Creative Teams

Comic artist Rob Liefeld tweeted a few days ago about how comic book series don't keep a consistent writing and artistic team. Every few issues, it seems, there is a new writer or artist. Where is the consistency? he asked. That got me thinking about creative teams in movies. I wish more franchises had consistent writers and directors.

Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy has a singular visual and storytelling style. The same writers and director was involved in all three films, creating a consistent product. The same thing happened with The Matrix, the National Treasure duology, and a few others. But most series have switched writers and directors after only a few films, or sometimes even every film. The Harry Potter films had four directors over eight films (Christopher Columbus directed two of them while David Yates directed the final four) and the Mission:Impossible series has had a different director for each film. Producer and star Tom Cruise said this was done on purpose, for each film to be different from the others. This is evident: the first tim is very much a Brian DePalma film, the second is a John Woo action piece, M:I 3 is essentially Alias the movie, while Ghost Protocol is the closest to the original series.

But I like the consistency of the same team of writers and director, or at the very least the same director. I think the films benefit from a singular vision, a person who has worked on what's come before and can build on that. It also creates a nice comfort zone, a sense of what to expect. If you liked the first film, you'll most likely like the second, and so on.

Sometimes it doesn't work out having the same team all the time. After the dark and disturbing bend that Batman Returns took, the studio went with a more friendly direction and that gave us Batman Forever. Those two films are so different from each other. Chris Columbus left the Harry Potter after the second film and many moviegoers remarked how different Prisoner of Azkaban was. I realize that keeping the same team isn't always possible but it seems studios are too eager to simply replace a team or reboot the series without trying to fix the previous films as a continuing series.

I would like to see more trilogies, with the same creative team signed up for multiple pictures, just like the cast are. I like the consistency and also I feel it would give the director a chance to improve on what didn't work in the previous films.

What are your thoughts? Comment below and as always, thanks for reading.