Grabbing the Boll by the horns
October 30th, 2007 by Jeff
Keep an eye out for Splattercast #50, which I hope to have uploaded over at Dead Lantern later tonight. It features a great interview that Mat did with controversial German director Uwe Boll.
Boll has become this infamous figure in moviedom, reviled by many people for making horrible films based on video games. But are the movies really that bad? Or are people just sort of running with the crowd? They’ve heard that Boll’s movies are awful, so they just pile on because everyone else is having fun dissing him? That was what I wanted to explore, so we all watched some of his movies and talked about it.
As you’ll hear on the show, my position after watching a couple of these movies is that yes, these are bad movies but they’re nowhere near as awful as some people say they are. It’s like some folks are actively offended by Boll’s work, and I just didn’t take that away from the movies. I never felt like I was being insulted or that some crime against humanity was being perpetrated.
The discussion on the podcast got a little contentious, with Mat being almost incredulously pro-Boll, me being a little on the “pro” side, and Braden being stridently unimpressed with Mr. Boll’s films. Steve was sort of lukewarm, liking one movie and hating another. And Deejay, of course, was largely incoherent 
I’m okay with all of the varying positions, though. I mean, we all feel differently about different things. It’s impossible to go through life and never run into people who disagree with you. Actually, that would be pretty boring! Who wants to sit around with a bunch of clones who think and feel exactly alike?
October 31st, 2007 at 9:06 am
I agree with your position 100%. Boll’s movies are bad, but they aren’t deserving of some of the hate that’s thrown towards them. If I seemed too Pro-Boll on the cast, it’s because I was purposely trying to play the Devil’s Advocate. It’s always better when you have a couple extreme opinions and not just a bunch of opinions in the middle. Makes for livelier debate
But yeah, my position on Boll’s films is pretty much exactly the same as yours.
October 31st, 2007 at 11:15 am
Something we totally agree on! Who’da thunk it?
I agree about having some different opinions. If our podcast was just all five of us sitting around saying “Yeah, that was awesome!” or “Yeah, that sucked!” in unison every week… that wouldn’t be very compelling.