How Did David Fincher Become the Kubrick of Our Time? A New, 3.5 Hour Series of Video Essays Explains

Most film-lovers must long for the next Stan­ley Kubrick, a new the­mat­i­cal­ly adven­tur­ous, aes­thet­i­cal­ly rig­or­ous, big bud­get-com­mand­ing, and take-after-take per­fec­tion­is­tic cin­e­mat­ic vision­ary for our time. But some film-lovers believe our time already has its own Stan­ley Kubrick in David Finch­er, direc­tor of such high­ly acclaimed pic­tures as Fight Club, Zodi­ac, The Social Net­work, The Game, and Sev­en — excuse me, Se7en. And just like Kubrick, Finch­er did­n’t start off at that lev­el of the game. No, his career first gath­ered momen­tum with com­mer­cials, a bunch of music videos for the likes of The Motels, Paula Abdul, and Rick Spring­field, and of course, Alien 3 — excuse me, Alien³.

So what exact­ly went wrong with that crit­i­cal­ly sav­aged yet (we now real­ize) auteur-direct­ed chap­ter of the Alien fran­chise? That ques­tion gets addressed in detail ear­ly on in the lat­est mul­ti-part video essay from Cameron Beyl’s Direc­tors Series.

You may remem­ber that we fea­tured the Direc­tors Series’ pre­vi­ous essay in April, but if you don’t, it should­n’t sur­prise you to learn that it exam­ined the Kubrick oeu­vre. Beyl end­ed it with a dec­la­ra­tion of his own mem­ber­ship in the afore­men­tioned Finch­er-Is-Our-Kubrick club, and cinephiles all over the inter­net thrilled to his announce­ment of Finch­er as his next object of analy­sis.

To date, five episodes of The Direc­tors Series: David Finch­er have come out, which deal with Fincher’s career as fol­lows:

1. “Bap­tism By Fire” (Rick Spring­field­’s music videos and The Beat of the Life Drum, assort­ed music videos and com­mer­cials, Alien 3)
2. “Redemp­tion & Tri­umph” (assort­ed com­mer­cials, Se7en)
3. “Cap­tur­ing the Zeit­geist” (The Game, Fight Club, Pan­ic Room)
4. “Into the Dig­i­tal Realm” (var­i­ous com­mer­cials and music videos, Zodi­ac, The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton)
5. “The Bleed­ing Edge”

Even though the series has­n’t yet reached The Social Net­work, The Girl with the Drag­on Tat­too, and Gone Girl, you won’t come away from the case Beyl has assem­bled so far uncon­vinced of Fincher’s influ­ences, pref­er­ences, and obses­sions: crime, decay, punk, obso­lete tech­nol­o­gy, archi­tec­ture, sur­veil­lance, cor­po­rate and per­son­al wealth, unusu­al illus­tra­tive visu­al effects, col­ors like blue and orange in high con­trast, nihilism, pre­de­ces­sors like Rid­ley and Tony Scott — the list goes on, and will go on as long as Fincher’s career does. It says a great deal about his film­mak­ing skill and style that his work has become so wide­ly known for both its over­whelm­ing­ly “grit­ty, grimy” and over­whelm­ing­ly “cold, clin­i­cal” look and feel. But if any direc­tor can ever arrive at this sort of tow­er­ing, con­tra­dic­to­ry rep­u­ta­tion, Finch­er can, and if any video essays can explain how he did, the Direc­tors Series can.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Film­mak­ing Craft of David Finch­er Demys­ti­fied in Two Video Essays

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

Every Frame a Paint­ing Explains the Film­mak­ing Tech­niques of Mar­tin Scors­ese, Jack­ie Chan, and Even Michael Bay

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.