It seems not everyone was thrilled to bits with the wham bam big action popcorn epic that was this summer’s The Avengers. Wally Pfister, Christopher Nolan’s go-to Director of Photography and collaborator, had some choice comments regarding Joss Whedon’s billion dollar super hero adventure.
“I thought “The Avengers” was an appalling film,” the Academy Award Winner bluntly told Arts Sarasota in an interview.
“They’d shoot from some odd angle and I’d think, ‘Why is the camera there? Oh, I see, because they spent half a million on the set and they have to show it off.’ It took me completely out of the movie. I was driven bonkers by that illogical form of storytelling,” he said.
Pfister won an 2010 Oscar for his cinematography on Nolan’s mind-bender Inception, and earned three additional nominations from Batman Begins, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight. While his criticism could be viewed as a direct jab at his fellow cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, who lensed The Avengers, it is also a direct shot at director Joss Whedon, whose job is to collaborate and ultimately sign off on the visual style, camera angle, and lighting design in each and every shot in the the film.
Nolan’s and Whedon’s storytelling styles have two distinctly different aesthetics to them, and few would disagree that what they delivered to audiences with The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises were apples and oranges when it comes to a summer movie experience (which both happen to be based on comic book characters). Earning over a $1 billion at the worldwide box office, calling The Avengers “appalling” puts Pfister in a distinct minority.
SOURCE: Arts Sarasota
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