By Spence Blazak
At this year’s Oscars ceremony, Ang Lee nabbed his second Best
Director statue for his work on “Life of Pi.” Unlike many great directors, Lee
is viewed by the media as a man who can seemingly do no wrong. No matter how
many great films Spielberg has made, “Jurassic Park 2” and “Indiana Jones 4”
will always be blips on his permanent record, so how has Lee achieved the feat
of a pristine career? The answer is a simple one: all that glitters is not
gold. The real question here is just exactly how bad is the seemingly infallible Ang Lee at his worst?
Lee is in an odd place among lauded directors. Since he
started out making films in his native Taiwan, the average filmgoer never heard
of his work before the martial arts epic “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
Also, when his films come out, they are only heavily discussed when they are
masterpieces. In the case of his flop “Taking Woodstock,” it was released
during the summer, and no one seemed to notice it slink in and out of the
theater at all. So this means that the first half of Ang Lee’s career is
virtually unknown to the general public, and critics tend to leave up their blinders
when he releases a dud. Then again, another possibility is that maybe his bad
movies aren’t really even that bad at all.
Since he emerged onto the international stage with
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” he has released the critically acclaimed hits
“Brokeback Mountain,” “Lust, Caution,” and “Life of Pi.” That is a run of four
excellent films in a period of twelve years. Peppered in between these hits are
the goofs “The Hulk,” his foray into the Hollywood blockbuster, and “Taking
Woodstock.” That is a batting average of 4/6, putting him at .666 while he has
been in the American spotlight.
“The Hulk” is a very curious case in film lore. Created
after the box office success of “X-Men” and “Spiderman,” Ang Lee got the job
based on his action direction of “Crouching Tiger,” where he juggles action and
still keeps the relationships at the center accessible and honest. The road to
hell is paved with good intentions, and so was “The Hulk.” Lee didn’t want to
waste the character on a silly action flick, so he used a very dark and serious
script that focused on the Jekyll-Hyde-esque battle of main character Bruce
Banner. While the “darkly-toned superhero movie” formula was later perfected in
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, Lee’s movie failed in almost every
storytelling aspect. The script is just so
ridiculously serious that by the time the big green monster comes out; it
feels like he came into the wrong movie. Once the action starts, the film fails
there too. Watching the Hulk fight mutated dogs at night in the woods can be a
cure for insomnia, quickly sending viewers to sleep.
Lee himself admitted to the horrors of “The Hulk,” and
almost retired from filmmaking because he was so upset about it. As for “Taking
Woodstock,” Lee once again tried something new by crafting a comedy set around
the inception of the famous three days of peace, love, and music. The film
doesn’t work as a whole, completely ignoring the whole musical aspect of the
festival, as well as using characters for cheap laughs rather than actually
developing them. Despite that, “Taking Woodstock” is a film that is hard to
hate, with brief personal moments throughout that save it from being dubbed a
“bad” movie. In the end, its greatest shortcoming might be that it just wasn’t
as good as a Lee hit like “Brokeback Mountain.”
A director who focuses on minute moments in stories and
details in character progression, Ang Lee is put on a pedestal because even his
bad movies might not even be all that horrific. As for his great movies, they
are so good that they make people forget about his “Hulk” and focus on his
successes instead. The bar is set high for him, and the stats show that he
meets it .666 of the time. As far as people forgetting his flops, it looks like
Ang Lee deserves it.
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