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.

In the ten years between Reser­voir Dogs (1992) and Kill Bill (2003), Quentin Taran­ti­no was all some film fans could talk about, and who many up-and-com­ing direc­tors idol­ized and copied. But it would take anoth­er ten years for his films to be intel­li­gent­ly dis­cussed, and it’s a sign of these times that the best essays are not in print but in video for­mat.

Matt Zoller Seitz and his col­leagues over at Indiewire’s Press Play blog led the charge with a series of 10 ‑12 minute video essays (col­lec­tive­ly called “On the Q.T.”) that explore indi­vid­ual Taran­ti­no films and his approach to film­mak­ing.

The video above is part two of the series and probes what it means to be cool in Pulp Fic­tion, how char­ac­ters cre­ate their own mytholo­gies and what hap­pens when real­i­ty con­fronts them.

If that video makes you look at Pulp Fic­tion in a deep­er way, then you’ll enjoy the first in the series, on Reser­voir Dogs. Seitz claims the film is both a col­lage of film quotes and ref­er­ences, from City on Fire to The Killing, but there’s a human heart beat­ing beneath all of it. And that’s a les­son lost on all the imi­ta­tors that came in Tarantino’s ‘90s wake, he says.

You might also want to check out this two part essay (Part 1 — Part 2) on Jack­ie Brown – this one craft­ed by Press Play’s Odie Henderson–which exam­ines what Taran­ti­no took from Elmore Leonard in his only adap­ta­tion to date, and what is pure QT. (Hint: It’s the cast­ing of Pam Gri­er).

The final video in the series looks at the Female Arche­type vs. the God­dess in Kill Bill. Cre­at­ed by Nel­son Car­va­jal, who uses cap­tions instead of nar­ra­tion, it’s the weak­est in the series, being long on clips and short on ideas.

But with The Hate­ful Eight on the hori­zon, the entire series will get you ready for inter­pret­ing the lat­est in his oeu­vre.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His 20 Favorite Spaghet­ti West­erns, Start­ing with The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Quentin Taran­ti­no Super­cuts Explore the Director’s Styl­ized Use of Sound, Close Ups & Cars in His Films

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.