Whenever they say “creative differences” it always sounds like “irreconcilable differences” from divorce papers. The one thing you know is that it’s not the whole truth. What bubbles underneath is something else that we won’t know until someone talks later on. Was it money? Was it “vision”? Hard to say. The unfortunate thing about it is that it seems like women are either leaving due to creative differences or being dropped from high profile projects. There’s Twilight’s first director Catherine Hardwicke, Jane Got a Gun’s Lynne Ramsay, Fifty Shades of Grey’s Sam Taylor-Wood, and now this. For Twilight, male directors were brought in to “clean up the mess.” Jane Got a Gun ended up with Gavin O’Connor. Why do I think a dick and balls will be brought in for Wonder Woman too, despite the uniqueness of having a woman develop that woman-centric superhero?
These high profile incidences seem to underscore the false notion that women aren’t up to the task of playing the kind of god one needs to be on a film set. In film, like almost every other high profile leadership position, it is necessary to fall in line with how men do things – write like men, direct like men, boss people around like men. Women, if given the chance, do bring their own set of skills to those positions if only those skills were better appreciated. Alas, they are not. And so it goes. Another one bites the dust.
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Some reassuring news, Warner has tapped Patty Jenkins to replace MacLaren. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/wonder-woman-movie-finds-a-789099
QMark: But here’s the interesting thing about the Russo Bros. As much as TV CAN have auteurs, they ARE auteurs. The most important part of any show in terms of directorial skill is roughly Episodes 1-5, after which aesthetic style and performative rhythm have been pretty much solidified and it’s all down to writing to make or break the episode. That means they were almost entirely responsible for the aesthetic and performative style of Arrested Development (episodes 1-4), were entirely responsible for those things on Carpoolers (episodes 1-7) AND Community (episodes 1-8) and were also at least partially responsible for how Up All Night and Happy Endings developed. Even Joss can’t really claim that he’s entirely responsible for how the shows tied to him are performed.
“Why do I think a dick and balls will be brought in…”
So classy!
QMark, that’s a really great way of putting it and something I didn’t think about. Feige is basically the showrunner and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is an ongoing commodity with phases or “seasons.”
The “auteur” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is Feige, and the actual film directors have some freedom just as long as they stay within the parameters of Marvel’s vision. This is why they’ve recently gone with TV directors (Whedon, Taylor, the Russo brothers) or filmmakers kind of just looking for a break (Gunn, Reed, Shane Black….though that one might be a unique case since Downey personally lobbied to give his buddy Black a shot) since TV directors are more willing to go with the showrunner’s flow. To this end, MacLaren would fit right in directing a Marvel film. The issue with Edgar Wright is that he wanted to make an Edgar Wright film that happened to be about a Marvel character, whereas the studio wanted to make a Marvel film that happened to be directed by Edgar Wright, and never the twain did meet.
Steve50, while I believe Marvel won’t tolerate MOST visions of the directors, I believe since Joss Whedon was brought on board that they will tolerate some people other than head honchos like Feige. I believe Guardians of the Galaxy would have been vastly different if it was made by anybody other than James Gunn or somebody like him. It takes a guy like Gunn, or Whedon, to make something truly offbeat work. And that’s why I really wanted Edgar Wright to stay on board for Ant-Man.
Can we really say that television is less of a challenge than movies? Considering what I assume to be the logistics of something like Game of Thrones and comparing that with any cineplex tentpole, most of the donkey work is done by the CGI/FX team. I don’t believe there is much difference nowadays. Both are big-undertakings and frankly, the small screen audience is larger and more unforgiving than the big screen audience.
I also think Richard makes a good point. A major franchise like Marvel is not going to tolerate any vision other than the one that toes-the-line.
I was very sad to hear this. They pulled the same thing with Patty Jenkins. She was all set to direct Thor 2, and then suddenly there were creative differences. What we ended up with was very disappointing. I was really excited about a woman finally directing a Marvel movie, but I should have known it was too good to be true. They made the announcement and got a bunch of free publicity off of it, but now they are probably going to just choose another straight white man to keep their franchise machine rolling.
Although I am very saddened that MacLaren left we have to take the news as the way they give it until we find out what really happened. This isn’t the same as the Lynn Ramsay thing because Ramsay was already established as a feature film director and we still don’t know what really happened. MacLaren never made a feature film before and doing Wonder Woman is a BIG undertaking. I was excited because of the work she did on Breaking Bad, I wasn’t even considering Game of Thrones. Maybe DC isn’t as confidant in “small time” filmmakers or TV directors like Marvel was with Alan Taylor, James Gunn and the Russo brothers. There have been so many male directors who have been let go or left due to “creative differences”. Prime example g Edgar Wright. He was attached to Ant-Man for maybe…years? That was practically his and then he left. Was his gender brought into question or his geek cred or lack of epic action? The fact is he was probably perfect for the job but something happened in the last leg of the race and he dropped out. For all we know MacLaren felt this was too big of an undertaking…but for all we know DC didn’t want to hand over the keys to a potential franchise to a woman. I couldn’t have thought of a better woman for the job though. She can create tension like nobody else. I was amazed DC wanted her at all and I still give them credit for thinking outside the box. I just hope they find somebody half as talented as MacLaren.
She left due to “creative differences” and some people are saying she goes to do Captain Marvel ? LOL in marvel the Director doesn’t have any word to say. They just say – do the way we want.
