james cameron-- avatar, titanic, t2
george lucas-- star wars franchise, indiana jones franchise--lucas dolby sound
steven spielberg--jaws, close encounters, et, saving private ryan, schindler's list, 1941

^None of the above. hell Tarantino has more talent than these mentioned.

lazycrockett said:

overrated. pulp fiction was okay, kill bill series--meh

^lol and the three you mentioned aren't?

lazycrockett said:

popular--yes--overrated nope

all three of them changed the game

none of the three. i'd go with almodovar, the andersons (wes or pt) or even von trier who are all changing the intelligent aspect of the game.

but if forced to pick between your three, i'd go spielburg.

cameron is fantastic, but not quite on speilburg's level of being able to explore all different kinds of movies. cameron, while excellent, is limited to one aspect of filmmaking.

and lucas, while a great producer, is a TERRIBLE director and writer. the best two of his movies (empire and jedi) were directed and written by other people.

Fury said:

They may have changed the game, but it wasnt throught their directing ability. Lucas as a director sucks and Speilberg and Cameron are too heavy handed and manipulative to be effective.

I'd go with Scorsese over the three you named. Cameron bores the ever-lovin' crap out of me. Spielberg was great to me years ago and so was Lucas.

Vendetta1 said:

scorcese is vastly superior to all three, especially lucas.

Vendetta1 said:

for those that think lucas is a director, here's what few non-student or short films he's directed...

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002)
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
Star Wars (1977)
American Graffiti (1973)
THX 1138 (1971)

the star wars prequels were TERRIBLE, the original star wars is good, but nowhere on the level of empire, and i would argue even jedi. american graffiti is good. 1138 i tried to watch and was so bored i fell asleep.

not a modern era director. he's only directed 6 films, and most of them were CRAP.

cborgman said:

Fury said:

Spielberg will always hold a special place in my heart for the Color Purple. I think it is one of the greatest films ever made.

Vendetta1 said:

i mean... how do you take a cast that includes such awesome actors as liam neeson, ewan mcgregor, natalie portman, samuel jackson, and hayden christianson (who was great in life as a house and shattered glass, among others) and make them boring, lifeless, and wooden?

answer: let george lucas direct them.

portman is one of the few young actresses who bleeds talent the way streep does, and in his movies, she's like a robot.

cborgman said:

Im a HUGE star wars fan and even I accept that Lucas sucks behind the camera. The prequels looked like he couldn't even be bothered with the actors.
[Edited 1/31/10 13:58pm]

Vendetta1 said:

spielburg can be really heavy handed as lazy pointed out, but... color purple, schindler's list, and so many more....

he's a great director. not the best by any measure, and even he would tell you that. he knows how to make a solid yet commercial movie, but he's nowhere near the best, espcecially not of late. he hasn't made a great movie since private ryan

Fury said:

Of those three directors, my vote goes to Steven Spielberg.

And BTW, why Frances Ford Coppola AND Oliver Stone are excluded from this discussion? They are of the same generation of filmmakers as Cameron, Lucas, & Spielberg.
[Edited 1/31/10 14:05pm]

lazycrockett said:

honestly, had he not let other people do empire and jedi, i dont think they would be great either. and the prequels probably would have been good if he let someone else write and direct them.

he has no clue how to direct actors or how to write dialouge.

carrie fisher has some hysterical bits about how bad he is at directing. one of the most memorable ones was she and hamill and ford used to joke they were going to build a board with two lights labelled "faster" and "louder" so he could just push the buttons, because those were the only direction he ever gave them.

If we are talking big box office types of movies then I'm going to throw in Peter Jackson.

TonyVanDam said:

scorcese, stone, coppola, woody allen, eastwood, sydney pollack, kubrick... there are a ton of directors from that generation that are FAR superior to all three, but especially shitty lucas.

lazycrockett said:

i prefer his earlier stuff pre-blockbusters, but... yeah.

mike nichols

Peter Jackson.. I Lived in New Zealand for 2years and was forced into watching all his movies, and honestly not one is bad! He has a vision like no other..Lucas is terrible, T2 is my favourite movie of all time and Cameron does have passion and Spielberg.. He can make a good movie too, but sometimes you just have to switch your bain off and enjoy the ride(But Indiana Jones 4 WTF!?!?!?!)

What aboutDavid Lean?

Brief Encounter
Great Expectations
Oliver Twist
The Bridge on the River Kwai
Lawrence of Arabia
Dr Zhivago
Ryan's Daughter

of the three id pick Steven Spielberg

David Lynch
John Waters.

lazycrockett said:

Tarrantino is kind of like the bombsquad that produced Public Enemy's stuff... samples engineered for macho massive effect at the time you watch. I think he is a almost feteshistic writer and excellent director or acting from a technical standpoint. And he did prove he could shoot a dynamic action scene with "Death Proof". But his movies do seem to be constructed of "samples" of favorite movies some of which are very familiar to me personally.

Cameron well... I think of James Cameron as a very skilled artisan (like someone making miniature ships and putting them in bottles), a technician, a craftsman. But he has not been groundbreaking yet in his subject matter or style! He's more like the best rewriter of existing ideas, and genius story editor of previously written stories.

Spielberg: Just watch his first (real) movie, "Sugarland Express" . Amazing. It's hard to touch the guy. My favorite movie of all time is Close Encounters of the Third Kind.It slays in pioneering ways in all areas a film should for me: Style, story, character, scope (deeply personal vs huge spectacle), technique, sound... good god.

Lucas: Just watch his three movies. That's right he made three movies as a director, and then recently he made the three new star wars films which are failures in my opinion.

But his first three: THX 1138, American Graffiti, Star Wars are so blindingly good... it's discouraging to me as a filmmaker.

cborgman said:

I would add Jonathan Demme (Melvin and Howard, Swing Shift, The Silence of the Lambs, Stop Making Sense) to that list, Joel and Ethan Coen (Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou, No Country For Old Men), Pedro Almodovar, and even Roman Polanski (despite his other issues).

Stephen Spielberg has made some incredibly outstanding movies, but I think that most people didn't take him seriously as a serious auteur until Schindler's List. Even though he directed The Color Purple, he was still primarily known as a big popcorn movie director. James Cameron is still more of a great popcorn move director; Titanic was considered a fluke from him as far as serious artistry was concerned.

George Lucas showed some promise early on as a director, but after the whole Star Wars series blew up, I think he got a little too content with himself, and it showed in his later movies.

lazycrockett said:

Yes. Definitely.

I'd add Woody Allen. André Téchiné. François Ozon. Clint Eastwood. Alfonso Cuarón. James Cameron. Mike Leigh.

cborgman said:

Of the Star Wars prequels, Revenge Of The Sith was THE best. But that was only because the villains were winning (just like the case of The Empire Strikes Back).

^Nope the plot holes in that movie were so glaring that no matter how good the action was the movie fell short.

Oh I just gave birth to jedi twins, but have lost the will to live....horseshit.
[Edited 1/31/10 16:49pm]