If you were to name to the most ambitious film project ever undertaken, what would you pick?
I’d choose Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. My opinions about them notwithstanding, it’s amazing that such critically acclaimed, financially successful movies were made at all considering – making 3 movies at once; filming an ‘unfilmable’ book which had both rabid fans & rabid haters; no huge name stars; special effects that were still being created while the movies were being made; Director who was mainly known for low-budget horror movies; pressure from studio to condense story to one or two movies, Etc.
However, others of you might think James Cameron took on bigger movie challenges with either Titanic or Avatar. Or a documentarian had the hardest job (the “Up” films come to mind). Perhaps an early Hollywood project that DeMille created is seen as most ambitious, or the early hand drawn (!) Disney animations.
No doubt someone will suggest this one: Russian Ark. A grand movie covering 300 years of history, using 2,000 actors and three orchestras…all filmed in one, 96-minute-long steadicam shot.
Apocalypse Now – using whole armies and air forces, drugged out actors, the star having a heart attack mid shoot, though to be fair, the drugs and heart attack weren’t among the “ambitions” of Francis Coppola, just remarkable stuff he had to deal with.
Along those same lines, I think older films that couldn’t rely heavily on CGI, fit the bill better. Spartacus and Ben Hur come to mind. Armies of extras, huge scenes with live action, etc.
And I’ve read tons of stories about the difficulties encountered filming Jaws.
It was 5 1/2 hours long, it used three projectors, and it had a live 48 piece orchestra accompany it when it was shown. That was one heck of an ambitious film project.
Does the OP mean ambitious artistically or financially?
Sorry, but I think that’s the very definition of unambitious. It was somewhat brave to give the first film a budget of $125 million. However, the first three Harry Potter books had been on the bestseller lists for about a year and a half prior to the beginning of filming. Philosopher’s Stone took almost $1 billion at the box-office, so commissioning the next 7 films was a no-brainer.
I might also suggest The Longest Day. Eighty-six “name” featured players. Thousands of extras. Shot at the locations of the the actual battles. Shot in three different languages.
Do ambitious projects that failed count? Or only ambitious projects that succeeded?
Can any Doper refresh my half-memory of an Arabian Nights themed animated film that was in production for about 30 years before the filmmaker was finally fired and replaced, to have the final stages of production rushed and shoddily slapped together, ultimately to be unfairly charged as a rip-off of Aladdin since it finally ended up being released after Aladdin despite having been in production 30 years prior?
I never actually saw it, but read about it somewhere.
Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo should get a mention. Herzog tried to make a realistic film about pulling a steam ship over a mountain in South America. He did it by trying to pull a steam ship over a mountain in South America.
Ambitious perhaps, or maybe just crazy. Herzog kind of blurs the line between ambitious and crazy.
It’s not yet finished, but I would have to vote for Dau. I remember reading the GQ article about it last year and finding it hard to believe. It’s like collective madness.
I’d forgotten all about that one. I can certainly testify that just playing it in a theater was really ambitious. I worked as a projectionist and AV tech at the National Gallery of Art when they played a reconstructed version of the film. We had to rent or buy all kinds of special gear, including an extra projector (we only had two in the booth, and yes, we did the three projector version), special lenses for all three projectors, and IIRC some special gearing for the projectors to run them at the right speed. Oh, and then there was the orchestra, I can’t even remember where they came from, and of course a sound system to record the orchestra, etc.
I thought Peter Jackson pitched two movies and that it was New Line Cinema that suggested three? If my hazy memories of watching 56,000 hours of DVD special features are in any way correct…
But even so, I totally agree. Also agree with Max Torque’s suggestion of Russian Ark and mcgato’s suggestion of Fitzcarraldo, which is what I came in to suggest.
In 1964, a group of British 7-year olds were extensively interviewed about their views on life for the film SEVEN UP.
Since then, every 7 years without fail, Michael Apted has gone back to re-interview the same group of children and release another film about that next stage of their lives.
This year, 56 UP came out. That’s over a half-century-long commitment to a single film project (and because they’re documentaries, the budgets are usually next to nothing)
Except the actual ship that the movie was based on was smaller, moved a shorter distance, and in pieces, whereas Herzog moved a much larger vessel further without dismantling it…and almost killed a significant portion of his crew in the process.
He’s not the biggest, flashiest, or most complex, but in terms of sheer unmitigated lunacy, he puts De Mille, Howard Hughes, Orson Welles, James Cameron, and Stanley Kubrick in their places. The only director that comes close in obsessiveness and complete disregard for the personal safety of his cast and crew was Akira Kurosawa, who had archers firing actual arrows at his cast in numerous movies and had actors burning in the wooden keep in Ran as the structure was literally burning to the ground.
Fair enough.
I guess I also have the questions whether we are talking “ambitous” artistically, financially, logistically or some other criteria.
I keep hearing Cloud Atlas referred to as an “ambitious” film. I haven’t seen it, but I presume it’s “ambituous” because of the sheer scope of what I’ve heard is a fairly convoluted story.
How about TV series like Game of Thrones? Basically taking 7(?) pretty thick books that most people have never heard of, where there are no definable “heroes” or “villains”, any character can die at any time, of which the final books haven’t been finished and turning it into mutiple ten episode seasons of television with feature film production values?