The Best Comic Book Directors and How they Rank

With the resurgence of the superhero genre and comic book adaptations in general in the late 1990’s, there has also been an emergence of directors who seem to be specialists in this genre of film. This is a list acknowledging these perhaps lesser known film makers and seeing to what degree they are specialists.

Bryan Singer

Bryan Singer had already established himself as a great director in general when he provided films such as The Usual Suspects in the mid 90’s, but since his directing of X-Men in 2000 his name has become synonymous with comic book films. X-Men and X2 both led the way he way for how future comic book adaptations should be approached. Superman Returns...not so much, but then he won us all back with arguably his best comic book adaptation yet X-Men: Days of Future Past

Overall Rating: 8/10

Joss Whedon

This man has never been a stranger to comic books as he has had a successful and critically acclaimed run as the Astonishing X-Men’s lead writer, while also successfully adaption his TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a long running comic series. Whedon’s really moved into the public eye which his 2012 release of The Avengers, the first cinematic venture into a film with a vast number of superheroes, and boy did he pull it off, as I’m sure he will do with Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Overall Rating: 9/10

Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi is something of a veteran of the modern superhero film, because as early as 1990 Raimi had created his own superhero in Darkman and made the sort of brooding, dark adaptations we are used to seeing more recently. He then went on to make two of the most quintessential comic book adaptations in the form of Spiderman 1 & 2. He also did Spiderman 3 though...he loses points for that one.

Overall Rating: 7/10

Christopher Nolan

There is no possible way i could claim Chris Nolan is a strictly ‘comic book’ director, rather, he is one on the finest directors of the past 20 years. However, his Dark Knight trilogy is an example of a experienced film maker, making comic book adaptations that will not be seen as great comic book films, but great films in general, and in an arguably snobbish film era we live in, that takes some doing

Overall Rating: 9/10

Matthew Vaughn

Matthew Vaughn is different from almost everyone else on this list in that he is not well known for directing traditional comic book adaptations (bar X-men: First Class, which was excellent), but rather for directing more obscure comic books in the form of Kingsman and Kick-Ass. The two aforementioned films really complimented the directing style that I feel Vaughn is most comfortable with, and bring out the best of Mark Millars comics.

Overall Rating: 8/10

Conor M.

Cinema paving the way for TV?

Cinema has always been seen as a more prestigious format than television. You can see it how Academy Awards are seen as more important than the Emmy’s, in how film releases are donned with red carpet premieres, or simply in how Alfred Hitchcock famously refused to have any of his creative efforts go into television. But the days of Alfred Hitchcock in his prime are long gone, and now it seems that TV has taken on some of the traits of cinema and is consequently coming up in the world.

The ‘Cinematic Universe’ is something that has always been related to Cinema (obviously) in instances such as Star Wars and more recently Marvel. A Cinematic Universe created a continuous story within a fictional world that allowed moviegoers to become a part of. Now, from this description it would seem this concept of a cinematic universe is somewhat already the format television operates within, long form stories spanning across series. Right? Not quite. The format of TV never really had the layers that a cinematic universe had, the closest thing TV had previously had to a cinematic universe was spin offs. But, there was a disconnect with spin offs a lot of the time, and the spin off series, while related to the original series, was taken in isolation. What TV is now doing though is applying the cinematic universe format more effectively, perhaps most notably with The CW and what they have done with Arrow and The Flash, series’ on a single network interlocking in both story lines and characters to create a large entity.

That is a way in which Cinema has allowed Television to borrow a concept, however there are other instances where Cinema has made mistakes which TV has noted and is aptly avoiding, one of the main ones is the idea of the blockbuster. Cinema, with the growth of CGI and scope has lost its way slightly with storytelling. Films like Transformers dominate the box office, Transformers which is a film that is comprised of 70% CGI fighting robots, 30% irrelevant forced love story, and 0% real plot.  As the budget of Blockbusters continue to rise, in a lot of cases the quality of the films is decreasing due to narrative taking a back seat. Now, narrative, long form storytelling, and plot in general are all things that play neatly into Televisions hands. TV will always remain grounded because it will never get the income that films can from a £7 admission, and so, as of late, TV has taken this understanding of what is important and run with it, leading to some of the most critically acclaimed programmes ever to be shown on TV.

The final favour that cinema has done for TV is lend it its star power. There are more A list actors on TV now than there has ever conceivably been in the past. We have Kevin Spacey, Matthew Mcconaughey, Woody Harrelson, Lawrence Fishburne, Madds Mikkelsen etc. The list goes on. With the audiences that these names draw, the interest that compelling long form storytelling has, and the ideas that TV has taken from film, TV looks to not only keep growing as an industry but maybe one day put the Emmys at around the same level as the Oscars.

Conor M.

The End of Hollywood Supremacy: Cinema Goes Global

If you live in what is known as ‘The West’ then your idea of cinema, and the films that you are constantly seeing advertised and shown at your local cinemas is mostly made up of...Hollywood. For everyone in the west, American cinema reigns supreme, which may seem normal, unimportant, however, there is a problem. Each nation in the west comprises its cinema of films from its own film industry and American films, as does nations in the east. The problem with this being that there is very little going in the opposite direction. America wants nothing to do with foreign cinema. Hollywood lives in a bubble, one that is about to burst.

American Cinema wants to continue to dominate everywhere and give nothing in return, and they have employed many tactics in order to keep it that way. One of the most known examples is American remakes of foreign films: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Oldboy being the most recent examples that come to mind. Now, it isn’t that these remakes were particularly bad, (although the old boy remake was terrible) its more that there was no need for them, no need to remake these films simply on the basis of having them be in English. But money talks, as they say, and a good film from another country can bring in millions as an American remake with millions of dollars behind it. Any show of excellence from another country is immediately paved over by America’s hijacking of it, all to keep the spotlight on Hollywood.

Another way in which America is trying to maintain its bubble is by giving the allusion of foreign cinema being present in America. In 2009 Slumdog Millionaire won Best Picture at the academy awards, along with winning seven other awards in different categories at the event. Now, I’m not saying Slumdog Millionaire didn’t deserve to win those awards, far from it, what I’m actually saying is that a Indian orientated film with an all Indian originated cast winning all those awards at an American award ceremony gives the impression that Bollywood has broken into America, when it just hasn’t.  It was a British film, by a British director, that America took credit for. Im not saying there was any corruption either, it was a happy coincidence for the American microcosm.

But, this is all changing now, and the American bubble is ready to burst. America has become saturated with remakes of its own films and of foreign films. It is showing that it is running out of ideas. Soon enough people everyone will see that there are fantastic films coming out of Europe, Asia, and Australia. They are finally seeing that cinema is a global commodity, and that other cultures have unique narratives, directors, and actors to offer. This is of course only helped by the growing popularity of eastern cultures in the west, most notably Japan’s. Very soon American cinema will not exist, and neither will foreign cinema, we will just have a global pool of interesting and engaging films, a global cinema.

Conor M.