15 Film Directors That Were Ahead of Their Time
Throughout the history of cinema, there have been a handful of directors who have stood out from the pack for pushing the medium forward.
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Filmmaking has always been one of the most innovative art forms. But throughout the century-plus history of cinema, there have been a handful of directors who have stood out from the pack for pushing the medium forward and creating work that is totally ahead of its time. Here are 15 of them.
Fritz Lang
Notable movies: Metropolis, M, Fury
Fritz Lang didn’t even have the benefit of sound to tell one of history’s most compelling sci-fi tales in 1927’s Metropolis, a film that is set in the future and seems as though it was filmed there, too. As one of the first films to employ special effects, including the use of the Schüfftan process (in which mirrors help create the illusion that actors are interacting with a set), the film has become a reference point for essentially every sci-fi film that has followed it (2001 and Star Wars included).
Richard Linklater
Notable movies: Slacker, A Scanner Darkly, Boyhood
Patience isn’t a virtue that every film director has, but Richard Linklater is the obvious exception—something he has proven with his 12-years-in-the-making hit, Boyhood. But Linklater has been at the forefront of invention since making his indie splash at Sundance with 1991’s Slacker. In the near quarter-century since—when not gathering footage for Boyhood—Linklater has chosen the experimental route over Hollywood, playing with low-budget technology and one-room locations for movies like Chelsea Walls and rotoscoping his characters for A Scanner Darkly.
Steven Lisberger
Notable movies: TRON
Steven Lisberger may not be a household name, but he should be. He has pushed movie technology forward with 1982’s cult classic Tron, one of the first movies to computer animation with live action. It was also a harbinger of the transmedia storytelling movement that would follow, due to Lisberger’s interest in combining video game technology with filmmaking. Though he did not direct 2010’s Tron: Legacy, he did serve as its executive producer.
Kathryn Bigelow
Notable movies: Strange Days, The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty
Even before she became the first woman to receive a Best Director Oscar for 2009’s The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow had been blazing her own trail in Hollywood, venturing to places where few female filmmakers have gone before her. She has a slate of high-octane action films to her credit, including Point Break, K-19: The Widowmaker, Zero Dark Thirty (which earned five Oscar nominations), and the odd-but-forward-thinking Strange Days.
David Lynch
Notable movies: Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive
We’re not sure whether it’s more accurate to call David Lynch a director who’s ahead of his time, or a director who exists in a world that’s all his own. In either case, his quirky blend of nonlinear narrative, coupled with oddball characters, has made him one of Hollywood’s most distinctive auteurs. Whether he’s creating an iconic television series like Twin Peaks or a surrealist feature like Mulholland Drive, there’s nobody duplicating what Lynch has done throughout his near 40-year career.
George Lucas
Notable movies: Star Wars, American Graffiti, THX 1138
A long time ago in a galaxy not so far away, George Lucas changed the business of Hollywood when he created one of its first major blockbusters—and the ultimate franchise—with a little sci-fi film known as Star Wars. In addition to the original film’s groundbreaking use of new technologies (many of which still look fresh today), Lucas has continued to reinvent the art form with each new entry in the Star Wars saga, and he pushed the boundaries of just what is possible through his work with Lucasfilm. He was also one of the first filmmakers to realize the financial upside of movie merchandising, meaning it’s Lucas who you have to thank for those Star Wars sheets that you cherished as a child (or adult).
Andy & Lana Wachowski
Notable movies: Bound, The Matrix, Cloud Atlas
From both a narrative standpoint and a visual one, it’s hard to keep up with the Wachowskis. Even if you think that you understand what they’re saying or where they’re going, a second (third, and fourth) viewing of their movies is always recommended. If not to fully comprehend the somewhat complicated storylines that have become their bread and butter (see: The Matrix movies), then to fully appreciate the game-changing visual style they brought to the table, which so many others have tried to replicate.
