Jump to content

Uwe Boll

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 65.30.100.199 (talk) at 08:29, 2 February 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

File:UBL.jpg
German Film Director Uwe Boll

Dr. Uwe Boll (born June 22, 1965 in Wermelskirchen, Germany) is a German film director and producer of movies usually adapted from video games. Unlike most directors that receive funding from Hollywood studios, he finances his own films through his Boll KG production company.

The Director

In his youth, Uwe Boll produced short films on Super 8 mm film and video. He studied film direction in Munich and Vienna, and later literature, then film and marketing and management in Cologne and Siegen. Boll earned a doctorate in literature from the University of Cologne in 1995. Among his first public works are the films German Fried Movie (1991) and then Run Amok (1992) and Barschel (1993).

Together with his friend and business partner Frank Lustig, he created the enterprise BOLU film production and rental business GmbH in 1991. Since 1998, he is the exclusive owner and Managing Director of the enterprise. From 1994 to 2000, he was also a producer and director with TaunusFilm production GmbH and the Managing Director of TaunusFilm International GmbH in Wiesbaden. Since 1991, Uwe Boll has been professionally active as director and a producer. Beside productions of German advertising spots for e-plus, Lucky Strike, Porsche and Pall Mall, he makes motion picture films. Since 2000, he always directs and produces his films. Boll's films frequently utilize financial advantages found in Vancouver, Canada; however, a large part of production takes place in Germany.

Uwe's BOLL KG company slogan declares itself the "World Market Leader in Video Game Adaptations", and has produced such movies as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and BloodRayne.

Boll is alleged to interact with fans by regularly posting on various internet message boards including IGN [1]. SomethingAwful [2], and The Digital Bits [3]. Listening to the DVD commentary of 'Alone in the Dark' reveals that Boll has at least read the IMDB forums.

Financing

Boll continues to secure investors for the rights to future videogame-to-movie adaptations, despite the controversy surrounding his products. His investors are mostly German. He carefully secures the rights for potential future adaptations, afterwards doing all of the actual production himself, and swiftly finishes the product.

Movies directed by Boll have not achieved the kind of box office returns one expects from a typical Hollywood film. The House of the Dead broke $5.73 million and "Alone in the Dark" made over $5.1 million. A Boll film is usually made on a relatively tight budget in places like Vancouver, Canada.

In the DVD commentary of 'Alone in the Dark', Boll explains how he funds his films:

"Maybe you know it but it's not so easy to finance movies in total. And the reason I am able to do these kind of movies is I have a tax shelter fund in Germany and if you invest in a movie in Germany you get basically fifty percent back from the Government."

Whereas most directors would no longer be able to acquire the funding to continue such projects after box office failures such as Alone in the Dark, Boll is able to acquire funding thanks to German tax laws that reward investments in film. The law allows investors in German-owned films to write off 100% of their investment as a tax deduction; it also allows them to invest borrowed money and write off any fees associated with the loan. The investor is then only required to pay taxes on the profits made by the movie; if the movie loses money, the investor gets a tax writeoff.

While Boll has received a lot of negative publicity regarding this funding method, he was actually one of the few directors to use the tax shelter as intended. His films were financed, produced, and directed by a German company, which was the initial intention behind the tax shelter: to provide incentive for German companies to invest in entertainment properties. Regardless of the laws intention, most of these German film funds ended up funneling money to American studios to finance American blockbusters. The law merely required that the movie's copyright be owned by a German company; thus studios would "sell" a movie's rights to a German company, then immediately lease the movie back for a small fee, while the German owners would agree to very limited control. Essentially, the German company would own the movie on paper, but have no say over its production. [4] Because of this, in January of 2006, as had been expected for several months, the German legislature changed the country's tax laws to eliminate the tax shelter. [5] It is not known if this will have any effect on Boll's funding as the new laws only seek to punish investors who are abusing the law for tax purposes; Boll's activities appear to be well within the legitimate usage of the tax shelter.

Writings

Boll has written two books, Wie man in Deutschland einen Film drehen muss ("How to Make a Movie in Germany") and Die Gattung Serie und ihre Genres ("Serials and Their Genres"), on themes of serial TV.

Criticism

When adapting a video game into a film, Uwe intends to stay true to the character and the atmosphere of a game. However, in order to meet the goal of appealing to a world audience, he will change the plot, environment, and anything else he deems necessary. For example, his recent film, Alone in the Dark, was criticised for departing from the video game's survival-horror style (the original game was set in New England in the beginning of the 19th century and featured a detective trapped in a haunted victorian house) to a more action-oriented one (the movie is set in a modern/sci-fi megalopolis, and features a super-powered detective with assault rifles). These deviations from the source material tend to irritate fans of the original video game the movie is based on, as well as those who work with Boll to produce the movies.

