Oh yeah, I went there. I asked the world’s most notorious director, Uwe Boll, what he thought of the most contested, debated art film of the year. It doesn’t even matter whether I liked The Tree of Life or not. I knew the director of Alone in the Dark and In the Name of the King would have something entertaining to say about Terrence Malick.
He also had some things to say about Michael Bay and Lars von Trier, important movies about African genocide and the holocaust, and we also mention his latest movie, Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, on DVD and Blu-ray July 5.
Q: You famously fought your critics in a boxing match and proved you were tougher than them. That doesn’t necessarily prove you’re a better filmmaker than they say you are, so how will you prove that?
UB: [Laughs] I think with more movies like Rampage for example or Darfur, other genres I started doing the last few years, more reality based movies also. I think I proved with a few movies already that are better than House of the Dead or Alone in the Dark, yeah? On the other hand, I also always said genre is genre. If you make a Bloodrayne: The Third Reich, you have to deliver what people are expecting, like action, gore, sex. With this movie now we did that, but it’s also clear you’re not getting an Oscar nomination for it.
Q: Would you like to win an Oscar one day.
UB: [Pouts] Absolutely. No, to say I don’t care, A, I would never get it but B, of course it’s good, it helps movies. A lot of movies got maybe no attention. You saw with The Hurt Locker for example, it tanked in the movie theaters but then it got the Oscar and a lot of people watched it on DVD and everything. It’s sometimes a very good thing for a movie.
Q: When you look at your own films, can you tell what’s different than other films?
UB: Yeah, I can see it. I think I’m not an easy director to write about because it’s a wide variation of movies I did, so you cannot really lock me down to one genre or one way to make movies. I always try not to make the style “an Uwe Boll” movie. The style is what the story is giving me basically. When I do a Darfur movie about the genocide in Sudan or the Auschwitz movie, I have a totally different approach as I would for an action movie. If people watch it they will feel that.
Q: What did you think of The Tree of Life?
UB: I hated it.
Q: Why?
UB: I totally hated that movie because I feel as a filmmaker that besides the fact that Terrence Malick did some great visuals on some movies, also on The New World, like the opening of that movie was really good but then he completely lost it. I think Tree of Life is a piece of shit. Totally, and I think Sean Penn is ridiculous in it, like walking around in the elevator. It’s nothing. This is the thing. It’s so overrated because it’s Terrence Malick. Same as Lars von Trier’s movies. I like breaking the Waves. After that was all crap. The thing is he gets all the Hollywood stars, “Oh, I want to work with him” and they don’t know what kind of retard he is. I think the same with Terrence Malick. I think Terrence Malick is one of the overrated directors of all time.
Q: Is that just because it doesn’t have a story and it’s more impressionistic?
UB: Absolutely. You have to tell a story that you get a connection to something. When he starts doing after 25 minutes a National Geographic break where you see volcanoes and planets coming together. Then his dinosaur episode with Jurassic Park. You think well, what’s going on with him? What is wrong with wrong with the guy? I was not engaged to keep watching. If I would have known how this ends, I would have walked out. But I watched the whole movie because I wanted to see how it ends also. The end was I think the most pathetic thing, when they’re all at the beach hugging each other. It was fucking disastrous. It was a complete disaster and it shows also that a lot of stars have no taste. Like Sean Penn, Brad Pitt have no taste what a good movie is. They trusted the director but you have to have your own brain. I’m very mad right now because I want to do a bail out movie about the financial crisis where a guy is losing everything and then he starts killing the investment bankers. I did various offers to stars and they passed on it. So CAA gave it a good reader’s review, so they’re supporting us but William Morris gave it a bad reader review. Like I also watch Matt Damon in The Adjustment Bureau, also a piece of shit movie. It was a disaster. It was a complete disaster and a guy like Matt Damon should feel that, that this story is nothing. It’s like a mini Matrix in the normal world but it makes no sense because that agency who’s changing it all, who is that? What was the plan of these guys? Who pays them? It’s totally absurd because that agency is doing everything but not doing anything basically. Also it’s a very flat movie and I think with The Tree of Life, this was for me an embarrassment and it gets hyped up because of Terrence Malick and I didn’t like it.
Q: Well, I knew from his other movies that he was experimental.
UB: Right, because his other movies you get the feeling he tries to tell a story and cannot do it. But this was poor experimental. You cannot tell me you were not bored to death while you watched The Tree of Life.
