Anderson, Romero, and Craven are all overrated...

I like Romero's first three films. I like his characters, the fact that he gives just about every zombie their own personality, and his innovations in the genre as a whole. Land Of The Dead was meh. I haven't seen Diary Of The Dead. I could certainly do without his commentary though. It's not subtle at all and not particularly insightful either. If you read or, better yet, watch his interviews, you'll see he's really a man of his times (the 60s). In any case, I think people have gone on to make better zombie movies than he has (Peter Jackson anyone?).

On a side note, Creepshow was a blast.

Craven was never a great filmmaker, in horror or anything else. His best film (to me) was The Last House On The Left). I liked The Hills Have Eyes and ANOES but everything else he's done has ranged from mediocre to outright suckage. Even Scream wasn't all that great and definitely hurt the horror genre more than it helped it.

Getting back on track, I hear Craven is once again trying to get another of his previous films remade... The Last House On The Left... yeah right. Maybe someone should make a film adaptation of Mein Kampf and try to market it as a Jewish sympathy piece . Last House isn't a Hollywood film, no matter how much gloss you pour on it. Fact is it's a film about humiliation, rape, and murder. This one definitely shouldn't be made.

James, you are right "The Last House On The Left" Will hit cinemas sometime this year, that is one film that definitely does not need to be made, but there is much worse to come.

I spoke in another post about Wes Craven a while ago and said something like his movies just  whores now and him being the biggest pimp in hollywood, selling them out to anyone who wants to abuse them.

This is 100% true, in 2009 we will see the first installment of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" remakes, they are currently casting for the role of Freddy. It just gets worse and worse.

I think what's most alarming is the reputation Craven and Romero have as masters of horror. Craven doesn't understand horror at all. he doesn't know how to create tension in a scene and always resorts to clichés and jump-scares. In fact his movies have become so anonymous and his style so erroded that Brett Rattner might as well have directed them. Honestly, would you be able to tell the difference?

I agree about Last House which is one of the few good films of his.

We should do a "most overrated directors" thread haha.

Quoted from Murphy This is 100% true, in 2009 we will see the first installment of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" remakes, they are currently casting for the role of Freddy. It just gets worse and worse.

Now there's one that definitely shouldn't be made. When Craven first pitched the idea of NOES, studios turned him down saying it was a bad idea. I think everyone involved was lucky the film turned out the way it did. I think it'd could easily have been a very sillly movie as the remake could also very well be. Plus no Englund, no good. Sorry...

I hear Hellraiser's getting remade as well with Ashley Lawrence and Doug Bradley reprising their original roles. That's a pro in a very con-laden production but I still don't think a Hellraiser remake should come to pass.

Quoted from Death Monkey I think what's most alarming is the reputation Craven and Romero have as masters of horror. Craven doesn't understand horror at all. he doesn't know how to create tension in a scene and always resorts to clichés and jump-scares. In fact his movies have become so anonymous and his style so erroded that Brett Rattner might as well have directed them. Honestly, would you be able to tell the difference?

Too true. That's because 1) Craven grew up in an evangellical community which forbid all films except for Disney, 2) Romero was reading Richard Matheson while Craven was watching Godard and Truffoit films, which leads into 3) Craven never wanted to be a horror filmmaker and has been trying to escape his "master of horror" label since LHOTL. That makes for quite an unqualified horror director if you ask me.

Quoted from Death Monkey We should do a "most overrated directors" thread haha.

Indeed. I don't think that thread would find an end though, haha.

Well, while we're trashing them...

Always found it hilarious in the last decade or so, all these trailers referring to Craven as "Master Of Horror Wes Craven"...umm...people did you actually WATCH any of his movies before penning that line? He's always been at hack level for me, and although I've liked a few Romero pictures, he's a clunky director with zero sense of style. It's funny to read the fanboys at Aint It Cool gushing over him, the trashing Paul W.S. Anderson, who, if he hasn't made a truly good movie yet at least knows how to make a good-looking film. Romero's films are always ugly, poorly staged.

Who really gives a shit about movies that shouldn't be made, they're made, that's life, accept it,  if you don't wanna see it don't go, it doesn't effect your life one way or another, go see the ones you wanna see and don't go to the ones you don't, it's very simple.

Quoted from The boy who could fly Who really gives a shit about movies that shouldn't be made, they're made, that's life, accept it,  if you don't wanna see it don't go, it doesn't effect your life one way or another, go see the ones you wanna see and don't go to the ones you don't, it's very simple.