  • Boll's movies, particularly his video game adaptations, are frequently panned by movie critics. As of January 24, 2006, all three of Boll's video game adaptations appeared on IMDb's Bottom 100 list, a list based on IMDb visitor's rankings of the movie. House of the Dead is consistently ranked in the bottom 20 (at #14), Alone in the Dark was ranked at #20, and Bloodrayne was ranked at #19 having received over 2,000 votes despite being in theatres for only a few months. [6].
  • One oft-cited review of Alone in the Dark, by Rob Vaux, sarcastically states that the movie should make all other "bad" movie directors feel better in comparison: "It's okay," they'll tell themselves. "I didn't make Alone in the Dark." [7]

House Of The Dead

Fans of the video game sometimes claim that Boll strayed too much from the source material, as nothing in the movie could be remotely connected to the actual game series despite the movie being a prequel to the events in the game. (Except for a subtle game reference in the end of the movie) Also, many fans think that a lot of the gimmick imagery used made the movie more comical than it was intended to be.

Alone in the Dark

  • Blair Erickson, a writer of a treatment for Alone in the Dark, has written a highly critical account of his experience working with Boll. It includes allegations that Boll blatantly ripped off prior movies, and requests to add elements to the story that were completely opposite the tone of the source material. Blair's script was ultimately not chosen, and Uwe went with another script. [8]

Bloodrayne

Template:Spoiler

  • The film makes many departures from the original video game plot and characters. Billed as a prequel, the events that happen in the movie contradict the events of the game. Specifically:
    • Bloodrayne kills her father, Kagan at the end of the movie, which occurs in 1723 according to the official movie site. In the second video game [Bloodrayne 2], Rayne battles her father in a modern setting. The second game which takes place after the first (1932), seems to be set somewhere around the year 2000.
    • The movie ends with the total destruction of the Brimstone society. This Brimstone society is introduced in the first game in 1935 to a young Bloodrayne.
    • Bloodrayne is born in 1916, in America according to the game. In the film Boll creates a European Bloodrayne born in the 1700's.
  • Allegedly Boll made an attempt to have Rayne (from the movie BloodRayne) altered so that in future games she would more closely resemble Kristanna Loken, the actress who plays her in Boll's movie.

Cult Following

Despite their generally negative criticism, his movies attract a sizeable cult following, similar to other "bad" directors such as Ed Wood, to whom Boll is frequently compared. Viewers who have little exposure to the source materials, and thus judge the movies entirely on their own, often find them as enjoyable as other low-budget science fiction movies. In some cases, Boll has made use of experimental or unusual directing tricks, such as inserting clips from the actual video game into House of the Dead, which simply turned out not to have the positive impact they were intended to have. Also, while Boll's movies tend to be poorly received by critics, they do not typically generate the level of disdain that accompanies movies such as those on The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made DVD or Roger Ebert's most hated films list.

Response to Criticism

Boll has responded to his critics in a number of ways:

  • Boll stated that video gamers develop a personal relationship with a game, playing it for hours and creating a story "in their head". Creating a movie based on a game, he reasons, is like creating a movie based on good book. Therefore, according to Boll, it is impossible to create a film to satisfy the original fans. (Source: Boll's commentary on the Alone in the Dark DVD)
  • "Fans are always totally flipping out and I understand that that the fan of a video game has his own agenda in his head and has his ideas about what is a good movie and what is a bad movie." - Uwe in the Alone in the Dark DVD commentary.
  • In response to criticisms from web sites like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb, Boll makes the argument that the Internet audiences that criticize his movies are simply a very vocal minority who wish to discredit his works.
  • Referring to film nudity, Boll stated in the Alone in the Dark DVD commentary: "What is disappointment, disappointment for all the fans is that Tara Reid is not losing her bra but this is a typical prude U.S. err, uh, thing like uh, the actresses are not willing play nudity normally and it's very disappointing for us Europeans and for the U.S. audience I think. Good that Kristanna Loken in Bloodrayne is full naked.”
  • Referring to critics who negatively review his work, Boll has said, "No. Harry and Quint are retards." [9]

Quotes

"They were better than actors. We looked for local Romanian actresses, but there they are all from the theater and act very broadly. For 150 euros a piece the whores would be naked and do as they were told. It was better.” - Uwe Boll (In a Interview for Bloodrayne: The Movie talking about why he chose to use prostitutes instead of actual actresses).

Upcoming Projects

Boll is at the helm of the forthcoming projects:

Boll recently claimed that "people" approached him with the script for Metal Gear Solid, but creator Hideo Kojima denied this claim. (Japanese)

Filmography

References

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Uwe_Boll&oldid=37818221"