Stephen Sommers did the excellent The Mummy (1999) and the masterpiece Deep Rising (1998), also Mummy 2 was pretty good.
The Jungle Book (1994) was funny.
Alex Kurtzman will never top The Mummy 2, forget about topping the first one lol
It will be on par with the disapointing Mummy 3.
Buddy, I hate to break it to you, but Stephen Sommers has a worse track record than M. Night Shymalan, and that guy is still getting laughed at every time his name pops up in a new trailer. Clearing the level of quality of any Sommers film is not that hard.
Warning! The Monster is loose!
Deep Rising is better than ANY monster movie made after 1998. It's better than your favorite movie.
Stephen Sommers will always respect for these 2 masterpieces: The Mummy (1999) and Deep Rising (1998)
"Deep Rising is better than ANY monster movie made after 1998."
Definitely not. It's not a good movie, let alone a good monster movie.
"Stephen Sommers will always respect for these 2 masterpieces: The Mummy (1999) and Deep Rising (1998)"
Neither are masterpieces. Sommers is one of the worst offenders in having visual effects coming to occupy greater and greater prominence at the expense of story, seriousness or even basic credibility.
Definitely not. It's not a good movie, let alone a good monster movie.
Definitely not. It's not a good movie, let alone a good monster movie.
Neither are masterpieces. Sommers is one of the worst offenders in having visual effects coming to occupy greater and greater prominence at the expense of story, seriousness or even basic credibility.
"LOL you fail it's one of the best monster movie and its amazing. You're just a girly man, you prefer Twilight and Transformers..."
Never saw "Twilight", nor do I have any interest in seeing it. That still doesn't make "Deep Rising" a good movie, not even a good monster movie. The only thing you've proven is that you're insecure about your own masculinity and that you lack rational, intelligent thought.
"You just have poor taste and don't know what a great monster movie is..."
Oh look, another mind-reader! So you claim to know my thoughts, eh? Get lost, fanboy brat. You wouldn't know a good monster movie if it came up and bit you.
"You probably hate Alien..."
Not at all, I love "Alien". Still doesn't change the fact that "Deep Rising" isn't good.
Perhaps, but Stephen Sommers hasn't made a film as bad The Happening or The Last Airbender - Give me that overly theatrical and campy Dracula from Van Helsing over Aasif Mandvi's poor attempt at imitating Jason Isaacs any day of the week.
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
"Stephen Sommers did the excellent The Mummy (1999) and the masterpiece Deep Rising (1998), also Mummy 2 was pretty good."
"The Mummy" wasn't really good, let alone "excellent". It was enjoyable in a 1930s pulp comic sort of way, but "enjoyable" isn't the same as "good". "Deep Rising"....also enjoyable, but it's definitely no masterpiece. Same with "2".
"The Jungle Book" was actually pretty good.
"Alex Kurtzman will never top The Mummy 2, forget about topping the first one lol"
Shouldn't be too hard considering they weren't good to begin with.
Yeah, I really enjoy the first two Mummy flicks for what they are, but Stephen Sommers in general is a very low bar IMO.
That said, Kurtzman's resume has its share of turkeys (as a writer) and his resume as a director is thin. I like what I've seen so far, and I have high hopes, if not yet high expectations, for this so-called Monster Universe Universal is trying to create here.
Both Kurtzman and Orci are hacks. How they get attached to big name products (Trek, Spiderman, Transformers) is beyond me.
...keeps alive the weak, the stupid, the lazy that breed and multiply, weakening the human race
Because they make a lot of profit? Why is that a hard concept to grasp? Money talks, if they all bombed hard we wouldn't see Kurtzman's name on here.
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
Why is that a hard concept to grasp?
Orci & Kurtzman weren't "shown out the door" after Trek/Darkness, they were developing a script and Orci was set to direct the project but negotiations were no one way street and ultimately Paramount opted for a different story and a new director. Orci still had producer credit though, and Kurtzman still has involvement in the next Trek movie and series Star Trek: Discovery co-writing the pilot.
They weren't "shown out of the door" with Spider-Man either, after TASM 2 they still had involvement with other related titles in Sony's attempt at an "extended universe" which went nowhere really and had waaaay too many cooks in the kitchen with too many story pitches that didn't sound very good on paper. Sony didn't know what to do with the property and at the "Spidey summit" it was agreed to share the movie rights with Marvel Studios and co-produce a new reboot set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Even so, Sony is still going ahead with an animated film from Chris Miller & Phil Lord and possibly a Venom solo movie( Which, according to IMDb, Kurtzman's still attached to direct, but I doubt it'll go anywhere really...Venom needs ties to Spider-Man and should make multiple supporting parts in movies before getting his own solo outing, IMHO).
Movies and TV shows are collaborative effort and they all go back to what's written on page, without some semblance of a story idea or direct they can't work, so obviously the writers are going to be given a level of credit in regards to its success. But they did more than write, they also served as producers, which adds more credibility in financial respects because of the management behind those projects.
Quality is all opinion based anyway, not every great writer puts out gold and not every "bad" writer churns out crap on a regular basis. Orci & Kurtzman are a mixed bag for me personally, but I've enjoyed most of their output, especially on TV( Fringie here).
