Okay, let’s go through this again:

Your citations need work. To wit:

XXX is not exactly a hit franchise today but okay. And Riddick - the film - is the only decent sequel and, like his return to XXX, came after many years and a failed first sequel.

When on his own Vin makes mostly bad movies. The F&F franchise has prospered but it’s not because he is Irving Thalberg. It’s because it really took off with Five - and the Rock.

Which ones? Riddick is just one movie.

I’m sure. It’s a BTS pic but I can tell you those circumstances or some like them exist in the movie.

You were not dreaming.

Tell it to the unstoppable Pacific Rim franchise

Fair.

Clearly the first and surely the last member of the Sanders coalition to be colossally tone-deaf on key social issues.

Glorious.

It’s so bad, and the seeming knee-jerk need for most geek sites to qualify any critique of it by lavishing praise on GDT or some of the visual elements irks me. Like, the man’s not going to die if we say one of his movies is bad or at the very least deeply flawed. He’s done much better films, to say nothing of The…

Fourthed.

I know, wtf? It sounds like Maximum Overdrive.

It may not cater to people who watched Evangelion 20 years ago (just as I did, BTW), but it’s coherent onscreen and has actual characters. PR has barely the former and decidedly not the latter. It’s the worst of his geek worldbuilding over compelling narrative or characterization tendencies that was becoming a huge…

No.

No, I’m just honest. Shape of Water and Crimson Peak are excellent but Pacific Rim is one of GDT’s worst films, and until those last two he was having a rough run the last decade. Not everything he touched turned to gold.

Are we done pretending the original was good yet?

Absolutely.

That’s all 100% true. But as a larger question, sets being fraught with raw nerves and tension at times is never going to change. That doesn’t make every director an abuser or martinet, but it’s part of the sausage making of the long hours and tremendous expenditure. In the best cases when the work is done, everyone…