15 Directors Who Went Outside Their Comfort Zone (and Succeeded)

Ah, the inevitable sequel. I felt my list of 15 directors who went outside their comfort zone (and failed) gave off a far too negative message. After all, if directors never went outside their comfort zones, our film history would be far less rich. The 15 directors that failed are at least to be commended for trying something different, rather than sticking to what they know with every new film (a topic that will be covered in a future post). But for every spectacular failure there is a success story and plenty of directors have taken a voyage into the unknown and emerged clean at the other side. Here are 15 that pulled it off.

Danny Boyle

The Film: Slumdog Millionaire

Throughout Danny Boyle's career he has proven he can cut it attempting a variety of different genres. Having burst into the public consciousness with Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, Boyle widened his scope, enjoying critical, but not necessarily commercial success with films like 28 Days Later and Sunshine. With Slumdog however, Boyle took things to the next level, creating an epic feel-good tale whilst retaining the harsh reality and brutality he has displayed in his previous films. Working with a limited budget, a cast of relative unknowns and in unfamiliar territory, Boyle took a risk with Slumdog Millionaire but it paid off massively.

Alfonso Cuarón

The Film: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

This is a strange one. Compared with his other work, Harry Potter seems a step down for Cuarón; it will most likely not be remembered as one of his great works and it is indeed the most lightweight film on this list. Similarities could be drawn with his work on The Little Princess but it seemed a strange choice for Cuarón to do a Harry Potter movie after Y Tu Mamá También. However, he emerged from it with his head held high. The step up in quality for this film compared to previous Potters is obvious, and it is purely because, no disrespect to Chris Columbus, Alfonso Cuaron is a much more talented director who was able to put his own mark on what should have been a uniform family movie. Cuarón wisely left the franchise after this one movie but his brief diversion into big budget family films still stands up well.

David Fincher

The Film: The Social Network

There was a time when The Social Network was being looked upon with very sceptical eyes. Despite the presence of Aaron Sorkin, there was still a perception that this would just be Facebook: The Movie with very little substance. That was until Fincher came on board. David Fincher has built a career on dark themes such as murder, anarchy and obsession and whilst he had made a slight change in direction with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, he seemed an odd fit for a tale about the bloke who invented Facebook. However, the themes that emerge from the film such as Zuckerberg's obsession, ruthlessness and betrayal were perfect for Fincher. He may not have been dealing with serial killers but the Social Network is still an intense study of human actions. Its core story may have been a world away from what we've seen from Fincher before, but he still found the perfect tone and atmosphere for this film.

Mel Gibson

The Film: Apocalypto

Mel Gibson's career may well be on life support at the moment, but somewhere between enraging a bunch of people with The Passion of the Christ and enraging even more people with revelations about his private life, Mel Gibson made a very good film. Apocalypto managed to enrage its fair share of people too but Gibson managed to combine his experience with historical epics and his experiments with making films in authentic languages to present us with a very different kind of action movie. A brutal and bloody Mayan epic using unknown actors, the history is a bit off in typical Gibson style but he presented us with a culture and era we've seen very little of on screen. We knew Gibson can do historical epics, sure, but with Apocalypto he took a risk and gave us something that's a long way from your typical historical action movies. Whilst other directors were playing it safe with sword and sandal movies, Gibson made something unique. He should have built on Apocalypto, but instead he went into self-destruct mode. It's a shame because on his day, Gibson is a very talented director.

Terry Gilliam

The Film: Brazil

Brazil changed everything for Gilliam. His talent was undoubted and as a director he was incredibly imaginative but his post-Python efforts still relied heavily on the troupes glorious comic style. Time Bandits, fun and unique as it was, seemed a lot like a more family friendly version of Python for example. Then came Brazil. Yes, Michael Palin showed up in it, but this was a clean break. Terry Gilliam was showing what he could do as a director with an enormous amount of vision. His sense of humour was still alive and well but Brazil is a great sci-fi film on its own merit. Without it, Gilliam would not have gone on to make the likes of Twelve Monkeys and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was the moment where a director said a fond farewell to his past and went it alone.

Peter Jackson

The Films: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Now that he is one of the biggest names on the circuit, it is quite easy to forget what a big step into the unknown Peter Jackson made when he got the job making The Lord of the Rings. Up until that point, Jackson could best be described as a cult director, his most mainstream film being the 1996 effort The Frighteners. He was talented, there was no doubt about that, but there were more than a few eyebrows raised when he was tasked with making such a tricky and expensive trilogy. It was Jackson's passion and vision for the project that helped get it made however, and what resulted was a success that producers could not have dreamed of.

