Just how overrated is Dicaprio ? and his parallels with Chris Nolan

And what did that have to do with my point?

Considering everything else you've written, it sure sounds like you think there's something wrong with "being a multiplex audience". Also, you can't determine a director's auteur status if you don't take their entire filmmaking career into account (hence why I said you can't judge Spielberg purely off public failures like Hook or Crystal Skull) - but I repeat, if your main criteria for who counts as an auteur is their commercial appeal then I don't think you even understand the concept in the first place.

It comes across as a compromise - like I wrote in that review, that scene severely breaks the established immersion just for the sake of "clever" condescension (which probably explains why you thought it was brilliant).

Gee, how dare the guy who had to watch his son be murdered look sad. Totally unrealistic.

Like I said, complete desperation to the point where rational thinking didn't enter into it.

I strongly suggest you question your reasons for thinking that there even has to be a "winning side" to any of this and why you have to take it to "Disney paid off critics" levels of conspiracy-spinning in order to make your point (consider that reporters wrote about The Revenant because it's their job to report on movies). You're even starting to make Christian Bale sound overrated.

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it backs up my "dicaprio doesnt take risk" claim

except it didn't happen in the true story.True story has nothing to do with son getting killed..it has to do with being left behind after bear attack.Imagine how creative that would have been to have a character out of the love for his own life sets on to take revenge on the man who tried to take away his life by breaking the bond of his teammate than the age old trope of you killed my son and i will come after you.Well thats the compromise you make when you want to make the movie for 100 million and expect it to appeal to multiplex audience.

It isnt about winning side.its about the human nature and how flawed our process of choosing an idol is.No wonder most people dont succeed in life. Most people will look at the glitters and not the path that took to achieve that.If someone is so focused on end result of an actor than the risks and choices an actor makes to lead to success. To me something like the big short is much more risky because a) it works..as its nominated for 5 oscars and was a box office hit and b) christian bale took risk by playing a guy on spectrum which easily could have been a razzie type performance.
If you so want to jump on christian bale is overrated thought process its upto you.

Which doesn't really counter my claim that risk is not automatically good and is therefore not that relevant to the discussion.

I'd like to know what face you're supposed to make when you've been left for dead in the middle of winter.

If the end results are the same, then what difference do the risks and choices really make? Maybe the reason people care more about the end result than the risks is because the risks can just as easily turn out poorly - that's what makes them risks, after all. You take Jared Leto, another actor who, like Bale, chooses to do lots of method acting and/or "risky" roles - gaining weight for Chapter 27, playing pranks on his castmates for Suicide Squad, playing a trans woman in Dallas Buyers Club - and he still ends up being terrible, so who cares about his attempts at taking risks? I'd also contest The Big Short being that much of a risk - it's a comedy featuring a bunch of A-listers from a guy known for making hit comedies, except it just so happens to be semi-serious and based on actual events. As for Christian Bale, I could call him overrated and it would still be a better testament to his acting ability than you genuinely praising him for playing an autistic person without winning a Razzie as if that's really so hard to do.

I know he was in the hands of a good director, but it feels weird to say he took no risks in a movie where he climbed naked inside of a dead animal.

Ah but if it were Bale he would have probably insisted on climbing naked inside of a live one you see

Wow, Leo really must have hurt the OP somehow. I think Leo is good actor and has mostly been a good fit for his roles. I guess I agree with the OP about The Revenant though - Leo looked too soft for that one.

so what...as long as he is climbing into a horse in a movie directed by innaritu aka the winner of best director oscar the previous year in a movie that is aimed for oscar its not a risk at all . Being in good hands of a director changes it all. Even colin farrell who had a horrible streak of movies in early 2000s with alexander and small indies that didnt work..had minority report which is a great movie because having great director at helm changes it all. It is surprising to me how its not obvious yet..i have no beef with wanting to work with top directors but wanting not to work with certain directors because they havent achieved the auteur status yet is reprehensible to me...as i said he is too afraid to take chances and the fact that he didn't work since 2015 till he got a project with tarantino and since scorsese wasnt available to make his movie for him shows he looks down on people that wants to work with him...dont say he didnt receive a challenging script from 2015 till now...he just believes the worst of the filmmakers and if even the worst is too good then he will work with them...if the worst is a bad movie then he will not. Some of the greatest movies came by taking risks star wars , Jaws , Dances with wolves,Lord of the rings etc...any actor will jump to work with scorsese,tarantino,christopher nolan or innaritu...but discovering a director like daniem chezelle or giving a chance to david o russell or adam mckay to make prestige movies is on actors like him who are in a privileged position especially if they are talented him..its called trusting an artist.

@aronisred Trying to pull out all the ways you are making mistakes when talking about blockbusters, well liked films, and auteurs is an impossible task. Let's start with this question, do you think Nolan is more of a known commodity than Innaritu? I sure do, yet you keep saying DiCaprio takes no risks by working with Innaritu once. Bale is the superior actor and risk taker yet worked with Nolan 4 times if I recall correctly. How do you explain this logic?