That is not actually quite true there for a very simple reason. People are always going to go to the movies, even in January which is the worst month of the year for the box office lots of people have paid a lot of money to go and watch "Meet the Spartans". If Meet the Spartans was never made then all of these people would have watched something else instead.

There are only so many movies released each week and as a consequence only a limited number of projects are given the green light for production. If you could take out of the equation 20 movies this year that should not be made (remakes, crap sequels etc..) that is 20 more projects that would be made and some of these could well be independent movies from break-out filmmakers and first time writers that usually would never get a chance. Not because they are not good movies but when the studios and cinemas can make much more money on "Nightmare on Elm Street 27: Freddy goes to Vegas" they always will.

If this was a forum dedicated to watching movies then your point would be a good one I guess, well in keeping with the forums main aim anyway. But as this forum is dedicated to writing movies and is populated by people who aspire to write a produced screenplay one day then your comments make little sense. Of course we care about the amount of crap that gets made and there are movies we would like not to be made because we want very much that one day the opportunity will be there for one of our spec scripts to be made into a movie.

Only problem is that as long as bad movies like Meet the Spartans continue to make 20 million dollars in its first week, they'll continue to get made.  It's all business.

Or we force a law through our respective governments that no cinema is allowed to sell tickets to morons. Not sure how they could be tested, maybe a quick quiz before purchase is allowed.

Quoted from The boy who could fly Who really gives a shit about movies that shouldn't be made, they're made, that's life, accept it,  if you don't wanna see it don't go, it doesn't effect your life one way or another, go see the ones you wanna see and don't go to the ones you don't, it's very simple.

True. I really have no excuse to complain since I actually don't go and see these movies. A lot of people do though. That is, plenty of people who talk shit about these movies go and see them anyways and end up pissed off they wasted their time and money. They really got no excuse either though, haha.

The only effect these movies really have, I guess, is that good movies either get pushed to the side and you have to go way out of your way to find a theater that's showing them unless you live in a big city with theaters all over the place. Either that or you have to watch good movies in the same theaters as the bad ones with the same audience that went to go see Meet The Spartans. It doesn't sound so bad but I think I only got to watch half of 1408 without the idiots in the front row talking, making noise, and, well... being idiots. These kinds of people really don't give a shit about anyone else who's watching the movie.

This also has a huge knock-on on the state of illegal downloading at the present time.

Do you know that a good proportion of the movies that are downloaded illegally at the moment are smaller Independent or quality movies and not the huge blockbusters that are shown on every street corner. This shows that many of the downloaders are in fact movie fans, the problem is that when there is just no legal way for movie fans to see the movies they want to see they often resort to downloading. I find for one find it hard to argue with with genuine movie fans who only download because there is no-one within 100 miles showing a movie - In the case of Australia it is even worse because very often movies will never get a release here and unless you are lucky enough to catch them at a festival you don't see them.

If anyone reads John August's blog (if you don't, you should) His movie "The Nines" was released last year and he has been talking about it being on bit torrent, he basically said he understands that the distribution of the movie is crap and he would rather people watched his film illegally than not see it at all!

If Hollywood were not such money grabbing, greedy profiteers and instead were movie fans and were genuinely concerned about the future of the industry then film fans would be able to legally pay to watch John August's movie in a cinema near them and he would get paid for his work too. But at the moment as much as the idea of illegal downloading is harmful to Hollywood is spread around, the truth of the matter is that it is only harmful to the box office performance of blockbuster movies and is actually often a great help to the independent film makers who are desperate for people to see their movies and spread the word.

In the world of football there is lots of talk about having a cap on the number of foreign players in team to protect the home grown talent. In the USA there is even salary caps on teams that attempts to stop money becoming more important that talent and ruining the sport. Why not do the same in cinema's? Why not have an industry agreement that 20% of a cinemas screens must only show movies that cost less than $5m to produce?

Quoted from Murphy I spoke in another post about Wes Craven a while ago and said something like his movies just  whores now and him being the biggest pimp in hollywood, selling them out to anyone who wants to abuse them.

I'd say this type of behaviour is true of Robert DeNiro and Nicholas Cage too. When they were serious artists they would only act in films that had artistic merit. These days, judging by some of the crap they show up in, they're doing it purely for the pay cheque. This may have something to do with them realizing that making films in Hollywood isn't a spiritual quest, it's a business. I guess it must be hard for some artists who start off with the intention of making meaningful work to discover that they've actually have chosen a fairly self indulgent life style. For some artists this realization can see them spiral into addiction and depression, whilst others just accept what is and cash in any pretence of altruism. However, on the positive side….