David Gordon Green Gets Stronger

Any time that I read about director David Gordon Green, it generally starts with how good of a director he used to be, and how far he has fallen, in regards to his more recent work in stoner comedies. David Gordon Green happens to be one of my favourite directors, and he truly is a working director, in that you can’t contain him into a single cinematic niche. Since films like Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and The Sitter (all three are top tier recent comedies for me), he’s done Prince Avalanche, Joe, Manglehorn, and Our Brand is Crisis. He is a guy who works, and he’s talented enough to deliver masterful low budget films like Prince Avalanche as well as mainstream fare like Our Brand is Crisis.

Stronger definitely seems like it is falling into the Our Brand is Crisis part of DGG’s career, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as this looks to be an engaging character profile about Jeff Bauman, a survivor of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. However, while the trailer is there below for you to watch, I implore you not to watch. It is one of those garbage trailers where the trailer itself has a three act structure, that basically gives away the entire film. Whoever is cutting Roadside Attractions’ trailers has definitely been guilty of following this 3 act trailer trend (see the recently released Only Living Boy in New York trailer and last years A Hologram For The King trailer, which also features a terrible narration), and it is truly the wrong choice for advertising a movie. The three act trailer structure vanilla-fies the movie that is being advertised, and ensures that it will appeal to everyone, by having zero character, and not being challenging at all. From a business perspective it is obviously important to appeal to the masses, because the masses have money, but the risk of making a trailer that is different also comes with the possible reward of that difference making the trailer blow up and get those sweet YouTube views.

As for the actual film Stronger, it has a cast lead by Jake Gyllenhaal and Tatiana Maslany, a good director, and what looks to be an interesting story. The most engaging stuff in the trailer is the stuff at the Boston Bruins game, simply because it appears to have been filmed in a very realistic way, and as a lover of large crowd scenes in movies, this is intriguing to me. I am worried that I’ll have a similar reaction to the film as I did to Our Brand is Crisis though, which I consider to be DGG’s worst film, simply because he fades his directorial abilities completely into the background, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see when Stronger gets released on September 22.

Finally, it seems like DGG is going on to a new stage in his career, after two more mainstream dramas, as he and Danny McBride are working on the newest Halloween movie, which is supposed to be released next year. I for one embrace the changing nature of DGG’s career, and cannot wait to see what he does with The Shape…