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
Yes, "shown out the door" was a poor choice of terms on my part. However I maintain that these two dudes keep failing upwards.
Of all the different articles I've been exposed to, I'm not sure what's true anymore... I think it's more that it's coming from the contrarian (or sycophantic) fanboy perspective (not you) I understand there is a level of opinion. ASM2 was a flop. It was a poorly written mess of an attempt to launch a franchise. And it was pretty obvious that Sony didn't know what to do with it. So instead of giving up all together, they struck a deal with Marvel. Once that happened Kurtzman was out (IE...Marvel wanted nothing to do with him). Kurtzman is credited at being an executive producer on the upcoming Star Trek Discovery but only for the pilot episodes. And there's a good chance that that's not even accurate anymore.
And everything I've read about Orci is that he was removed from Trek. Hell, even in that dude's post he says Orci was set to direct...there weren't any negotiations. He was SET to direct. It was announced. The fact that Paramount opted to go with not only a different director but a different story altogether is pretty telling. And it wasn't like they had someone come in and touch up Orci's writing. They had Simon Pegg do a complete re-write! Again...that says something. And as far as him still having a producer credit...that's meaningless. I can't count the times when someone's been fired from a production but still got the "producer" credit in the final production. Heck, maybe it's because of SAG that they HAVE to be included if they put so much work into the production...even if they've been completely replaced. It's almost like a pity credit.
As you can tell, I have a negative bias against these two. So I agree that I cherry pick the articles that support my bias. However I maintain that I'm not far off.
...keeps alive the weak, the stupid, the lazy that breed and multiply, weakening the human race
I don't get why the 1999 Mummy gets flack on here by some folk, sure it's not the most clever film out there or is even remotely scary but its' still a pretty solid action film, and a rare event where a remake manages to turn out fine despite being different in tone than the original. It may have been taking more than a few notes from Indiana Jones but it still was better than an actual sequel we saw some years later from that series in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Not only that, but 1999's Mummy approached its action sequences in a way that didn't come off as being too trendy outside of the use of CGI - Compare that to today where the camera lens is dirtied up, there's so much unmotiviated shaky cam, lens flare, and over-editing going around.
That said this new movie looks good, but Orci's never directed a film on this scale before.
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
As someone that liked Crystal Skull...yeah you're right.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
Stephen Sommers was always underrated as far as genre directors go.
Whatever you are, be a good one.
"Stephen Sommers was always underrated as far as genre directors go."
Not at all. Sommers is one of the worst examples of directors who don't direct, who let the effects do the work for him rather than put any work in himself.
Er, just because a lot of computers are doing the work doesn't mean he isn't instructing the effects artists or the cinematographer to frame the shot. So yes, he does still technically "direct" but if you want to get technical Sommers hasn't done a huge effects heavy film since 2009's G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Odd Thomas probably counts but its more contained and smaller scale. As far as being "underrated as a genre director" goes most of his films do feel like old Hollywood, and he didn't do a bad job till he really dropped the ball with Van Helsing.
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
"Er, just because a lot of computers are doing the work doesn't mean he isn't instructing the effects artists or the cinematographer to frame the shot."
In his case he just lets the effects guys do the work. Often times, he would have effects in his movies for no reason whatsoever, especially for scenes that don't even require special effects. Sommers is a director whose attitude to special effects is for the effects to do all the talking, showing off bigger effects spectacles and explosions without any in the way of self-control (I haven't seen "Odd Thomas", but in terms of his other movies this applies), while directors such as Peter Jackson and Guillermo Del Toro are people who have the ability to not only create spectacle of dazzling awe but to also craft the effects into a poetry of the imagination and find a heartfelt soul amidst it all.
Not to sound like a nitpicker but the proper word is "visual", not special. There is a difference between visual effects and special effects. Visual effects are done on the computer, special effects are done physically on set. Sommers' most definitive work has utilized visual effects more than special effects.
Nevertheless you do raise a point there, in Van Helsing Dracula states and we even see for a brief second that one of his fingers is missing, buts its intact throughout the rest of the film. Sommers even mentions this on the commentary, but only says they didn't have enough money to support it and even back then I was left pondering why even bother doing it in the first place if they money wasn't all there?
His adaptation of G.I. Joe was also all over the place effects wise, and the cinematography and color grading( Which he approved of) actually made it feel like it came out in the early 00's despite being made for 2009. Same goes with the editing choices for that movie too. I'm not surprised he didn't get called back to direct the follow up( Which was stylistically pretty different), and that his remake of When Worlds Collide has gone literally nowhere.
I guess Sommers is pretty much another example of somebody who struck luck a few times, but didn't really know where to take his career after the failure of Van Helsing and later G.I. Joe, and probably didn't quite grasp on what made his best movies work. I guess TV might be one route to take, lots of directors who have track records on par with Sommers found more success on TV, like Danny Cannon, Stephen Hopkins and Renny Harlin.
COOKIES AND MILK!-Ed
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra is where Sommers stumbled in the fx department. Still, I'd rather he had done Tarzan instead of David Yates.
Whatever you are, be a good one.