Anthony Stokes on the unfair criticism of Gone Girl…
Every once in a while a movie comes out that not only appeals tremendously to your tastes on a cinematic level but also relates to things going on in your personal life. No, my wife has not gone missing, but Gone Girl’s ambiguous message on marriage spoke to me. I’m also a huge David Fincher fan and think even given his accolades and massive fanbase he’s still underrated as a director. And while Gone Girl is getting good reviews, I’ve been hearing some quite baffling complaints that don’t make sense to me. It’s not a flawless film, but certainly less flawed than other many movies with equal or more accolades.
Most of the negative views on Rotten Tomatoes that caught my attention mention Fincher by name. To be fair a lot of the positive reviews did too, but I make mention of this to say that Fincher is a big name in the film buff community. The commercial success of both Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo can be be attributed to good marketing and his name being attached. That said people have expectations of what a Fincher movie is. Fincher unfortunately peaked for a lot of people with Fight Club. That and Se7en are the defining acts of his career. Fincher’s murky green filter and iconic imagery dispersed throughout both movies have made an impact on viewers like myself. But ultimately Fincher is a different filmmaker today, or at the very least he is making different kinds of movies.
Unlike other directors of his generation such as Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, he’s matured. He’s broken out and stepped out of the gritty thriller box people have put him in and has a pretty varied film career. Now he does much more procedural thrillers. I think a lot of the people calling this movie bland are comparing it too much to his earlier works. I don’t care what movie it is, it’s going to be considered bland next to Fight Club. And of these procedural thrillers he’s made I think Gone Girl is better than The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Zodiac. In no context is this movie bland. There hasn’t been a good missing person mystery thriller since TGWTDT 3 years ago. It’s a genre riddled with weak entries that shouldn’t even see theaters. This is a stand out of the genre, and is the best example I can think of.
There’s a lot of satire, social commentary, and allegories in Gone Girl, the media being one of them. A lot of people have been claiming it’s overbearing, and there’s even a Nancy Grace type character in the movie. My combat for that is that the media itself is a character and is at the center of several plot points. If you take the news out, there’s no movie. It’s like saying the Reagan politics in Robocop are too overbearing. I’d rather it be entertaining than half assed.
The final complaint I’ve heard is that the movie gets ridiculous, which is a ridiculous complaint itself. First off the movie doesn’t find its identity until the end of the first act. It’s not bad – it’s just setting itself up. It doesn’t seperate itself until it gets crazy. And this is an adaption of a book and Fincher films it in a way that is completely believable. Blame the source material, not the movie. There’s a very specific tonal shift in which it goes from a typical, but good, mystery to outright absurdity and it doesn’t go back. And the ending and reveals are at least set up properly, instead of something like Non-Stop where it feels as if they picked twist endings from a hat.
Overall Gone Girl is a great movie. If you want to see Fight Club, go watch Fight Club. I’ve seen other directors work get praised just because of who they are, like Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master and Alexander Payne for Nebraska, but instead Fincher gets the opposite. Anybody who can suspend their disbelief, go check out Gone Girl, which in my opinion is a return to form for David Fincher.
Anthony Stokes is a blogger and independent filmmaker who also hosts the podcast Delusional Losers.
Originally published October 14, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