Stanley Kubrick

The Film: Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

In my introduction to the article on directors who had failed when going outside their comfort zone, I marked out Kubrick as an example of someone who did it constantly and succeeded. Dr. Strangelove is perhaps the finest example of this. Kubrick had made some great films before this (Paths of Glory, The Killing etc.) but with Strangelove he took a step into the unknown. He was hardly known for comedy and was often regarded as quite detached and Peter Sellers, genius though he was, was a difficult actor to work with. But Kubrick made one of the finest comedies ever made and certainly the finest satire we are yet to see. From this point on, Kubrick's career began to be remarkably varied and he excelled in almost everything he tried his hand at.

John Landis

The Film: An American Werewolf in London

John Landis was on a roll when he made this film. Coming off the back of the zany energy of Animal House and the Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London was something a bit different but still one of Landis' best films. The humour was still there, although much blacker, but the horror and romance elements of the film worked just as well as the comic side of the story. In truth, Landis had been planning the film long before Animal House or the Blues Brothers but the film was still a big risk and financiers initially baulked at a film that was not a good fit for the comedy or horror genre conventions. Landis managed to create a great atmosphere for the film, which he would go on to recreate for Michael Jackson's Thriller video.

Ang Lee

The Film: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was the film that introduced many people to the modern Chinese martial arts movie and made Ang Lee a true household name. However, it was vastly different from Lee's previous work. The likes of Sense and Sensibility and the Ice Storm were much more intimate character studies and though Ride With The Devil had a bigger scope and budget, Crouching Tiger was a big step up. What we got was a thing of beauty. Made for a fairly small budget, Lee created a classic martial arts film. The action scenes were as graceful as they were kinetic but Lee never abandons story for the sake of action. A return to the genre would be very welcome.

Spike Lee

The Film: Inside Man

Spike Lee does mainstream, and Spike Lee does it well. Inside Man is a very solid film. It's not a classic but it's a smart bank heist film. Of course, Lee couldn't make the film without bringing some racial politics into it but the usually very vocal messages of his films are toned down considerably to make a well crafted popcorn thriller. It was a very interesting experiment for Lee, perhaps something he wouldn't want to make a career out of but he proved there was a lot more to him than meets the eye. The directing of Inside Man is exemplary and if Spike Lee ever wants to make another movie to appeal to the masses, he is more than welcome to.

Christopher Nolan

The Film: Inception

It's strange to think of this as a director going outside his comfort zone when he has constantly displayed an unrivalled level of creative vision in his previous works. However, you have to remember that it took his huge success with his Batman reboot for producers to take a punt on this work. Inception is Nolan's first work since Following that was not adapted from any other material and to create such a high concept, ambitious project from scratch for such a huge budget is the mark of an extremely confident director and studio striding out of their comfort zone. Batman already had a huge fan base, and there was much less to lose with The Prestige and Memento but for Inception, Nolan took a risk and followed his vision. What resulted was a box office success and the film of the year, proving more directors and studios need to take the plunge and go into the unknown.

Bryan Singer

The Films: X-Men and X-Men 2

Bryan Singer was no action director when he stepped in to make X-Men. The Usual Suspects had proved he could craft a great story and it was comforting that the project was being taken seriously with a talented director on board but Singer came with no guarantee he could give the popcorn crowd what they wanted. The first X-Men film was solid but cautious; after all, the comic book movie boom was yet to take off so it always felt like Singer was holding back a little. With X-Men 2 however, Singer made a classic in the genre. His lack of action movie experience never seemed to be an issue but the strength of the film lies in Singer's understanding of key central themes such as isolation and stigmatisation. Singer was regarded as such a sure hand with the comic book movie genre that he was tasked with rebooting Superman. It didn't exactly go to plan but it was evidence that Singer had carved out a new niche for himself as a big budget genre director.

Paul Verhoeven

The Film: Black Book

in the late 80's and 90's you knew what to expect with Paul Verhoeven. His films didn't hold back. They were highly sexual, relentlessly violent and very much in your face. When he got things right, they went very right (Total Recall, Robocop). When things went wrong, they went very wrong (Showgirls). Then, all of a sudden, everything went quiet. Verhoeven didn't make a film for 6 years after the relative disaster that was The Hollow Man, but when a new film did show up, it was a very different side of Verhoeven. Returning to his native Holland, it hardly showed Verhoven becoming a shrinking violent, but the tone was much more serious, dealing with war and Nazi occupation in admirable fashion. It was Verhoeven's best film for years.

Martin Scorsese

The Film: The Last Temptation of Christ

This was not the last time Scorsese would make a film you wouldn't expect (see The Age of Innocence), but having built a career on lowlifes, gangsters and psychopaths, Jesus Christ seemed an unlikely next target for Scorsese. Naturally his take on the matter was hugely controversial, and like the novel, it presented ideas that vary quite a bit from Biblical interpretations but Martin Scorsese has never shied away from controversy. Scorsese had always wanted to make a movie based on Jesus, and though it was a departure from his previous work he did exactly that. What we got was one of the better acted and more intriguing interpretations of the life of Jesus.