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C'mon, this is clearly a huge overstatement. Good directors make risky projects, too, and it's easy to pretend, after the fact, that it was obviously going to be good or successful. There's plenty in that film that is challenging and risky, it just happened to work.

You mean the hugely budgeted historical epic from an acclaimed director that was a huge embarrassing bomb?

Preemptively: please don't try to swat this entire broad point away just by pointing out that Stone is a bit more controversial/less talented/whatever. The point is that predicting which movies will be good is actually shockingly hard sometimes.

Really? "Reprehensible"? This is feeling like the standard Internet "overstate the opinion in lieu of making it logically or factually stronger" thing. You should know that this kind of rhetorical overcompensation actually has the opposite effect, though.

Yeah, it's simply not credible or reason to draw conclusions about his mental state and motivations from the directors he worked with.

Its simple, do you know how many actors want to work with innaritu ? He is highly respected among directors community in Hollywood. DiCaprio by the time revenant came along didn't need box office cache from the director..he has enough star power to open the movie....he knew that if revenant opened in the middle of summer it wouldn't make as much money as it did...all he needed was an actual end product that met the hype...there has been numerous news articles about how hard it was to shoot and all that jazz..none of that would have mattered had the movie didn't turn out to be good...one of the best ways to prove that a movie met the hype is through oscar nominations...if a movie like that comes out and it has 10+ oscar nominations, then its a proof to audience that the movie worked...its in this area that dicaprio doesnt take risk...he wanted innaritu for this movie because if you see his track record, all his movies have oscar nominations in major categories...so the chance of this movie not getting oscar nomination is close to 0 percent.So the risk factor is gone...5 movies - all good is a huge track record if those are the only movies you made.

speaking of bale working with nolan. Their first collaboration is batman begins...at that time nolan made 2 movies...memento and insomnia....one is a great movie and the other was a remake...so you dont have enough sample size to really assess his talent. Moreover its a big budget mainstream movie...its not a big budget indie movie like revenant..its a movie that has to appeal to core fanbase..and we know how critical the fanbase and its a departure from previous versions....and add to that the stink from batman and robin...all these are stacked up against him and if it didnt work out then look at where brandon routh is ...that would have been fate of bale...batman after batman and robin is not the same batman after the dark knight rises...former is much riskier to take on. Sequels are part of contract so he cant actually break the contract. By the time prestige came along still nolan wasnt a box office draw as he is now. So even that was risky. A movie prestige was never an oscar movie...its a fantasy made by a guy with 3 movies under his belt and not as well respected as innaritu.

In-fact the fact that DiCaprio worked with nolan after he became a box office draw and after he delivered the dark knight kinda reduces the risk factor for inception from dicaprio point of view...may be its risky for nolan to take on the project..but from leo side its like "this guy just directed the dark knight..which isnt just a summer movie..its a brainy complicated billion dollar blockbuster..if i want to work on a concept like inception then there would be no safer choice director than him"...in fact i consider the dark knight success as a pay off to christian bale for taking risk on batman begins by trusting this independent director.

You are putting the cart before the horse here. The highlighted statement would infer that Leo was the catalyst behind the idea for Inception. Is there any evidence to support this position? Inception seems like a pretty personal project for Nolan himself. The subtext of the film would suggest an exploration of cinema itself, as well as the intricacies of the relationships between all the major players on the crew, from creation to execution to funding. Not to mention his complex relationship with his wife in regards to their marriage/business interactions, and how it ultimately invades his approach to his art. Care to elaborate how Leo's risk-averse stance would somehow not only play into this, but be a major force behind the making of the film?

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You misunderstood what I meant...It was always DiCaprio's choice whether to accept inception offer or not. Yes you are right ,Inception is personal project to Nolan. But the ball was always in DiCaprios court because Nolan offered the role in inception to DiCaprio. The risk-averse stance comes from the fact that Nolan just did the dark knight. Everything changed after the dark knight. Inception was no longer a risky project after the dark knight. If a guy can deliver something like the Dark knight then he has the best shot than any director at delivering something like inception. So Inception might look like a risky project if you are a layman but Inception from the director of the dark knight is no longer a risky project. He made complex movies before it like the prestige and the dark knight gave him Spielberg type popularity at the box office. Had DiCaprio worked with Nolan on inception before batman begins or the dark knight came out then I would have said DiCaprio took risk making inception but after the dark knight (with all its complexities and themes and narratives) worked perfectly , Inception by Nolan was not a risk. Did you see the dark knight ? the way he shows 2 or 3 parallel running scenes at different places and the way he cuts back and forth between them...I wouldnt have doubted that a director who did that could easily have pulled of Inception especially if its his own idea.

I dont. how many?

I didn't misunderstand anything - I simply asked for clarification. Also, who said Inception was either risky or not risky? I sure didn't.

