We established in last week’s poll that most of our readers think that Stephen Sommers is a worse director than Michael Bay. Not to turn this into another Movie Madness tournament or anything, but let’s take this to the next logical level. Who’s worse: Stephen Sommers or Uwe Boll?
I’m going to guess that Uwe Boll will take this in a sweep. There’s no denying that his movies are just laughably awful. However, Sommers is responsible for destroying a franchise beloved from my youth (‘G.I. Joe’), as well as pissing all over the entire batch of classic Universal horror monsters. Those are some pretty serious cinematic crimes. In comparison, all Uwe Boll has ruined are some adaptations of videogames that nobody cared about in the first place.
What are your thoughts? Which director do you think is worse?
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Julian
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t seen a single Uwe Boll movie and I have only seen ‘The Mummy’ (which I liked). So, for the moment, I’m not allowed to call either man a bad director. I do, however, know their reputation.
Boll visited a convention in Antwerp last month (conveniently called “Antwerp Convention”). He was hilarious during the Q&A-section. “When I have to yell at my actor, I yell. So I said :”Get in the fuckin’ shower!”” he stated while discussing “Auschwitz”. When the interviewer asked another question, he quipped : “What a stupid question!”. He’s quite the vocal guy.
Julian
P.S. Shouldn’t this blog entry be called “Mid-Week Boll”?
Ben Jennings
^ what he said. Wordplay fail, Josh.
Uwe Boll makes the film world a slightly more interesting place (thought not with his actual films), Stephen Sommers doesn’t.
If you want someone to ‘beat’ Sommers then you’re going to have to pull out the big guns, like Tom Shadyac, Raja Gosnell or Jason Reitman.
William Henley
I think that is enough to call him a bad director – the movies of his that I heard of got such HORRIBLE reviews, I have no desire to see them. The trailer I saw of Farcry and Alone In The Dark made me groan. Isn’t a trailer supposed to at least entice intrest in said movie?
On the other hand, I liked GI Joe. Easy vote in my opinion.
Dail Whiteley
uwe boll. hands down. bay and sommers are bad directors but uwe is at another level of bad. nothing goes on at all in his movies. garbage is something , uwe boll’s movies are nothing.
Ryan Megan
there is now way you can sit through an entire Uwe film and not vote for him.
His films insult me. as a horror fan his House of the Dead, felt like the cheapest of exploitations of zombie and game lovers. Almost like a film version of “Oh you like shit do you? well Ill give you shit and you wont even know the difference, here eat this you moron”.
Or something to that effect.
Chaz Dumbaugh
Well I’ve sat through almost every movie Uwe Boll has made (a couple I havent got around to watching yet) and I voted for Sommers, Van Helsing is probably my most hated film, it just shat all over the Universal horror monsters and Uwe Boll has done nothing like that, his movies are always bad (except Rampage which I thought was really damn good) and completely inept but he doesnt go and so something like Sommers did to classic characters.
Even though Boll’s movies are absolutely terrible, I find them completely hilarious, I’ve shown the House of the Dead zombie gun scene to so many people because its the funniest/worst thing I’ve probably ever seen filmed before, Bloodrayne I actually enjoyed for its camp, bad lines and lots of gore 🙂 Dungeon Siege had tons of problems, but Jason Statham can still kick ass even in a Uwe Boll movie so I had no issue watching that one as well, Bloodrayne 2 was extremely awful though, that one I’ll say for sure I’ll never touch again, but I actually own Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Bloodrayne and Dungeon Siege (on Bluray no less) and I have to say I’m actually looking forward to watching Blubberella, that to me looks hilariously bad.
Stephen Sommers has nothing coming out of ANY interest for me and its a shame that he cant do anything like Deep Rising or The Mummy anymore, he’s akin to M. Night in the action genre, gets worse with every film….
Matt
I’ve been around HDD for quite a while. I started reading regularly right around the time blu-ray first launched. I remember reading reviews for every single release because it was only a slow trickle back then. When the blog launched, I was really excited. I loved the general news articles and especially the TV commentaries.
With that said, and with as much respect as possible, I have to say that over the last few months I feel this blog has taken a drastic turn towards the cynical and negative.
Yeah, sure. Both these guys tend to make “terrible” movies (I’d make the distinction that they make terribly low-brow movies). I won’t argue with you there. And this is your website to do with as you please.
But for a long-time reader and fan, this pervasive cynicism is growing rather wearisome. For what it’s worth.
rudy
For me a movie has to be entertaining. I do enjoy critically acclaimed movies but I will always have a soft spot for movies that just try to be mindless fun. Michael Bay and Stephen Sommers clearly fall in this category for me. I loved the first two mummy movies and deep rising. I enjoyed Van Helsing too (Hope that doesn’t make me a bad person)
Uwe Boll on the other hand is horrible. I can’t even remember being able to make it through most of his movies. I find them just plain boring.
Top Gun
At least with Stephen Sommers there’s a level of technical proficiency and basic behind-the-camera competence. He’s sort of a “gets the job done” vanilla director like Brett Ratner or Paul W.S. Anderson, but definitely not your first choice because he’d be unable to make a good script better and actually end up making it worse.
The Mummy was fun, but The Mummy Returns was CGI overkill, and somehow he was able to crank up the CGI even more for Van Helsing. After G.I. Joe, his next feature should be called CGI: The Movie.
Uwe Boll is just a delusional hack. You’d never hear Sommers rip Steven Spielberg and declare himself superior. And of course, beating up nerds in the boxing ring (who you specifically pick out on the basis that they don’t offer any challenge) proves how good of a movie director you are.
But Boll is where he belongs now in straight-to-DVD land with significantly smaller budgets than the absurd $60 million he got for In the Name of a King.
Chaz Dumbaugh
Uwe Boll’s Rampage is better than the last three Sommers movies IMO 🙂