Thousands upon thousands of people are necessary and needed when it comes to making a feature-length film, and each person is important to the process - but the one person who’s arguably the most important when it comes to getting the vision for the movie on the screen is the director.
Directors are the ones who are household names, and their names can very often be the thing that persuades audiences to get up and go to the theater in the first place. And while many directors have made their imprint on Hollywood history, here’s our list of ten directors that transformed the way movies have been imprinted on us.
Christopher Nolan
Not the director we deserved, but the director we needed. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe may currently be taking over the globe one project at a time, there will never be another set of superhero films that even comes close to Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.
The three movies were and still are, unlike any other comic-book based film that has graced the big screen. His Bat-Man franchise partnered with a resume of movies such as Memento, Dunkirk, Interstellar, and Inception, along with his incredibly creative visual style of directing easily earn Nolan a spot on this list.
The Coen Brothers
The Coen brothers are arguably the greatest siblings to ever sit in the director chair together, but that’s just, like, our opinion, man. The duo emerged onto the Hollywood scene with their breakout hit of Fargo which was briefly on the AFI Top 100 list until it was booted off in 2007. Along with that North Dakota thriller, the brothers are responsible for such classics as O Brother, Where Art Thou?, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis.
However, the brother’s masterpiece was the 2008 neo-noir western No Country for Old Men - best picture, best director, best-adapted screenplay at the Oscars. That’s the triple-crown in case you didn’t know.
George Lucas
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away there lived a director who would forever change the course of sci-fi cinema. Some directors are on this list because they have several different unique, daring, and creative projects that collectively have nothing to do with one another and are different in not only styles but genre - then there’s George Lucas.
Star Wars - what more needs to be said? It’s a multi-billion dollar franchise with countless merchandise, memorabilia, theme-parks, and now they’re branching into television shows with Disney+. All of that was because of one man. May the force be with you, George Lucas.
Ridley Scott
While a director such as George Lucas may have gotten his claim to fame for one specific sci-fi franchise, other directors might have specific niches but not have any problem straying from their usual stuff - one such director is Ridley Scott. While the acclaimed filmmaker got his start from sci-fi movies such as Alien and Blade Runner, he quickly made it known that he wasn’t just a one-trick pony and kept producing masterpieces in all types of genres.
With films such as Gladiator, Thelma & Louise, American Gangster, and The Martian, Ridley Scott has made it clear that his only genre is quality film-making.
Alejandro G Inarritu
This is the first director on our list that possibly not too many people are familiar with unless they did a quick google search. However, that doesn’t make him any less talented and any less worthy of being on our list.
Regardless that Mr. Inarritu has been around for a couple of decades now, and had at least one Oscar nomination in seven out of his twelve directed films, he only recently reached mainstream success with his two films Birdman and The Revenant, both of which combined for a total of twenty-one Oscar nominations and seven wins.
Martin Scorsese
Let’s just go over the line-up: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Color of Money, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, and now The Irishman - Scorsese has a directing career that has spanned over five decades and he doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the verge of stopping. He’s been nominated for twelve Oscars and has helped launch the careers of hall-of-fame caliber actors such as Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Despite his recent beef with the MCU, this director deserves the respect of anybody who’s ever stepped foot in a movie theater.
Stanley Kubrick
How many filmmakers in Hollywood would kill to have just a single film in the AFI Top 100 list? Well, when you’re Stanley Kubrick such accolades are a dime a dozen because the acclaimed filmmaker has directed four films ranked among the best that Hollywood has ever produced.
From 1960 until 1971, Stanley Kubrick had arguably the greatest decade in the history of directing when he created Spartacus, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. That’s an absolutely insane line-up and one that hardly any other director could touch.
Quentin Tarantino
We dare you - we double dare you - to tell us that Quentin Tarantino isn’t one of the most prolific and unique filmmakers to ever step behind the camera. Closing in on his third decade of directing, Tarantino’s handling of his career has already been different than any other director on this list (or in all of Hollywood) because he’s made it clear that his next film is going to be his last.
No other director has ever just called it quits because they’ve hit a certain number. But with classics like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained, and his most recent, Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, Tarantino has already made an emphatic stamp on directing history.
Alfred Hitchcock
Talk about a man who knew his genre and ran with it. Alfred Hitchcock is widely regarded as not only one of the greatest filmmakers to have ever lived, but a genuine pioneer and influential visionary to the film industry that exists today. Step into a film class at any college in America and there isn’t a single professor who doesn’t teach some sort of aspect about Hitchcock’s illustrious career.
Just a few of his directed works include Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. If any of those don’t sound familiar, kindly crawl out from under your rock.
Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg’s tombstone will one day read “Greatest Filmmaker To Have Ever Lived” and not a single soul will get stirred up in the slightest about it. He is the undisputed G.O.A.T. of the movie-making industry and every single person who dreams of sitting in a director’s chair one day will ultimately look to this man’s body of work for inspiration.
In case you’ve forgotten: E.T., Jaws, Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Saving Private Ryan, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Goonies, Lincoln, and scores more that cinema buffs, fans, and historians will be studying and analyzing every second of until the end of movie-making time.
