With big-budget action movies like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: Way of the Water,” and “John Wick 4” taking over the box office, we contacted legendary director and “The Mandalorian” star Werner Herzog to get back behind the camera and make the next great action film.
Having raised a nearly unlimited budget via crowdfunding, then giving the great auteur as much time as he wanted, Herzog finally came back with mind-numbingly boring landscape footage and dry narration about humanity’s endless, brutal conflict against nature.
Knowing full well that we financially took a bath on this one, we sat down with Herzog to discuss the project:
The Hard Times: “Werner, I just want to say, we respect you and your vision but this isn’t what we were expecting. Maybe you could talk us through some of these scenes, like the roughly thirty minutes of a cactus you chose to open the film with.”
Werner Herzog: “Splendid. As I say in so many words in the scene, the cactus stands alone, as we all must, against nature, against time. The cactus with its spikes which poke ever so sharply, is like a reverse prison, only instead of metal bars keeping one in, its spikes keep us all at a distance, only able to guess what lies within. I can imagine nothing more suspenseful than this.”
THT: “Really? Nothing? Let’s just move on to this next scene. Here we see a partially constructed building. Again, nothing really happens in the scene, Werner.”
WH: “I suppose if you consider man’s struggle to conquer nature to be meaningless then you are correct, nothing happens. However, if you look closely you’ll see nature and man are a blight upon one another. Mankind’s armament is composed of concrete, steel, and its machines. Is it hopeless? Nature is an imposing foe and man itself is of nature. Man surely cannot conquer nature with what it must take from nature itself. This fact I have laid bare within the scene, the tension is quite palpable.”
HT: “You aren’t really making me feel any better about this action film Werner. Okay last one, is the whole third act just footage of you driving?”
WH: “Precisely. A young person at an electronics store convinced me to purchase and install a recording device, which I believe may colloquially be referred to as a dashcam, in my personal vehicle. The footage is truly captivating.”