Director of Babylon AD Hates His Film

Vin Diesel and Matthiu Kassovitz back in the glory days, when Babylon AD had the potential to be the greatest, most awesome movie ever. 

Yup, Matthiu Kassovitz, director of the heavily advertised Babylon AD, is not happy with the film. On the AMC SciFi blog (I was directed to this story by CHUD, thanks, Chudders!), Kassovitz says:

“I’m very unhappy with the film. I never had a chance to do one scene the way it was written or the way I wanted it to be. The script wasn’t respected. Bad producers, bad partners, it was a terrible experience.”

The bad partner, by the way, was Fox. Studios are never the good guys.

Kassovitz explains that the movie, based on the novel Babylon Babies, by George Dantec, was meant to have a big message, but he wasn’t able to get through what he wanted. 

“It’s pure violence and stupidity,” he admits. “The movie is supposed to teach us that the education of our children will mean the future of our planet. All the action scenes had a goal: They were supposed to be driven by either a metaphysical point of view or experience for the characters… instead parts of the movie are like a bad episode of 24.”

Yeah, that last season of 24 was pretty awful.

Kassovitz says the movie was cut so much by the studio that when star Vin Diesel saw it, he joked about whether he was even in it anymore. The length is now what is described as a “confusing 93 minutes.”

The director doesn’t hate all of it. Kassovitz says he likes the “energy” of it and a few scenes. But otherwise he feels he didn’t get to make the film he wanted to make:

“I should have chosen a studio that has guts,” he says. “Fox was just trying to get a PG-13 movie. I’m ready to go to war against them, but I can’t because they don’t give a s–t.”

Should Kassovitz have realized earlier that he and the studio had different ideas about the film? Could he have worked better within the restrictions of what the money men wanted? Is it wrong for a director to trash his own movie before it opens? Probably easier said than done for the first two, and as for the third, he has the right to say anything he wants–but it might make another studio think twice about handing money over to a director who is going to essentially torpedo a movie before it opens. No one says Kassovitz has to be out there saying, “It’s my best movie ever!” That would be hypocritical. But next time he might want to just lay low and then after it opens talk about what went wrong–you know, when he’s touting the director’s cut on the DVD.