Iconic filmmaker David Fincher is entering a new era with his sleek thriller The Killer. As he heads to the future, the filmmaker has been talking about his legacy and how he views his career.
Speaking to The Guardian, Fincher honestly looks at himself, saying he’ll “never be a more mature filmmaker” before addressing his work and whether it speaks to outsiders.
“I honestly believe that the high school quarterback who’s dating the homecoming queen cheerleader – even that guy thinks he’s an outsider,” says Fincher. “Who doesn’t think that they’re an outsider? That’s the fundamental difference between me and Tim Burton. Tim Burton believes that Edward Scissorhands is an anomaly. I just don’t know anybody who doesn’t think, in some kind of way, that they’re Edward Scissorhands.”
The conversation turns to auteurism, and if he looks at himself as an artist like that. The filmmaker has a mixed reaction: “I’m so bad at that because a) I don’t care. But b) At the point in time I was making Fight Club, people were saying: ‘How could you?’ And now you make something like The Killer, and people go: ‘Why aren’t you doing it like your earlier, more important movies?’ I can’t win.”
Speaking of Fight Club, Fincher addresses the long-standing conversation of Fight Club’s reception, particularly from a group that doesn’t understand the satire of the original novel and film adaptation.
“I’m not responsible for how people interpret things, but people will see what they’re going to see in a Norman Rockwell painting, or [Picasso’s] Guernica…. It’s impossible for me to imagine that people don’t understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence. People who can’t understand that, I don’t know how to respond, and I don’t know how to help them.”
After a fateful near-miss an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.
The Killer sees Michael Fassbender leading a cast that includes Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard, Sophie Charlotte and Tilda Swinton.
The Killer is in select cinemas now, and arrives on Netflix on November 10th.
Originally published October 30, 2023. Updated October 31, 2023.