Of course people are already saying “why make this a question of sex when male directors are fired all the time” but the big picture is men direct around 95 out of a 100 films so if four of them are fired that’s not really the same as four female directors fired…out of the five projects (usually about men) they could even get in the first place. This is bad bad bad, I want FEATURES on a regular basis from the likes of Nicole Holofcener, Patty Jenkins, Lisa Cholodenko, Julie Taymor, Ava DuVernay, Sarah Polley, Kimberly Peirce, Jane Campion, Jodie Foster, Sam Taylor-Johnson (not crap like 50S, more films like Nowhere Boy which I loved). FEATURES. I appreciate that they can get great opportunities on television (Campion’s Top of the Lake, Cholodenko’s Olive Kitteridge, Jenkins’s DGA winning work on The Killing – what gives, all three about women, too) but that is simply not enough : Jane Campion is one of only four female directors ever to receive a BD Oscar nod AND the first female director to win the most prestigious festival award (Palme d’Or); Lisa Cholodenko wrote and directed a BP nominee only five years ago for which she received a script nod; and Patty Jenkins directed one of THE most memorable female performance of all time, one we are still talking about 12 years after we first saw it. Long story short, these women received the kind of recognition that should have secured funding for their next FIVE features (it probably would have, had the same accolades gone to men) and here they are doing television. Great television, and for the record there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing television. The problem is they seem to be doing tv because in spite of being remarkably acclaimed, it does seem their name still isn’t enough to get a feature greenlit. And that is just disturbingly frustrating and horribly unfair.
Irritating, but not surprising.
There’s a big “no girls allowed” sign on the treehouse and it’s not coming down anytime soon. The best thing to do – your own thing. There are plenty of properties of a similar vein outside the Marvel/DC universe, and plenty of women writers, directors, editors, etc to do them up as good as, if not better, than the established boys’ club.
And, yeh, echoing what Ryan just said above: The best stuff is NOT being done for the big screen these days. The venue is of no consequence anymore, and that the Academy refuses to recognize that or the trend taking us to the future will eventually result in AMPAS asphyxiation – Oscar will become just another fashion show where the red carpet becomes more relevant than what happens inside.
Agnieszka Holland, if they’re looking for TV directors (though she’s hardly best known for her TV work)?
Although the 4-hour film Holland made for HBO Europe 2 years ago about the 1969 Prague student uprising was one of the best movies of the year of any length on any size screen. Czechoslovakia wanted to submit the theatrical cut of Burning Bush to the Oscars as their official submission in 2013 but the narrow-minded Academy with its paranoid eligibility rules said no…. but I just got finished promising Akumax in another post that I would ease off the automatic griping for awhile so I’ll just chew on my tongue and go back to bed since it’s 2 hours before sunrise here. I’m sure many of you already know about Burning Bush… but for those who do not, please do yourself an enormous favor and seek it out, because it ranks with one of the very best films that HBO or any other entity has produced in the past few years. Not that you’d know it from the Academy, because it doesn’t fit into their quaint corset.
Considering how hard DC have been banging the drum of the diversity of their shared universe superhero movies compared to Marvel’s, I wouldn’t be surprised if DC picked another woman for this job. They’re already attracting heat for McLaren leaving (as on this very page) and I think they’d be keen to ensure that they find another woman to helm this female-led project.
After leaving Thor: The Dark World, who’d be surprised to see Patsy Jenkins come on board here? Agnieszka Holland, if they’re looking for TV directors (though she’s hardly best known for her TV work)?
“Wonder Woman” (and perhaps the entire Justice League franchise all-told) will bomb. The MacLaren-directed “Captain Marvel” will make a billion dollars. And I will laugh and laugh and laugh.
Yet another body-blow to the DC/WB Justice League franchise. Can we even be surprised anymore that they’ve made another (likely to be) poor creative decision? It’s like they saw what Nolan did with Batman and for some reason thought “Hmm, can’t have a filmmaker with a unique vision in charge, that will get in the way of toy sales!” and are now trying to water things down as much as possible.
In the case of Jane’s Got A Gun, that film has run through so many changes anyway (director, multiple actors, and rewrites) that it just seems like one of those doomed projects, so I’m not sure you can really blame it on sexism. In the cases of Twilight and 50 Shades, I’ve gotten the impression that the conflict was….
“Geez, this source material really sucks, so I’ll have to really make a lot of tweaks to make it any good whatsoever.”
“No, we don’t care if it’s good. And CHANGES?! But that’ll tick off the diehard sad-loser fans! You’re fired.”
Whaa…shocked and saddened by this development. I was so excited to see her take — however, it could be for the best. Much like Edgar Wright, she might be too good for them. She wants to make a feature. She should go just go ahead and make her own JOHN WICK, so to speak…her own THE GUEST if you will. Get one of those young up-and-comer writers and develop your own thing. McLaren’s well beyond having to “prove herself”. Now who’s stepping in? Andrea Arnold’s WONDER WOMAN? No, seriously, Wendey Stanzler.
This annoys the fuck out of me.
She seemed like a perfect choice, and you’d think her experience directing TV shows like “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” would mean she could do this sort of directing job easily. It really is a nasty trend, almost as if film studios are going out of their way to make the environment for women precarious.
The Wrap is reporting that she may direct “Captain Marvel” for Marvel Studios instead. If that is true it’d be a major coup.