The studio that gave us Frank Miller’s 300 has bought the rights to Ronin. More importantly, it looks like Sylvain White is in charge.
You remember Sylvain White — he directed Stomp the Yard. What? You mean you haven’t seen Stomp the Yard? Surely you see the similarities between freestyle street dancing and ronin warrior kicking it in futuristic New York.
I haven’t seen Stomp the Yard either.
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Assuming Sylvian White does direct Ronin, is there any hope for the movie? Is there a precedent in directing movies for starting off with a crappy movie and then doing well? So the bonus question is: Any examples of directors who started off with a crappy movie, and went on to direct at least one kick ass movie?
I almost wanted to say Peter Jackson (Frighteners), but I believe Dead Alive was his first movie, and that was a fun splatterfest.
Having seen Stomp The Yard i can say its not total crap. And white shoots a good scene. Any faults in the movie are not the fault of the direction.
As far as Directors starting out on crap movies and going on to greatness the list is long. Some examples:
Jonathan Demme – Caged Heat
James Cameron – Pirahna 2
Francis Fortd Coppola – The Bellboy and the Playgirls
Never heard of Dead alive, but i think his first 3 movies were Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles then Braindead.
Bad taste was pretty bad in terms of plot and pacing, but then so was Meet the Feebles. Both had their moments of genius though.
John Favreau hasn’t had a great track record with directing (the director for the upcoming Iron Man movie) with only Made, Elf and Zathura under his belt.
Sam Rami was a bit of a surprising choice for Spiderman too, come to think of it, having his roots is low budget B-Movies rather than huge budget blockbusters.
Good ones so far…John Carpenter? I haven’t seen his initial movies, but similar to Cameron’s “Piranha II”, that’s probably because they were badly done (ie low budget) B-movies, where the director cut his teeth.
Early Carpenter movies include: “Revenge of the Colossal Beasts”, “Terror from Space”, “Gorgon, the Space Monster”, and “Gorgo Versus Godzilla”.
I think the only big question is if this movie can live up to Samurai Jack, which was essentially a rip off of Ronin in the first place but beautifully done instead of being 80’s-tastic as Ronin was.
I never read Ronin but I’d trust an up and coming director over an established (and likely ego-driven) one. With the way the biz sometimes works, White may have been signed by a studio based on some indie or student work and they gave him something to cut his teeth on before letting him do something he wanted.
My point is he’s trying to prove himself and is more likely to craft a quality movie and perhaps remain faithful to the source material. Michael Bay for instance is rich from making explosive pieces of crap, so when someone gripes that the Transformers sucks, he won’t be able to hear them over the roar of his new Rolls pulling out of the driveway.
Dead Alive, for the record, was one of those early 90’s campy gorefests, somewhere in between Evil Dead and Re-Animator in terms of tone.
also, according to imdb, braindead = dead alive