Filmmaker Richard Donner has passed away. The director of film classics like The Omen on Superman turned 91. Fellow directors praise Donner as one of the founders of modern Hollywood.
Born in New York, Donner began his career directing TV series such as Gilligan’s Island on The Twilight Zone. He broke through in 1976 with the cinema film The Omen, at a time when the horror genre became more popular after the success of The Excorcist. In The Omen The stillborn child of an American diplomat is exchanged for another child shortly after birth. That turns out to be the devil’s son.
Two years later followed Superman, a film that brought actor Christopher Reeves to fame as the superhero and his alter ego Clark Kent. That film marked a style break with previous TV and cinema adaptations of superhero comics. Until then, the superhero genre had been mostly comedic and campy, but Donner made Superman serious. He also felt that superhero films were ideally suited to use the most advanced special effects.
As realistic as possible
He insisted that the scenes of Reeves flying be as realistic as possible in order to convince the audience that Superman was no more bound by gravity than a bird or an airplane. His uncompromising attitude saw him fired as director of the Superman sequel.
Donner’s tone and approach were widely imitated in later years. By now, the superhero genre is one of the main corks that keep Hollywood afloat.
Donner is also seen as one of the big names in another genre: the buddy cop-movie. He made a total of four Lethal Weaponmovies, in which actors Mel Gibson and Danny Glover played an agent duo.
–
