A Defense of Uwe Boll

Uwe Boll is, possibly, the worst director, ever. Worse, he has attacked one of my other loves, video-games in his ridiculous attempts to adapt a number of classic videogame franchises for the big screen. The primary crimes against video games, against movies, and against humanity itself include:

• Alone in the Dark (ridiculous)
• House of the Dead (OMG Stupid!)
• Bloodrayne (Wow, not even Ben Kingsley can act in this POS)
• Bloodrayne II: Deliverance (Wait, it’s bad, makes no sense, and this one has NO NUDITY!)

Unlike Ed Wood, who is often given that title, Uwe Boll isn’t trying to express some strange, complex vision, yet failing. Ed Wood had odd plots, mixing aliens and transvestites in some kind of pattern that you think secretly must make sense in his head. But Boll’s pattern is just derivative crap. You know pretty much what he’s trying to say, because other people have already said it better.  His best shots are clearly copied, his worst show that he didn’t understand what he was stealing.

All this I knew, but when I discovered my PS3 could actually sell me movies, the only thing worth downloading and watching was In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.  I’ve only played a few minutes of that particular game, so I have no particular fondness that could be violated, but I was definitely up for an evening of Uwe bashing.  Many parts are bad, and everything good is not original.  But, still, Jason Statham is putting it all out there, doing his athletic action coupled with sullen intensity.  Ray Liotta is at about half creepy, but that’s still pretty creepy.  And Matthew Lilard is nasty enough that you find yourself really rooting against him.  By the predictable ending, I was engaged.  Not impressed, or blown away, but I wanted bad things to happen to the bad guys and good things to happen to the good guys.

Of course it wouldn’t be a Uwe boll movie without some inexplicable old, but still respected actor phoning it in.  Bloodrayne had Ben Kingsley, this one has Burt Reynolds!  As the King!

But I’m not changing my mind about Uwe just because he directed one mediocrity amidst all his crap.  I loveUwe Boll because the world would be less mysterious without him.  How does he get money?  How does he get medium-large names to appear in his obviously bad movies?  Why does he insist that he’s a mis-understood artist?  Also, he’s the only director I know of who challenged his critics to a boxing match.  Two took him up, and were defeated.  How about having Spielberg fight anyone who didn’t like the last re-hash of Indiana Jones?  I’d be up for that.

The other thing about Uwe Boll is that he’s trying the best he can.  He doesn’t have much talent, and he doesn’t make up for it with technique.  He sucks, but he’s trying to make the best movie he can.  Not so much Spielberg and Lucas.  They have talent coming out the wazoo, but contine to foist crap like the latest Indiana Jones movie on us.  That smacks of contempt.