Alfred Hitchcock

The Film: Rebecca

We all know Alfred Hitchcock as the master of suspense, but he was a master of a few others things besides that. Adapting much loved novels proved to be one of them, and Rebecca, Hitchcock's first Hollywood film, is a classic quite unlike any he had made before or since. It feels so different from Hitchcock's other output partly because Hitchcock was kept on a much tighter leash for this adaptation. Producer David O. Selznick wanted a faithful adaptation so Hitchcock had less freedom to display his revolutionary tricks and plot devices. Nevertheless, despite working within tighter constraints and beginning a voyage into Hollywood film-making that would change cinema forever, Rebecca is a beautifully made and crafted adaptation. It proved that no matter what situation Hitchcock found himself in he could deliver the goods.

15 Directors Who Went Outside Their Comfort Zone (and Failed)

What makes a great director? Ultimately it comes down to output; great directors make great films. But there is an extra quality that truly marks out the best; range. Take Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick transcended genres and excelled in every new style he attempted. He made classics in horror, comedy and sci-fi, while all the time keeping his own personal stamp on his work. Kubrick wasn't afraid to try something new and different, and that's what made him the best.

Most directors know what they're best at, but a lot also realise that if they stick to that for their whole career people will begin to question their talent. It takes stepping outside of your comfort zone to prove yourself. Often it means less talented directors biting off more than they can chew but sometimes even the best, and there are some fine directors on this list, can try something new and ultimately fail. This list charts 15 directors that went outside their comfort zone, but misfired.

Kevin Smith

The Film: Cop Out

Kevin Smith is cinema marmite. He has adoring fans and hate filled critics. One thing you can't argue with is that Smith's early films were extremely personal; based on his life and with a script written by Smith that he staunchly refused to change. Kevin Smith movies were all about Kevin Smith. For a while this was successful, but after Clerks and Chasing Amy, the noughties were less kind. For Cop Out, Smith tried something new; making a buddy action movie from a script that wasn't his own. What we got was incredibly generic and bland. It hasn't stopped Smith branching out; his next film, Red State, is a contemporary horror film, but only time will tell if he can cut it away from the chummy pop culture referencing tone of his early work.

M. Night Shyamalan

The Film: The Last Airbender

Shyamalan needed a change. His films were becoming a joke, and he was increasingly gaining a reputation as a one trick pony. Shyamalan needed to move away from the gimmicky plot twist movies that had defined his career and went all out with a big budget cartoon adaptation. It failed, miserably. Poor acting, bad decisions and murky cinematography made this the worst blockbuster of the summer and proved that M. Night's name could no longer act as a box office draw. One struggles to see how he can restore his reputation from here. Unbreakable 2 anyone?

Brett Ratner

The Film: X-Men: The Last Stand

This may not seen like too much of a departure for Ratner; he'd done action before, albeit a very different kind of action. However the jump in quality required for X-Men: The Last Stand was just too much for Ratner. The X-Men series may have been 'just' comic book movies but they were built on very solid foundations; previous director Bryan Singer had approached the movies very seriously and produced two great films but it was always going to end badly when handing the series finale to a less talented director. A lot of the blame has to lie with Singer himself, and the script, but Ratner's directing was messy and confused and he has not been trusted with a major franchise since.

Michael Bay

The Film: Pearl Harbor

As much as it will pain people to admit, Michael Bay is good at what he does. His movies are generally explosive and cheesy and completely lacking in substance but that's all you expect from him. That lacking in substance bit is important though, because you need substance when asked to make a film about the deadliest attack on American soil in the 20th century. Pearl Harbor needed to be handled sensitively and subtly; instead we got a fist-pumping action movie with insincere emotion.

Robert Altman

The Film: Popeye

Proving that it can happen to the best of us, Robert Altman, director of The Player, Short Cuts, and M.A.S.H was given the prestigious job of adapting a spinach eating cartoon sailor to the big screen. Whether anyone actually wanted a live-action Popeye starring Robin Williams is a pretty important question but Altman should have known to steer well clear of this. Even the best couldn't make a good film out of this material.

Marc Forster

The Film: Quantum of Solace

I've made this point before but I'll make it again. Marc Forster is a fine director who has made good films, but to give a director with no experience in the action genre the job of directing the new film in a reinvigorated James Bond franchise was wrong. Yes, new Bond has a stronger emphasis on character and plot, which are Forster's strengths, but at the end of the day James Bond is about the action sequences and Forster directed them poorly, taking too big a leaf out of Paul Greengrass' book and giving us dizzying and rather confusing car chases.

Peter Jackson

The Film: The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson hasn't always been a genre director. While his roots are in horror, and his stardom comes from fantasy, his work on Heavenly Creatures showed he had a gentler touch. He wasn't right for The Lovely Bones though. If anything, Jackson tried too hard, laying on spectacular imagery where it wasn't necessarily needed and valuing visuals over story. Jackson has evolved into a director of big films, and he does that very well, but for a film as emotional and personal as The Lovely Bones, more subtlety was needed.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The Film: Alien: Resurrection

Jeunet is my favourite director purely for his absolute unique style. His films inhabit their own little world of big characters and whimsy. This meant he was a strange choice to revive a big franchise with its own world and back story. In truth, he didn't do a particularly bad job of it, but his own unique directing quirks and style just looked out of place in an Alien movie. Each Alien movie has very much acted as a showcase for the director's own style but while it worked perfectly for Ridley Scott and James Cameron, the glove just didn't fit for Jeunet and David Fincher. Jeunet has not made a Hollywood film since.

Ang Lee

The Film: Hulk

Ang Lee makes thoughtful and intelligent movies and his Hulk adaptation was thoughtful, and to some extent it was intelligent, but for the most part it was just dull. It's easy to see why Lee was chosen, especially after Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but if you go back and watch it you'd see Dragon is actually something of a slow burner. Hulk is very much a slow burner and while Lee's efforts to delve deep into Bruce Banner are admirable, at the end of the day Hulk is a comic book movie about a big green dude smashing things. It didn't help that the action sequences, when they finally came, were laughably bad. Lee will not jump so easily into Hollywood blockbusters again.

David Lynch

The Film: Dune

David Lynch is absolutely bonkers. David Lynch makes absolutely bonkers films. But the genius about David Lynch is that when he is left to his own devises he makes bonkers films that are really very good. When given a lot of money to work on a big sci-fi adaptation, David Lynch isn't really left to his own devises and instead we get a film that shows Lynch's mad style but limited by the confines of the genre and budget. Audiences just didn't take to Lynch in the mainstream, and Dune became a famous flop.

Roman Polanski

The Film: Pirates!

Polanski did his fair share of hopping between genres but his attempt to make a swashbuckling pirate movie was an unmitigated disaster. Polanski has always thrown up surprises with his work, and he was convinced he could make a great pirate movie, but the material just wasn't right for a man who's directing style has never been a good fit for an action-adventure. Pirates! flopped badly, and effectively killed off the pirate movie until Johnny Depp and co. revived it.

Guy Ritchie

The Film: Swept Away

You can blame Madonna all you want, but Guy Ritchie still made a terrible film and has only himself to blame. Ritchie has always been accused of being a one trick pony and while it is clear that he is most at home with mockney gangster films, you have to wonder how his one time wife ever convinced him to make Swept Away. The jump from gangster caper to island romance is a pretty big one to take and needless to say Ritchie failed miserably. It didn't help that Madonna was atrocious in it, but it must be difficult to tell your lead actress that when she's your wife.

Jim Sheridan

The Film: Get Rich or Die Tryin'

Sheridan was a bizarre choice for 50 Cent's self congratulatory disaster. Sure, I can see the logic on getting a respected director in, especially as Eminem had Curtis Hanson for 8 Mile but this film was such a long way from anything Sheridan had done before it just seemed way out of left field. The transition from powerful Daniel Day Lewis dramas to the tales of a rapper's rise from the mean streets was not smooth and it didn't help that 50 Cent lacked Eminem's charisma. Needless to say, it was no 8 Mile.

Sylvester Stallone

The Film: Staying Alive

It's easy to forget that Stallone is an Oscar nominated screenwriter and when he directs himself in his strongest franchises (Rocky, Rambo) the results aren't too bad. Stallone is more than just an action hero but he should stick to what he knows. What he was doing writing, directing and producing a sequel to Saturday Night Fever is anyone's guess. Stallone has proved he can write, he has proved he can direct, but only with the right vehicle. Staying Alive was a long way from being the right vehicle and was extremely damaging to Stallone's reputation behind the camera.

Chris Weitz

The Film: The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass should have been a sure thing; a beloved children's book, in many ways better than the Potter franchise, with an epic quality that everyone wanted post-Lord of the Rings. Weitz, however, managed to kill the franchise before it even got going. Weitz had done very little to prove he had earned the right to direct a major franchise; American Pie was good but just a teen comedy and About a Boy was fairly diverting but little more than that. In more experienced hands, The Golden Compass could have started a major money-spinning franchise, instead it just reflected the mediocrity of the director.