Entertainment Jan 11, 2022

Bryan Singer; best film maker Valkyrie (2008)

After three consecutive comic book adaptations (X-Men in 2000, its sequel in 2003 and Superman Returns in 2006), Bryan Singer was in the market for something different. Singer read the script of Valkyrie, based on a true story set in Nazi Germany in WWII. The script, co-written by his high school friend and ex-colleague Christopher McGuire who secured an academy award on his script for The Usual Suspects (1995), was an opportunity Singer couldn’t miss. McGuire was a big draw to the film for Singer, considering they used to make WWII films in his backyard when they was younger, it was a chance to revisit his past. He had touched upon the Nazi subject matter in Act pupil (1998) and X-Men, not to mention that thrillers had defined his early career in films such as The Usual Suspects (1995), yet Valkyrie marks his first historical film.

Set in 1944 Nazi Germany, the tense and compelling thriller is based on the well-known large-scale conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It centres around Col. Claus Stauffenberg (Tom cruise) joining a group of high-ranking like-minded men who want to overthrow the Nazi regime from within and so plan the daring coup on 20 July to use the ‘Operation Valkyrie’ to seize control from the evil dictator.

Valkyrie was the first time Singer has made a film with a movie star- Tom Cruise. It is easy to forget now that we have huge stars in X-Men like Hugh Jackman, that Singer has not previously worked with movie stars before this but with actors that went on to become stars after his films. Singer is able to elicit suspense from this story with a foregone conclusion (as we know the conspirators didn’t succeed) and he doesn’t do things by halves, in fact this move took two years in the making and around 90 million dollars to get to our screens. Valkyrie was nominated for best director and best actor (Tom Cruise) at the Saturn Awards and is rated a respectable 7.1 on IMDB.

 

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Entertainment Dec 28, 2021

Bryan Singer: best film maker

Bryan Singer, the director of four X-men movies, another superhero movie- Superman Returns (2006), The Usual Suspects (1995) and Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)- has a different and unusual repertoire of films, one might say the common denominator is success. Overall Bryan Singers filmography is varied, even within the X-men franchise, he has made a point to make a distinctly different movie with each project- he even says so himself in an interview with Alex Billington here

“There’s a lot of film directors who make the same movie over, and over, and over again. They dress it up differently but they’re always making the same movie. I’m just not like that. I always want to be doing something different. Even my Superman movie had a very different tone than my X-Men movie. And Valkyrie was a historical thriller. Apt Pupil is an adaption, more horror. Usual Suspects, crime movie. “House”, medical drama. You know, there are similarities to them. But from the palette, and the tone, and the experience of making them I need them to be different or else I get very bored.”

So what is his secret to develop a different movie each time? Singer describes himself as a storyteller, he is hands-on with his projects, working with the writers to develop the script. “I used to do that as a kid. I used to just write stories and tell stories and make up stories”. Of course, it is not all storytelling- he is also visually influenced and uses new skills and knowledge developed during each project to bring to subsequent movies- a constant learning process. For example in Jack the Giant Slayer he is directing motion capture and incorporating real-life characters in environments with 25-ft tall CG giants, something completely different from any of his previous work. Even though he says he loves a real set, he can still work in a virtual environment, his ability to adapt means he is constantly picking up the awards and rewards of being a top director in Hollywood.

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