Are movies whose directors quit mid-production ever any good?

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jan/08/movies-directors-quit-any-good-ant-man-accidental-love

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Two trailers were released this week, one for Ant-Man and one for Accidental Love. They both, it must be said, contain slightly suspect notions of what the movie-going public wants to see; Paul Rudd riding a bug around like a rodeo cowboy and Jessica Biel playing a serious brain injury for knockabout good-time funsies.

But the Ant-Man and Accidental Love trailers both had one more thing in common: neither were for films credited to their original directors.

Ant-Man – which only wrapped principal photography a month ago – will be the work of Peyton Reed, of Bring It On and Yes Man fame. The director of Accidental Love, meanwhile, is listed as “Stephen Greene”. Given that IMDb only contains two credited Stephen Greenes – one a production assistant on a recent short and the other the producer of a 2005 documentary entitled Boost Mobile RockCorps Concert – it seems fair to assume that Accidental Love is the work of a man hiding behind a pseudonymous shame-shield.

It shouldn’t have been this way. For years, the most thrilling thing about Ant-Man was the involvement of Edgar Wright; a singularly talented and dynamic writer-director, beloved by comic book fans, with a proven track record of magicking impossible production values out of barely there budgets on films such as Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz. Back in 2006, when Marvel announced its first slate of independently produced feature films, it was Wright’s involvement that generated the most heat. Reaction to a brief snippet of his test footage in 2012 was euphoric. It was all incredibly exciting, at least until Wright left Ant-Man last year amid reports that he couldn’t make his vision dovetail with the wider Marvel plan. Now it’s hard to feel anything about the film except exhaustion.

Similarly, Accidental Love shouldn’t even be called Accidental Love. It should be called Nailed, and it should have been released half a decade ago, and David O Russell’s name should have been on the trailer. But he abandoned the troubled production – blighted as it was by lawsuits, cast walkouts and a general failure to pay anybody on time – in 2010 after its fourth shutdown, leaving the film’s financiers to Sellotape together their own movie from the uncompleted footage. No wonder Russell won’t have his name anywhere near it.

Sure, it’s possible to glean some positives here. Wright’s Ant-Man script has now been partly rewritten by Paul Rudd, which will hopefully push him into producing more of his own material; and Russell’s nightmarish experience with Nailed seems to have informed his decision to create more intimate work such as The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, which helped to cement his reputation as one of Hollywood’s most prestigious artists.

And, true, sometimes films can be vastly improved by a last-minute switch at the top of the tree. Pixar, in particular, has been incredibly cavalier about the treatment of its directors in the past – swapping out Jan Pinkava for Brad Bird when Ratatouille ran into problems, and Brenda Chapman for Mark Andrews when Brave did the same – while the fact that Spartacus was directed by Stanley Kubrick immediately makes it more intriguing than if it had been directed by Anthony Mann, the man he replaced.

But mid-production changes usually result in a finished piece that ends up either being unwatchably bland, because the new director has been too timid to put their fingerprint on what’s already there; or unwatchably muddled, because they’ve been far too enthusiastic about doing it.

Fortunately, Wright left Ant-Man too soon – and Russell left Nailed too late – to create a mess as pronounced as 1980’s Superman II, which still stands as an all-time gold-standard example of the perils of replacing a director midway through filming. Richard Donner’s original footage doesn’t just clash thematically with the bizarrely madcap slapstick scenes shot by his replacement Richard Lester, but the continuity is just as screwed; surely a drinking game exists where people get progressively more wasted whenever Margot Kidder’s haircut changes mid-scene.

Plus, thankfully, nobody had thought to make an official teaser trailer for either of these films before they ran into trouble. The same couldn’t be said for Alien 3, which heralded its arrival long before its release (and long before a script was finalised) with a trailer that boomed: “In 1979, we discovered in space nobody can hear you scream. In 1992, we’ll discover that on Earth everyone can hear you scream.” Several drafts – and directors – later and the Earth-invasion premise was long gone, banished in favour of one where the aliens land on Planet Bald Tedium instead. By the time it was released, the only people harder to find than those who enjoyed the film were those willing to take any credit for it.

Nevertheless, these are the films that Ant-Man and Accidental Love should start counting as their peers, alongside others that couldn’t quite make it to the end with their original vision intact for other reasons. Clint Eastwood hijacked The Outlaw Josey Wales from original director Philip Kaufman. Trainwrecks such as The Birds 2, The OJ Simpson Story and Kiefer Sutherland’s Woman Wanted all ended up being credited to “Alan Smithee” – the notorious pseudonym used by Hollywood directors who wanted their names removed from credits. The Day The Clown Cried, hidden from view by its mortified creator Jerry Lewis. Started-but-never-finished would-be masterpieces such as Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind or Tim Burton’s Superman. Whatever Lynne Ramsey had planned for Jane Got a Gun – another film that’s finally seeing the light of day this year after an onset change of director.

It’s not a bad bunch to be lumped in with, really. With the possible exception of Ant-Man, which you suspect is going to be steamrollered into anonymity by Marvel’s overwhelming desire to create a vast and painfully homogenised cinematic universe, these films have long since mutated into something else. They’re lessons. Lessons of what can happen if you overreach. Lessons of what can happen if you can’t get along with people. Lessons of what can happen if you don’t stick up for your principles, or if you do stick up for your principles but all your principles are stupid and you’re an idiot with no talent or social skills.

Chances are that Nailed – if it had been seen through to completion – would have immediately disappeared from view. It was the followup to the hugely unsuccessful I Heart Huckabees, for example, and it hardly seems feasible that David O Russell would have clawed back his reputation with a chuckle-fest about a mentally injured nymphomaniac. But Accidental Love? That’s going to last for ever.

There’s no question that Nailed would have been a better film than Accidental Love. But Accidental Love is notorious now. It’ll be the answer to a pub quiz question. It’ll end up in lists of films that couldn’t make it past the finishing line. It’ll be pored over for generations, whispered about by dedicated film fans and curious bystanders alike, who’ll pull it apart and squint at it in an attempt to make sense of Russell’s original vision. Because that’s what these films are. They’re more than just films. They’re a peek behind the curtain; a chance for us to guess at the majesty of what could have been. And that’s always better than the reality, isn’t it?