Steven Spielberg
Notable movies: Jaws, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List
Steven Spielberg is on this list almost accidentally. Because it was really by accident that Jaws, the movie that pushed him to the top of the director A-list, was so groundbreaking in its less show, more tell approach. And much of that credit goes to a laundry list of mishaps that occurred during the film’s production, most notably having a mechanical shark that rarely worked. Rather than give up on the entire thing, Spielberg used old-fashioned ingenuity to create a movie that forced the audience to participate, as much of its horror was manufactured in the viewer’s mind. And it totally worked—so much so that others have followed suit over the years. But it really was just the beginning for Spielberg and the groundbreaking techniques that he would employ over the years (like the animatronic dinosaurs in Jurassic Park), especially as his standing—and budgets—grew.
John Carpenter
Notable movies: Halloween, Escape from New York, The Thing
Though deep pockets can go a long way toward cinematic innovation, John Carpenter has long been the poster child for the fact that financial constraints can be a boon to creativity. Case in point: 1978’s Halloween. Shot on a budget of just $325,000, the film went on to make $70 million in theaters, making it one of the most profitable independent films of all time (even to this day). Though it’s often credited as one of the first slasher flicks, Carpenter took a cue from Spielberg’s Jaws in leaving it up to the audience to fill in many of the horror elements; though it’s filled with frightening imagery, there’s actually very little gore or graphic violence. Though dozens of filmmakers have attempted to re-create similar movie magic over the years—including the nine films that followed in the franchise—its ingenuity (and genuine frights) have never been matched.
Stanley Kubrick
Notable movies: 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining
Nearly a full decade before Star Wars became the benchmark of success for the sci-fi genre, Stanley Kubrick was revolutionizing the genre in his own right with 2001: A Space Odyssey. Visually stunning in every way, Kubrick’s fingerprints can be found on every element of the film, right down to the costuming and the set design. He was also a pioneer of the front projection and retroreflective matting—two techniques that were a precursor to green screen movie making.
James Cameron
Notable movies: The Terminator, Titanic, Avatar
You don’t have to believe that James Cameron is “King of the World” to appreciate the way in which he has managed to continually push the technique of filmmaking forward. And he’s been doing it for years, going all the way back to his earliest films, like The Terminator and Aliens. Part technical innovator and part creative force, Cameron has adopted a seemingly simple attitude toward film technology: If it doesn’t already exist, he will invent it. As he did with the Fusion Camera System, a digital 3-D camera that he helped develop for the making of his many documentary films and for Avatar.
Christopher Guest
Notable movies: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind
Christopher Guest may not have invented the mockumentary genre (though he did star in one of its earliest and most successful examples, This is Spinal Tap), but he has turned it into a staple of both television (The Office) and movies—especially his own, including Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind.
Alfred Hitchcock
Notable movies: Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho
Alfred Hitchcock didn’t earn the nickname “The Master of Suspense” by accident. Throughout his more than 50-year career, he pioneered a number of styles and techniques that completely reinvented the mystery and suspense genre, turning the audience into genuine voyeurs. And he did it all with ingenuity rather than invention. Hitchcock created a seemingly new kind of cinema with simple tweaks to the already-existing foundations of movie making, including framing shots in a way that would increase the viewer’s anxiety and cutting those shots in such a way that made the audience feel as if they were a part of the action.
Christopher Nolan
Notable movies: Memento, The Dark Knight, Interstellar
Initially, it seemed as if Christopher Nolan’s greatest contribution to film might come from a storytelling perspective, as he first rose to prominence with 2000’s Memento, the told-backwards tale that earned the director and his brother Jonathan an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. So it didn’t take long for Hollywood to come calling, putting Nolan in charge of revamping the Batman series. And while it could have been yet another example of an indie directing selling out for a bigger paycheck, Nolan completely changed the way we look at superhero movies (in a good way) and has since graduated to more effects-heavy movies with a genuine message in films like The Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar.