In Memory of Richard Donner

Other tributes to the recently deceased Richard Donner have, in varying ways, already made the observation that Donner's lack of distinctive visual flair resulted in a sort of anonymity in his work. You know a Martin Scorsese picture when you watch it. Just like you know a Steven Spielberg picture, or a Tim Burton picture. Donner's work, however, never seemed to have personal directorial touches that defined his style, or at least nothing readily noticeable. As a result, Donner himself has oddly been largely overlooked and underrated despite the fact that his films have reached iconic status -- and no, that's not a hyperbolic use of the word "iconic" -- on an almost regular basis. You can't hear the name "Damien," for example, without immediately thinking of the demon child from The Omen. You can't discuss, or even make, any Superman film without at least acknowledging the legacy of Christopher Reeve in the role. And any time anyone complains about being "too old for this shit!," you can't avoid picturing Danny Glover as Detective Roger Murtaugh.

It would be a mistake, of course, to lay all of the credit for this at Richard Donner's feet; certainly his writers deserve their share of acknowledgment as well. But what Donner provided was a consistency of quality that made a startling number of his movies the best -- or the most beloved, or the most influential, however you want to phrase it -- in their genre. The Omen. Superman. The Goonies. Lethal Weapon. If Donner had made any one of these films, he would have gone down in cinema history as an accomplished filmmaker. The fact that he made all of them is astonishing.

Even before Donner's astounding movie career, he had a tendency to make "the best of" whatever television producers threw at him. He didn't just direct episodes of The Fugitive for example; he made the episode where Doctor Kimble actually caught the One-Armed Man! Donner didn't just direct episodes of The Twilight Zone; he directed the episode in which William Shatner desperately tried to warn everyone "there's something on the wing of this plane!"

Even Donner's less appreciated work, frankly, deserves a second look. Take his most notorious film by far, for example, The Toy, starring Richard Pryor as a man who "sells himself" to the millionaire played by Jackie Gleason. Every single discussion of the movie bashes it for its insensitive and mostly unintentional echoes of slavery, and for playing that echo for laughs. Look, I agree with this assessment in a way. It would be royally screwed up to not at least address the parallels. But I submit that, under Donner's direction, Pryor did some great comedic work here. The Wonder Wheel scene alone is hilarious. Does acknowledging this make me a racist? No, it makes me appreciate the brilliant comedy performance of Richard Pryor.

Donner followed The Toy with Ladyhawke -- an often overlooked gem, but one that at least earns the proper respect from those few who watch it -- and then hit audiences with the one-two punch of back to back hits of wildly different tone and subject matter: the thoroughly Spielbergian Goonies, and the "yes it's fun but probably darker than you remember" landmark buddy cop movie Lethal Weapon.

After the love thrown at Donner for Lethal Weapon and its first sequel, it seems his stock gradually decreased in the eyes of both audiences and critics, who never seemed willing to give him a fair shake. "Under-rated" seems to be a term that can be applied no nearly all of his subsequent films. Scrooged, for example, is often dismissed as a "dumb comedy," but is arguably the most imaginative of all of the countless interpretations of A Christmas Carol. 

Lethal Weapon 3 is the first in the Lethal Weapon series that seemed a conscious attempt to maintain a formula -- but the formula worked. Maverick was a fun little Western, and despite the fact that it was obviously a labor of love for the filmmakers in some ways, it never pretended to be anything more ambitious than a simple joy ride, which poked fun at both Western movie conventions and also audience preconceptions of movie heroes. (Note the scene in which Mel Gibson easily single-handedly beats up a whole gang of tough guys -- a typical action movie scene, for certain -- only for the audience to later learn that Gibson's character had bribed the tough guys to lose the fight, and when they really get mad at him, he actually, more realistically, doesn't stand a chance.)

Assassins is often dismissed as merely "forgettable," but I saw this in the theaters, and had a grand old time watching veteran action hero Sylvester Stallone and newbie action hero Antonio Banderas match wits over whether to kill or protect Julianne Moore's damsel in distress.

Conspiracy Theory was praised by some as a "return to form" for Donner, who delivered the goods with a skillfully directed, intelligently written action comedy that had an intriguing high-concept premise: Gibson's paranoid loner is suddenly targeted by assassins, and he has to figure out which of his many crazy conspiracy theories was the one that turned out to be too close to home for powerful, dangerous figures.

I strongly advocate the opinion that the only reason why Lethal Weapon 4 was so maligned by both audiences and critics was less because of quality and more because of franchise fatigue. I'm thoroughly convinced that if the same movie had been made with a different title and different character names, it would have been praised as a delightful callback to the old fashioned farces of yesteryear.

Timeline was another skillfully directed genre picture, with modern-day time travelers finding themselves in the middle of a medieval war. And Donner's last picture was 16 Blocks, which critics rightfully praised as an intelligent action thriller sporting some of Bruce Willis's best work. Willis is (as is commonly observed) an actor who knows how to coast through a film when he's in it for just the paycheck, but 16 Blocks is a reminder of how good he can be (and how rarely he rises to that occasion) and perhaps it's a fitting end to a career that Donner was the director able to bring out the best of Willis. After all, Donner had already done the same for Shatner, Reeve, Glover, and Gibson, not to mention Gene Hackman, Ned Beatty, and Joe Pesci, giving us some of the best work of all of these very different actors, in very different genres.

And Donner's influence continues to be felt today. Many people are now arguing that the current constant slew of quality superhero movies wouldn't have been possible without Donner. I question that claim, as comic books have always provided a ready-made source of imaginative intellectual property ripe for cinematic interpretation; superhero movies were around decades before Donner's Superman, and no doubt would have continued even if Reeve had not put on those tights. Still, the argument could be made in both directions, since it was Donner's movie that proved that superheroes could dominate the box office. Marvel Entertainment certainly remembered Donner's contributions to superhero films when they brought him on as a producer of Wolverine's first solo movie. And more recently, Zack Snyder's opportunity to appeal to the general public and get a more personal, re-edited version of Justice League out even after the movie had already been widely seen in its more familiar studio format, undoubtedly owes much to Donner's struggle to get his "director's cut" of Superman II out to audiences long after the struggle seemed like a lost cause.

But more than that, Richard Donner movies aren't just acting class exercises or lessons in cinematic history; they're just plain fun viewing experiences for audiences. Even though Donner's death was more than a decade after his most recent film, his loss is still our loss, as movie-goers. Donner never gave up on his dream of one day making a Goonies 2, and while his death means that that movie may never come to fruition, in a way, that's Donner in a nut-shell; the best filmmakers, the best artists, have always been dreamers.