Defending Uwe Boll

It’s easy to pick on Uwe Boll. His movies are the equivalent of the trash bag ripping open on your shoes on garbage day, and he’s unabashedly German. And who doesn’t like making fun of the Germans?

But Boll isn’t nearly as bad as you make him out to be on your blog, and he certainly isn’t as bad as Ed Wood.

Really, a closer look at Boll’s films shows that he’s at least making progress, with his most recent release, Postal, being a good example of a director flexing his creative muscles to make a movie about some dude going nuts more than just a crappy reinvention of Falling Down.

But before I get into praising Boll, let’s get some of his skeletons out the way first.

House of the Dead. Garbage.

Alone in the Dark. Garbage featuring Tara Reid.

Bloodrayne. Garbage starring Ben Kingsley as a vampire. Oh, and Kristanna Loken topless.

In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale. Promising garbage.

And now Postal, which is more about life in Bush America than anything else. If you haven’t seen it yet just because of Boll’s name, I advise that you do. If not for Boll’s humorous take on terrorism, then at least for the shock of seeing somebody actually making a 9/11 joke in the first five minutes of the movie.

Really, Boll has a lot of passion for his films. Why else would he box his critics to defend them?

And in all truthfulness, just look at the games he’s translating into movies in the first place. Have you ever played House of the Dead? Granted, a movie of it probably shouldn’t have been made in the first place, but still, Boll took what he had and made a film that wasn’t any more ridiculous than the actual game.

Same goes for Bloodrayne. Trust me, it’s no Final Fantasy.

Personally, I think a lot of Boll’s failure has to do with his source material. Some of his other, non-video game movies, such as Heart of America or Blackwoods really aren’t that bad. I mean, Spielberg may be a genius and all, but do you think he could pull off a movie version of Pong? Well, maybe, but you get my point, get Boll a quality script and let’s see what happens. Unfortunately, that day may never come. His reputation does precede him after all.