In my mind, you can’t even compare anyone to Stanley Kubrick. We all have our favorite directors, those guys/gals whose films hit us on a personal level that we dare not explain and whose tropes click with us for whatever reason, but at least for me, my love for Kubrick feels more objective, like it’s not even a matter of opinion. Of course these films are masterpieces, and of course he was playing the game at a higher level than pretty much everyone in the field. This was a guy that could take a year-plus to shoot a movie, that could drive his actors/crew nuts with his intense, sometimes near-mad dedication, and you could trust that you’d see the result of the efforts on the screen. Since his death, his films have taken on a near-mythic quality (remember those blue “STANLEY KUBRICK COLLECTION” on top of those old WB DVDs?), and one of his many unfinished projects, A.I., was picked up by Steven Spielberg for one of his more intelligent sci-fi jams (which, it should be noted, does not mention Kubrick on the poster or even in the trailer).
For the past several years, producers Steven Lanning and Phil Hobbs have been developing another of his old projects, a nearly-60-year-old screenplay by the maestro titled THE DOWNSLOPE, alongside another called GOD FEARING MAN. The initial idea was to do them both for television, but now, it seems that it will be produced as a feature film trilogy by Marc Forster, who will also direct the kickoff film.
Kubrick’s THE DOWNSLOPE is about the Valley Campaigns of 1864, a vicious series of Civil War battles that took plays in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. General Custer (yes, that one) led the Union troops, while Colonel John Singleton Mosby (no relation), also known as “the Grey Ghost”, and his Mosby’s Rangers fought for the Confederacy. Each kept winning successively on the battlefield, leading to an intense rivalry between the two officers.
The sequels (presumably more based on original material) will follow-up that story with the tale of post-war Westward Expansion as the Transcontinental Railroad allowed mass migration all the way out to the coast.
I think QUANTUM OF SOLACE soured people somewhat on Forster’s talents, but I think he sticks the landing more often than not, and I happen to like several of his films (STRANGER THAN FICTION, STAY, THE KITE RUNNER) quite a bit. His style is decidedly different from the meticulous, often fixed-camera deftness of Mr. Kubrick, and his action films (SOLACE, WORLD WAR Z) are well-executed (at least, for me), if somewhat impersonal stylistically, but I think of him as a strong director. He also shares Kubrick’s ability to jump from one genre to the next, having taken on comedies (FICTION), depressing dramas (MONSTER’S BALL), psycho-drama (STAY), period biopics (FINDING NEVERLAND), big-budget horror (WORLD WAR Z), and even a Bond film (QUANTUM) in his 15-year directing career. Spearheading this planned trilogy is easily his most ambitious undertaking this far, and for the sake of his career and of Kubrick’s legacy, I hope that he hits on whatever part(s) of the story captured the legendary director’s fancy.
What you guys think of Kubrick-by-way-of-Foster? Think he can do the master's work justice?
