Sunday, May 20, 2012

Auteur Watch - Lana and Andy Wachowski

Oh, Laurence... Well, you can't argue with box office receipts.  They're like a big box office Coen brothers somehow, and they're not afraid to say it in their films, either!  Their first big break was the disastrous Assassins.  I blame the usually reliable Richard Donner for that one.  Sylvester Stallone?  Seattle?  What were you thinking?  Somehow, the combination of Sylvester Stallone and Seattle was box office cyanide.  Ultimately, I guess I can't blame Donner.  For God's sake, he was 65 at the time!  He's just thankful for waking up in the morning in an un-crapped bed.  However, the Wachowskis were still on the make.  They're the next generation, and they rose up and said to themselves, we can direct this crap better than anyone!  That's the attitude you need.  And next came Bound, still considered Jennifer Tilly's best work... I'm assuming.  Maybe make it a double bill with The Getaway.
Still, recouping the budget wasn't enough for the brothers W.  And so, with the internet still rising, we get 1999's The Matrix, the coolest commercial for wi-fi ever.  The sky's the limit now.  The gates of Warner Brothers studios open forever.  They were stuck, however... what to do next?  A studio chief's got it!  Why not do like Back to the Future and do two sequels simultaneously?  Give the people more of what they want: more of that cool 3-D crap!  More bullets, more swooshes, more flying falderal, more bendy buildings!  And more of that Agent Smith guy.  He's got something...
And so, those came and went.  What else you got, guys?  Well, there's V for Vendetta, but they're tired of directing all that R-rated stuff.  We'll do the green-screen-centric Speed Racer ourselves.  You know, the real prestige stuff.  It was still worth it, haters!  John Goodman!  Susan Sarandon!  Christina freakin' RICCI, for Gawd'z zake!  Still, time to take a few years off to think about what to do next.  And we've got projects!  We got Cloud Atlas, I Love You and something called Jupiter Ascending.  Why does it make me think of Andrew Niccol?  He's got a vaguely similar pipeline at this point.  Anyway, keep the genius coming, guys!

No comments: