Born in the great depression. little to no interest in education.
Picks photography, gets a job as a photographer for a magazine.
Starts a movie company at 21 and makes shit movies.But importantly, develops a knack for persuading people to work for little or no money convincing them that the "experience" was was worth more than money
Young Kubrick is ruthlessness and ego centric, hard to like... mature Kubrik is intriguing and softer. Then he makes some great movies, gets a family going, has money and goes nuts.
This allows him to get obsessive, neurotic, totally fixated on his work, horrifyingly oblivious to the feelings of colleagues and employees driving some to breakdown. Outraged designers, writers all persuaded for the experience and the glory of the final result. All swearing never to work with him again.
persuading people to work for little or no money for the experience and the greatness of the purpose and the final result seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others like Jobs.
It doesn't have to be like this though. Actors and others who work on sets with David Lynch always talk about how wonderful he is to work with and how well he treats everyone. And he is also a man with singularity of vision who does things his way.
I like each in their own way, I may be more biased towards Kubrick as I consider the Shining one of my top 3 movies of all time. Lynch may be the ultimate auteur in making a certain type of movie or tv show that really no one else was making or thinking about(Blue Velvet, Mulholland dr. etc). Twin Peaks season 3 might be one of the best tv shows ever made(and also one of the weirdest) and its why I like David Lynch so much. Kubrick touched on that side a bit with 2001(my second favorite of his movies) but his style is much more traditional.
Yes. But how much of their results is due to their attitude, versus just a coincidence?
I like movies, but admittedly know nothing about making them.
Big budget movies require hundreds of people with their own opinions working together to work towards a single vision. I don't find it impossible that demanding, narcissistic, and disagreeable people may have an advantage in that regard.
and it’s equally as possible insufferable directors make it worse far more often than they make it better.
there is no shortage of absolutely elite tier directors who exhibit exceptional abilities to work well with others.
in fact. on the spectrum where most coworkers “would _love_ to work with them again” to “nope, not a chance they were awful humans” i’d make a confident bet there are far more elite tier who lean towards the former.
David Lynch's oeuvre, while unquestionably idiosyncratic, is also characterized and widely criticized for its obvious compromises. Kubrick puts the art above the artists, it's the only way
It's not, in fact, the only way. The alternatives are time and/or money. Not having access to the resources needed to accomplish something is not a license to resort to socially unacceptable means.
Now, there's an argument to be made that actors who accepted to work under Kubrick knew (or at least ought to have known) what they were getting into, which blurs things a lot in this specific case. But "It's the only way" is going too far imo.
Its going too far if industry is replete with Kubrick level work with above reproach behavior. Else I can just choose to not watch Kubrick films while stewing in my own moral superiority.
Denis Villeneuve is another example of a universally loved director, and he is not often criticized for obvious compromises.
Villeneuve's good friend Christopher Nolan presents as a bit more of a prickly pear, but he has a very long list of long-time collaborators on both sides of the camera so he's probably not that bad.
In fact, more than a few of those behind-the-scenes folks collaborate with both Villeneuve and Nolan. It would be interesting to hear them compare an contrast.
Chris Nolan famously drives all his production designers insane! No one has made more then one film with him. Apparently he also only shoots 3 or 4 takes per shot, and goes ballistic if somethings goes wrong.
Dune took "Show Don't Tell" the the utmost extreme that it practically inverted upon itself. There's no character development to speak of, the plot is secondary, and visual spectacle is placed front and center.
I tire of movies with lazy expositional dialogue, but this was absurd in the other direction.
> There's no character development to speak of, the plot is secondary, and visual spectacle is placed front and center.
I totally agree with this take, but I think Dennis' directing/writing is full of 'Telling' instead of 'Showing', not that he took "Show Don't Tell" to the extreme. The entire movie is full of instances where the audience is told aspects of the characters/world, but isn't shown them in the first Dune movie:
- We are told the Atreides ruled Caladan, but at no point is the audience shown who the Atreides' subjects are, or how their subjects feel about the Atreides. The only shots the film has on Caladan are beautiful yet empty areas of the Scottish Highlands. Where are the people they rule over? What does their way of life look like? None of this is shown, but it should have been.
- On Arrakis, we are only ever told how strong and powerful the Fremen are from characters like Duncan Idaho. In fact, the only time we get to see the Fremen fight is at the end of the movie when Paul, the child _who has never been in a life or death fight before_, makes a fool of a supposedly strong Fremen fighter! Dennis clearly wants the audience to perceive the Fremen as strong, yet he fails to illustrate their strength on screen. I understand that Dennis wants Paul to be seen as powerful too, but the resulting scene undercuts everything that the movie has told us about the Fremen's fighting ability.
If it isn't already clear, I don't think Dennis Villenueve is a particularly good film maker (though this is not to call him a bad one). He likes to have large empty scenery shots which are almost monochrome. I find that it makes his imagery striking but, ultimately, boring. For instance, his shots in Bladerunner 2049 mostly depict an empty wasteland that, though striking in its scale, doesn't drive one's imagination. The original Bladerunner's shots are so cluttered with detail and color that it fills every location with a unique character. This is why I think Bladerunner inspired so much other media after it; the audience's imagination can't help but linger on the sets and one off characters of the original film.
I agree with the original poster. The novel was extremely expositional, with epigraphs, italicized personal thoughts, and shifting points of view. The film is the novel with all the exposition removed. I see the film not just as an adapatation, but as a direct response to Lynch's version which includes all the exposition you could like.
> - We are told the Atreides ruled Caladan, but at no point is the audience shown who the Atreides' subjects are...
I'm not sure why this is particularly needed and it isn't really in the novel. The importance of Caladan in the novel is that it is wet (which we do see); and that the way Caladan is ruled (whatever that is) must necessarily be different than how Arrakis is ruled (air/sea versus desert power). I'll have to rewatch the film to see if this can be gleaned from it; but it seems largely irrelevant what day-to-day life is like for Caladanians not in the Duke's direct employ and if the Duke is particularly loved or hated there.
> - On Arrakis, we are only ever told how strong and powerful the Fremen are...
This is also true of the novel. The main characters know more about the Fremen than anyone and very little at that. The Duke believes the Fremen are his 'desert power' because of the comparison to the Sardaukar on Selusa Secundus and because their estimates of the number of Fremen are greater than those of the Harkonnen or Emperor. Duncan Idaho confirms these suspicions, but the Fremen are largely mysterious even then. We also have the interaction between the Shadout Mapes and Jessica to hint at their capacity for violence.
> I'm not sure why this is particularly needed and it isn't really in the novel...
I know saying this is sacrilegious to some sci-fi fans, but I think that the novel, Dune, could do with improvement. Neither the book nor the movie spend enough time fleshing out the details of their characters, which in my opinion robs both of them their ability to connect more deeply with the audience. The scene where Duke Leto explains to Paul that they will require desert power to rule Arrakis, for instance, did not have to be set such that the characters were alone on an empty cliff above the shoreline. There could have been a city full of culture upon this shoreline with great boat yards and planes over the sea to show the audience the empire that they are leaving behind on Caladan. I want both the novel and the movie to flesh out the details which make the audience engage with the fact that Caladan is a comparative paradise to the harsh, prison-like planet called Arrakis. It would suck to be forced to leave behind all the great work that the Atreides' forefathers put into Caladan. But, ultimately, both the film and the novel fail to fully engage their audience with these facts since they don't flesh out the details about the environment and people that the Atreides rule. At least that is my opinion.
There are a number of things I'd like to change or improve upon if I had the chance to edit Dune (novel or film): the story's allusions to the Cold War fight for oil in the middle east; the poor decision making by the Harkonnens; Dr. Yueh's murder of Duke Leto etc. But I don't want to ramble on too much. My point is that I think the film could have improved upon the novel in a number of places, instead of following the novel to its detriment.
Just want to say I agree about the book. I like the book, but I've never felt connected to any of the characters. There's simply no reason given to particularly care about any of them, any many simply appear to fill a role and then disappear as quickly.
The Villeneuve movie at least gives personality to Stilgar.
You're lucky, I find something like <2% enjoyable to actually give real attention to. For that reason I watch basically 0 TV or movies anymore.
And feels like the less I watch, the less I can watch anything without immediately being annoyed at cheese, cheapness, and mostly just plain unrealistic characters or dialogue (which really and truly is 99% it seems like of shows).
I need either high art or a slice of life. Ghibli or Satoshi Kon for anime, stuff like Kubrick in film, or Mad Men for TV. Mad Men especially was my turning point where after that show I couldn't stomach much else.
Call me elitist. I watch lower quality YouTube stuff much more easily (at low attention), but once you're trying to sign me up for 30 minutes or more I just give up.
Tried watching the 3 Body Problem on Netflix and in just the first scenes (cultural revolution + the scientists convo on God) were so full of cringe. I kept it on as background a bit but petered out after a few episodes.
You conveniently left out Arrival. Also, Blade Runner 2049 was not a remake, but a sequel with original content. Also, Dune was a book adaptation, not a remake. Also, that's just a weird reason to reject a director. Is it easier to direct a movie that's set in an existing universe? Should we reject all World War 2 movies as potential masterpieces since they're just remakes of a thing that happened?
Just to further your point, we are in a thread about Kubrick who did numerous book adaptations including Lolita, Dr. Strangelove, The Shining, and Clockwork Orange and this is just off the top of my head. Tons of directors adapt novels. Bringing the story to the screen is the skill.
As an aside, 2001 is an interesting case as it was produced concurrently with the novel. It's clearly not an adaptation, but I wouldn't say it's clearly original material either.
I guess Lynch has his fans but I just looked up a list of his work and haven't seen any of it, to me he's the Transcendental Meditation guy who played a pretty funny role in Louis CK's TV show.
> persuading people to work for little or no money for the experience and the greatness of the purpose and the final result seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others like Jobs.
Peter Jackson got started the same way, making ultra low budget horror flicks like Bad Taste with friends and family as extras. Critically, like Kubrick and Jobs, those early attempts were actually good, good enough to kick start their respective careers.
Jobs conspired with Google to suppress wages of employees with no-poaching agreements. He even stole from his founding partner, and avoided paying child support.
Avoiding child support is a personal issue that can have many reasons. For all we know the woman swore she was on birth control, yet Jobs could have found out later from a mutual female friend that the woman secretly stopped taking it because she really wanted a child with a high networth individual. I personally know someone that this exact thing happened to. Is it wrong to withhold child support in that case? Probably still yes. But that's not exactly the same as just withholding child support because you don't think the woman you had a child with knowingly stopped loving you and wanted to go separate ways. If you got basically defrauded and forced into having a child because someone wanted monetary gain, you might have different opinions.
And trying to stop skyrocketing salaries fueled by endless poaching is also bad, but trying to only pay your employees 3-10x the median local salary its not the same as trying to flat out not pay someone.
> persuading people to work for little or no money for the experience and the greatness of the purpose and the final result seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others like Jobs.
Well if you don't have many resources, you need to persuade them somehow. Many people would pay to work with an all-time genius in their field. Wouldn't you?
> (abusive stuff)
There's no evidence or reason to think it's necessary. Power corrupts. Why look for rationalizations for assholes?
Kubrick was remarkable in his singularity as a filmmaker.
There is a fantastic 1 hr BBC documentary from the mid 2000's called 'Stanley Kubrick's Boxes' in which the documentary crew is given access to Kubrick's estate and warehouses after his passing. They examine the contents of the boxes of research and pre-production material that Kubrick accrued over several decades when crafting his films. The lengths he went to flesh them out are stunning.
The takeaway is of someone with a singular ambition and extreme thoroughness when planning their films. It's been immensely inspiring to witness just how intently a creator can focus on crafting their work. I strongly recommend it.
Sounds about right. I recall reading a book about Kubrick 15 years ago in which the author/interviewer visited his house and was left alone in Stanley's study for a few minutes. As he walked around the room and examined the (fully stocked) bookcases he realized that every single book in the room was about Napoleon.
> Cinema is a collaborative art, and auteurist accounts that centre the director’s vision often seem at odds with the actual process of film-making. But Stanley Kubrick was a special case; a director who won an astonishing degree of autonomy from the Hollywood studios that financed his films and used it to control almost every aspect of those films: the scripts, the performances, the lighting and camerawork, the mise en scène down to the smallest details of sets and props, the gradations of colour in the prints, how the films were promoted and, later, even the typefaces on the boxes of VHS and DVD releases
I wonder at directors: It's hard enough to find artists with the insight, vision, expressiveness, and mastery of their craft to create great art.
But before film, artists worked mostly alone. I suppose architects and composers have had to be mindful of the performance of a bunch of humans, but didn't necessarily have to manage that process. Stage directors obviously have similar jobs, but necessarily at a much smaller scale, with fewer technical demands, and by my limited understanding, stage directors lean toward overseeing and facilitating the art, which is more a product of the playwright and actors.
But film directors - as artists they must be all those things an artist is; and also they must master more domains than most artists - film, audio, script, story, costumes, sets, lighting, etc.; and on top of that they must be top-notch managers: hire and manage hundreds or thousands of highly talented people (just look at the credits), and then coordinate them all to finish on time and also manage a budget in the 10s or 100s of millions, and then also sell their vision to funders.
Where are these 'directors' found? Can they really do all that or is it handled otherwise? How are they developed? It's hard to imagine there would be more than a couple of them.
I'd say that most of those things you list film directors needing to worry about are just as important to stage directors, but also, film directors have crew and other experts to fill a lot of those gaps. Directors aren't writing scripts, there are scriptwriter for that, just like playwrights, the director just gets some input, which happens in live theater right now. I know a director who is having to edit the script of Hamlet himself right now due to time constraints. A film director doesn't necessarily need to know everything they just need to be able to vocalize their wants and vision to other people who know more, and be able to receive feedback from that. Also, to my knowledge, directors aren't hiring everyone. They might pick a few key people, but that's why you have producers, and you let your key people pick their people under them.
What do you think of my comments on stage directors in the GP (rather than my pedantically repeating them). Also, more delegation requires substituting more management skill for artistic skill - and IME many highly talented people hate to delegate for that reason.
I am neither film nor stage director nor actor, but here is Lawrence Olivier, highly accomplished and respected in both mediums, on the differences:
"Now the sense of continuity in the film is provided by the director, who says that was too quiet, or that was too loud, or that was too much, or that was too slow.
Now an actor on the stage is supposed to conduct it much more for himself. The director in a stage play, he can do two things, I think, principally ...: He can give the play a point of view, which he can sell to the actors. His principle task is to make quite sure that the author is served to his best advantage, and the actors are served to their best advantage. And at the same time, he can describe, without setting, because this will vary according to performance, according to audience, but he can desribe what he thinks is the right tempo for each scene, or the comparative tempos between two scenes, three scenes, four scenes, five scenes, etc.
Whereas the director of the film is the absolute magician, who is in charge and knows the answer to every question right from the beginning of the film to the last. In directing a film, people say, 'would it be alright if she wore a red hat?' Well, simply means that you have to split your mind to every single shot that could possibly affect that situation, right to the beginning of the film, right to the end of the film, before you say, 'I don't care' or 'yes' or 'no'. It's a very precise arrangement, altogether, in a film."
To me, that reads largely as an organizational difference, and one of the few areas that does largely differ. In live theater, everything occurs in order, and especially in more contained plays, props stay where they're left between uses, or there is a scene change, during the time jump within the prop moving doesn't matter. Not so much with movies, so I can definitely grant that difference. However, I think some of this can also put the cart before the horse. In live theater, you really can't enforce your precise vision of the play. Things happen, and actors have to take it into their own hands. Someone drops a line, a glass shatters mid-scene and creates a hazard. That's the delegation a stage director does. A film director though, can re-take most shots, pick the one that matches their vision best, but with that creative control comes that excess cognitive load the quote mentions.
I've reviewed this book and agree with the Apollo Magazine writer: this book is very sloppily edited. There are better books about Kubrick; I recommend:
One of the cool facts about Kubrick I've always admired as a testament to his perfectionism is his typical "shooting ratio": The ratio of how much film was shot vs the run time of the final product. For The Shining he exposed 1.3 million feet of film for a movie that runs for 142 minutes, a ratio of over 100:1. The baseball bat scene alone took 127 takes to get right[1].
This could also mean that he's inept at getting composition right, and neurotically obsessive about things that don't really matter.
I do photography, and a ratio of 1000 discarded photos to one you keep would far more likely mean someone doesn't know how to select their shots more carefully and can't distinguish what's important, than it would mean that they're a perfectionist genius.
To each their own point of view, but I hope you see my main point. I actually like the compositions of Kubrick's films, but I don't think they'd need 100 or more takes to get right. Thus, if you take off the Kubrick equals genius blinders for a moment, either he was somewhat inept and covered for it by working through an absurd amount of takes, or he was obsessive about trivial details that didn't really matter visually. I can think of no other reasons for why it would take 100 or more takes to create the majority of his best scenes.
When I first started with my own photography, i'd often take dozens of photos of the same subject, day after day after day, trying to get my shot "just right". Eventually I noticed that this only created pointless extra revision work for me for no reasons other than that I was failing to note the difference between completely irrelevant, tiny differences and those worth adjusting, and that I was thus failing to simply compose more carefully with far fewer shots. Having learned these things, my photography became much less tedious without losing any existing quality.
You keep saying he was inept, or obsessive about trivial details; even saying I have Kubrick genius blinders.
But you can't argue with the results of his process. He's literally the GOAT. It's not close.
The idea that everyone has to take things easy, or that you can get the same results without some amount of obsession, is not borne out by reality - because no one has come close.
If I'm wearing blinders for saying so, then so is every respectable film critic of the last how many decades... Weird that we all love wearing those "blinders", when all those "tiny differences" were "unimportant".
Details matter, and a little respect for other people's process is in order, especially when they're widely known as the actual best ever.
If someone can't see why Kubrick is the best, I can't respect their eye. Same as I can't respect the ear of a musician who thinks the Beatles were overrated.
As a neutral reader I find the parent’s thoughts on their own expertise and appreciation that acclaimed artists aren’t infallible more persuasive than you appeal to authority.
We all know he’s acclaimed. That doesn’t invalidate any of the points you’re trying to retort, and your disrespect for people with different viewpoints is an uninteresting contribution to this discussion.
And my argument was more than that he's acclaimed. You seem to have entirely missed the point, and I don't know how I could have been more clear.
Would you respect the skills of a coder who disrespects Richard Stallman, saying he doesn't know enough about open source software? Or an economist who thinks Marx didn't understand capitalism, citing their own work in a bank as proof?
One person made appeals to authority (themselves) while being disrespectful in this thread, and it wasn't me.
It's not an appeal to authority to say that Kubrick made the most beautifully framed movies, by a long shot, of any director ever. It's about as close to objective truth with such a subjective question as possible. Ask ChatGPT to tell you who made the most beautifully composed movies! I did - it told me Kubrick.
To say that Kubrick tried too hard, and could have got the same result with less effort, is bananas. It's clearly untrue on its face, because no one else ever has gotten the same result with less effort. It demonstrates a damning lack of understanding & appreciation for the art form. Which, by the way, is actually pretty different to photography - adding time changes the game.
You can say Steve Jobs could have been nicer to his employees - and you'd be right. But you can't seriously claim that you'd have gotten the same results with less effort, citing your experience as general manager of a tech store. Would you hire such a guy as your PM?
I think you're missing the point. He might have a great eye for what he wants, but could be bad at making it happen.. requiring 100+ attempts to get it right.
This is a bit hyperbolic, but in a way I get the point OP was trying to make.
Barry Lyndon is probably my favorite (or at least, the one I appreciate the most) of Kubric's films when it comes to his perfectionism, but perfectionism alone isn't a great metric for the resulting film:
> Cimino shot more than 1.3 million feet (400,000 metres; nearly 220 hours) of footage, costing the studio approximately $200,000 per day in salary (equivalent to $720,000 in 2022), locations and acting fees.Privately, it was joked that Cimino wished to surpass Francis Ford Coppola's mark of shooting one million feet of footage for Apocalypse Now (1979).
My favorite trivia on Barry Lyndon is the fact that he built a camera out of satellite lens to get the necessary aperture to shoot candle lit scenes with no artificial lighting. But with such a massive aperture, the actors had to stay absolutely still to remain in focus, which you can tell in the card playing scenes.
Though I love the film, the very slow rythme makes it hard to re-watch, and probably impenetrable to today's young audience.
Most of what you hear about that are exaggerations and rumors, mostly based on this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o-n6vZvqjQ. People cite lines like "don't sympathize with Shelly" to jump to the conclusion that Kubrick "ordered the cast and crew to alienate her". Or they cite making her do 60 or however many takes, as if that constitutes abuse. I wonder if the abuse allegations are compounded by Wendy Torrance being so vulnerable and scared in the movie influencing perception of the actress, and also some kind of collective guilt for the initial uninterested to negative critical reaction to her performance.
Plus trying to extract a genuine reaction from your actors by surprising or manipulating them is a common occurence. A few examples from the top of my head: the alien bursting out of the chest in the first alien, jodie foster's nervousness confronting Hopkins as Hannibal the first time, Leone releasing a dog to spook Eli Wallach in the cemetery scene in the good bad ugly, etc.
> Most of what you hear about that are exaggerations and rumors…
Are they? Kubrick is known for being difficult and for his shallow portrayal of women. And whether it was due to misogyny or his personal view of Duvall, even Kubrick's daughter called her father "a different director" when referring to how he singled her out.
> People cite lines like "don't sympathize with Shelly" to jump to the conclusion that Kubrick "ordered the cast and crew to alienate her".
Except he literally did that in order to alienate her and extract a slightly more authentic performance, which is the same reason he spent three weeks on the baseball bat scene.
>Kubrick is known for being difficult and for his shallow portrayal of women
He may or may not be known for that, but is it really true? Part of the point of my comment is to dispel common misperceptions. Is Alice in Eyes Wide Shut shallow? Or the women in Barry Lyndon, particularly his mother?
>Except he literally did that in order to alienate her [...]
Or he did it as a joke. Maybe he thinks it's funny to say that to Duvall as she's saying her hair is falling out, because he has a big bald spot. Hey, isn't Kubrick also known for his dark humor?
I don't know what happened between Kubrick and Duvall, but it is clear to me that Kubrick's art looks at humanity in general in a cynical and one might even say misanthropic way.
Think about his male characters. His films are full of men who are neurotic losers, corporate conformists, cynical opportunists, or violent lunatics. Not that he never presents conventional male heroes, but they are rare in his work as a whole.
He certainly seems to be more interested in male characters than in female characters on average, judging by who gets more screen time. But he is not especially kind to the male gender. If he was a misogynist, perhaps we might just as justly call him a misandrist.
He very well might actually have been more of a misogynist than a misandrist, but if he was I'm not sure that it really shows through in his movies.
The quotation from a BBC interview is, “Shelley Duvall as Wendy is really one of the most misogynistic characters ever put on film, she’s basically just there to scream and be stupid and that’s not the woman that I wrote about.”
I think King was wrong. Wendy outwits Jack and saves her son. Yeah she screams a lot but that seems pretty realistic to me. When push comes to shove and she can no longer deny what is happening, she shows a lot of strength and intelligence. The idea that she is "just there to scream and be stupid" just does not match up with what the movie actually shows.
Yea I disagree with King here. He wants Wendy to be strong but IMO it’s such a better story with her as this hopeless character who’s dealing with crap way over his head. It makes the story into a classic Greek tragedy.
Highly recommend watching "room 237" a documentary about the shining, some of it veers into speculation but one interesting take was that Kubrick in the film specifically lets Stephen King know that this is his vehicle(the movie) and is quite subtle about the message.
King's come around by saying basically it is a good movie but a bad adaption, and he's not wrong. They're two different stories with different characters.
Thats a lot for sure but I really dont think the number of takes shows abuse or not. I dont have an opinion on any alleged abuse of Duvall either way, because it just doesnt matter enough for me to form an informed opinion. Regardless the number of takes and the opinion of the author certainly dont mean much.
He was probably talking about the story. In the book, Wendy is supposed to be strong, not one to be pushed around. In the movie, it's the total opposite.
It’s all media bullshit. Shelley Duvall never said he abused her. In fact, she said the exact opposite: that she felt like The Shining was the moment she turned professional and Stanley taught her how to get more out of repetition.
The footage you see of Kubrick “abusing her” was cherry-picked by Kubrick himself in order to promote his film. He had a reputation as a “perfectionist” so he thought the footage would drive ticket sales.
I think it’s a form of sexism to assume that Shelley was somehow weak and not able to make her own decisions here. If we were talking about Leo DiCaprio or Daniel Day Lewis, we’d all be talking about how much of a dedicated actor he is that he would go through all that hardship just to get a great performance.
But gained a lot for Shelley... that she was able to direct her terrible emotional state into her acting and give one of her best performances speaks greatly of her.
He really wanted to make a film on Napoleon. Though not officially related to his work, one got made last year to mixed reviews. And he started production on the movie "AI - Artificial Intelligence" after a short story from 1969. He handed it off to Steven Spielberg.
Lots of films have been made about Napoleon, many long before Kubrick (before he was born, even) and several while he was an active director, I don't how him wanting to do one and one recently being made makes him "ahead of his time".
You're right. He had a vision for not just a movie, but something of a massive scale. That wasn't really the norm for a historical epic like this anymore. You're right that there are a bunch of films about Napoleon (https://www.vulture.com/article/napoleon-movies-history.html) but nothing attempting the scale. The latest Napoleon was the first to attempt that scale ($200m).
> Slated for production immediately following the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey , Kubrick’s "Napoleon" was to be at once a character study and a sweeping epic, replete with grandiose battle scenes featuring thousands of extras. To write his original screenplay, Kubrick embarked on two years of intensive research; with the help of dozens of assistants and an Oxford Napoleon specialist, he amassed an unparalleled trove of research and preproduction material , including approximately 15,000 location scouting photographs and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery. No stone was left unturned in Kubrick's nearly-obsessive quest to uncover every piece of information history had to offer about Napoleon. But alas, Kubrick’s movie was not destined to the film studios, first M.G.M. and then United Artists, decided such an undertaking was too risky at a time when historical epics were out of fashion.
He also backed off on AI because the scale/requirements.
In my opinion he had the vision, but the tech and audiences just weren't ready. But maybe the same things might have been said about 2001.
I would say Waterloo (1970) is very close to that never-made epic Napoleon film, though it only focuses on one event. The film employed an army of around 15000 extras and 2000 horses, remodeled the entire landscape required for the battle, including transplanting a forest, etc. The scope is certainly more narrow than an all-encompassing biopic, but is that a bad thing? To me, the direction and cinematography are good, but of course not Kubrick-level, because nothing is.
"A bunch of movies" you say. If you want to talk insane ambition and vision, technically groundbreaking and giant scale filmmaking that was so far ahead of its time it took decades to be recognised, Abel Gance's 1927 Napoleon fits the bill nicely.
The contention the moon landings were faked is ridiculous. The most obvious rebuttal is that the USSR would have asserted it if there was a modicum of truth to it.
There is also a hilarious movie called The Moonwalkers which did that also. I think it completely missed its audience which probably killed the director's career which is a pity.
Starts a movie company at 21 and makes shit movies.But importantly, develops a knack for persuading people to work for little or no money convincing them that the "experience" was was worth more than money
Young Kubrick is ruthlessness and ego centric, hard to like... mature Kubrik is intriguing and softer. Then he makes some great movies, gets a family going, has money and goes nuts.
This allows him to get obsessive, neurotic, totally fixated on his work, horrifyingly oblivious to the feelings of colleagues and employees driving some to breakdown. Outraged designers, writers all persuaded for the experience and the glory of the final result. All swearing never to work with him again.
persuading people to work for little or no money for the experience and the greatness of the purpose and the final result seems like the common pattern between Kubrik and others like Jobs.