We all know making a movie is tough. It takes blood, sweat and tears and a crap ton of money spent on the gamble that it will do well. If it doesn’t, fingers are pointed everywhere, from the director to the screenwriter, and even the critics who “don’t understand what the movie actually was.”
That last statement is made all too often and in my opinion, is complete bullshit. Making movies and releasing them to the general public is all about money. How do you get money? By making people watch. Why do people watch? Because it’s a good movie that is geared towards a general fondness by the public. Saying the public doesn’t understand it is a cop-out for the fact that the filmmakers didn’t understand what the public wants, and it’s what the public wants that is the most important.
In comes the screenwriter, who is tasked with writing a script that will bedazzle the audience. Their job is to be commercial in the originality, a task that is much harder than it sounds. If it gets too weird, it becomes an indie movie, which is great, but is not going to make the studio hundreds of millions. If it’s all too familiar, the audience gets bored and no one watches it. In the end, it is up to the director to change the weird to familiar, and the familiar to bedazzling.
On that note, here are seven films that have pretty bland stories, but were thankfully saved by great directing.