The Espinof site met the director of the cult A day in hell and Piège de Cristal, John McTiernan, during the BIFFF. The filmmaker attacked the studios which, according to him, always produce the same films.
Invited to give a master class during the 2022 edition of the BIFFF (The Fantastic Film Festival of Brussels), director John McTiernan spoke with a journalist from the Spanish site Espinoff.
And the director of Predator, Crystal Trap, A Day in Hell, Chasing Red October or Last Action Hero has not been kind to recent action films.
At the question “Do you think action cinema is dead?“, the filmmaker replies: “There are too many useless people making the same movie over and over. I couldn’t do that.
Today the studios are no longer looking for directors, they just want to make money. They don’t care what movie they’re making.
Studios don’t care if their movies are about extinct creatures, superheroes, wizards or juggernauts, what’s clear is that they don’t make movies for people..”
The director indeed regrets the lack of inventiveness and especially the lack of risk-taking by the studios which prefer to produce sequels, remakes or prequels rather than novelties.
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Burned by the failures of his films The 13th Warrior and Rollerball and after spending 328 days in prison for a dark case of eavesdropping and lying to the FBI, John McTiernan has not filmed since Basic in 2003.
The latter nevertheless specifies to the Spanish journalist that he has two projects: a science fiction film and a horror film… Will McTiernan find a studio to finance his works? To be continued…