You use the term layman a lot. There is no way you can know if people you have never met are layman, unless you are being presumptive, and are just sort of immediately ascribing that position to whomever you are interacting with; perhaps in an effort to argue from authority, which would be a argumentative fallacy in the first place? I am not sure who you are referring to here, anyway, as some of your points in the above post don't seem to directly address what I have said so far, while others do.

I might be calling the situation incorrectly, since I don't really know you, your background in film, or your credentials in regards to anything, really. See what I mean?

A few short interactions in regards to one actor's performances certainly wouldn't be enough to get a read on pretty much anyone. Thanks for the reply.

I am wondering, how was the "ball" (in regards to Inception) always in Leo's court? What evidence is there that the film wouldn't have been made without Leo's involvement?

I wouldn't know because neither one of them does much for me. Sorry. Carry on. I'm an internet dick, it's true.

haha, nicely done, sir.

So it's a lie. OK, good to know where you stand. The side kick certainly wasn't "imaginary" though. It's well documented how that sidekick would have been incorporated into the story. It was quite a substantive role before it got removed.

DiCaprio was cast in the first decent role in a Scorsese film since 1993 that could've been filled by someone of his profile. There isn't a single other character he could've played.
I'm not saying Scorsese wasn't happy that Leo had become a huge star by then and it certainly helped Scorsese to realize one of his passion projects (remember when you were arguing Scorsese only cast Leo in projects he wasn't passionate about?), but again, that doesn't AT ALL prove that Scorsese secretly thinks Leo is a bad actor.
Which director would cast someone whose acting he severely dislikes in one of his passion projects? Not Scorsese, I imagine.

First, that was clearly a joke by PTA. Second, he has admitted multiple times that he really thought, back when he made the statement, that Magnolia was his best film (and that it was the best he'd ever make). These days he goes around saying that The Master is his favorite of his own films and he has already made two other pictures (Inherent Vice and Phantom Thread). That surely isn't some weird marketing trick, right? I'm quite sure PTA is sincere about his feelings towards Leo, just as he is about pretty much anything else..

He wanted to cast him in the leading role of Boogie Nights BEFORE he knew Titanic was going to be a success and Leo declined. That's enough proof for me that he really likes him.

You clearly don't understand what the "auteur theory" really means. It certainly doesn't say that success equals greatness. People who know me know that I'd never say that.

I don't put artists in boxes. I do however respect certain people more than others because I like their films better. Those people all seem to be liking/loving Leonardo DiCaprio and just like them, I enjoy his performances as well. This is not the result of some theory. I'm just saying what I feel and believe. I believe DiCaprio is a genuinely great actor who has proven multiple times that he has the charisma of a huge star and that he has the ability to do very difficult and challenging leading roles.

If I'd be a brilliant film actor with a lot of charisma, I'd also like to work with the best directors (or the directors whose work I like best). That doesn't mean Leo is not a risk taker. It means he doesn't want to waste his talent with average projects. It would be intensely weird if he'd regularly work with completely unknown directors who haven't proven yet that they can make an actor look good. This is literally how all huge movie stars, since the beginning of Hollywood, have behaved. They all wanted to work with the directors they liked best all the time.

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Directors have no say in how budget gets accumulated. To do movies like gangs of New York..producers will have a list of stars from which director has to choose if he wanted to make it at that budget. Try making gangs of New York with a nobody and that movie can’t be made.Leo isn’t a bad actor he is more serious than Johnny Depp and a better actor than Matt Damon,Brad Pitt and Ben affleck.Thats it. He is lesser of the two evils.

I have no problem in calling him the new charlton Heston or Cary Grant or Humphrey bogart ...all great stars with great movies....but he is no Brando or De Niro...he is no chameleon....every time he puts out a movie for awards his attack or campaign is two fold....1) his performance , which his marketing team and film team raves about which anyone will do about their stars. 2) his movies are all big budgets movies that studios don’t make anymore. So he is gonna ride the coattails of “people watching his movies”...had those movies were made by other stars,they might not be such huge successes. It’s not his performance alone ...it’s the situations surrounding the movie as whole...”it’s shot in natural light ....give Leo an oscar”....”it’s a huge budget period piece...give Leo an oscar “...”the direction of the movie is great...give Leo an Oscar”....bottom line is movies are great despite him and not because of him...look,he is not a bad actor ...he is just serviceable...he never elevates the material..the material is already great..he just rides the coattails.

I dropped a link above of Tarantino discussing his original choice for Calvin candie...I guess who it was??? 20 yrs ago..he would suite and now he is old...of course it’s kurt Russell...when actors exit projects..it’s not gonna one out like that....even Tarantino is not too balsy to let out the secrets of production.

its not about whether inception would have been made or not had DiCaprio said no to the movie. It’s about DiCaprio being offered the movie and his reply to the offer was yes. In Hollywood an actor is offered a part and they wait for reply.i referred to that as “ball in his court”.