live with strange and horrific abilities. In the hot and cold world of Hollywood, the fall from wunderkind to pariah can happen in as little as five words — words such as . In a report published by The Hollywood Reporter, sources complained that Trank and his dogs had caused as much as $1. New Orleans, but the most scathing criticisms were reserved for his perceived lack of experience. One person described him as being . More to the point: It was a total box- office bomb. This means sometimes making the boring choice and entrusting, say, the first Star Wars film of the Disney era to a proven director like J. J. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and the Mouse House brain trust knew what was at stake, so they went with the guy who had already made another beloved space franchise, Star Trek, a massive commercial success. Photo by. Would Steven Spielberg have the same legacy today if he had launched straight from Jaws to the historically expensive Jurassic Park? He had nearly two decades between films to refine and explore his craft, resulting in such classics as Poltergeist, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, and a little movie called E. T. None of these films required controlling massive animatronic dinosaurs, but they gave Spielberg the confidence and artistry necessary to pull off that feat. Jurassic Park is a nearly perfect action film, not just for its special effects but for its tone, pacing, and trove of quotable dialogue. Godzilla and Jurassic World may have raked it in at the box office, but history is not likely to treat them quite so kindly. Both films suffer from being far too derivative of their source material, and just like Fantastic Four, they sacrifice character building for grand action sequences that feel more perfunctory than exciting. Quick, can you name the Godzilla protagonist played by Aaron Taylor- Johnson? Probably not, but chances are you know the names Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm. Sure, the first goal of any blockbuster action film is to be entertaining and diversionary, but that shouldn. We need to foster a culture in which young filmmakers get to be bold and take risks without worrying about those risks incidentally crippling a beloved franchise. Look at a film like this year. Rather than throw Trachtenberg into the deep end and wait for him to sink or swim, producer J. J. Abrams threw his own name on the poster and let him tie an entirely original idea to an existing franchise. This level of low- stakes creative freedom not only makes good economic sense (1. Cloverfield Lane cost $1. If Hollywood is going to insist that everything on screen takes place inside some kind of extended universe, studio execs need to actively carve out a space for filmmakers like Trachtenberg and Edwards and Trevorrow to develop their craft without the explosions and the expectations of the traditional tentpole movies. If that means putting them in a less expensive car every once in awhile, well, is that such a bad thing? Especially if that car comes with adjustable seats and a colorful interior.
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