Every David Fincher Movie Ranked From Worst To Best
With another David Fincher film on its way, we're ranking each film he directed from best to worst.
With much anticipation for the upcoming release of Mank, the story about the creation of Citizen Kane, we thought it was a good time to take a look at the films directed by one David Fincher. The upcoming release of Mank will see the 57 year old American return to the director's chair for the first time in six years for a feature film, and not a moment too soon.
While Tarantino has managed to garner the title of most important Director of the century to date, David Fincher is definitely one who deserves to be mentioned in the same category. While police procedurals have become his bread and butter, Fincher has also dabbled with Sci-Fi, Dark Comedy, Biopics and Romance, with his trademark style of Nihilism, smooth camera pans, dimly lit interiors and ambient music always coming to the fore.
While Fincher's first film was critically panned at the time and several of his films have flopped at the box office, he is, alongside Tarantino and Christopher Nolan, a modern day director who can rightfully claim to have never made a bad film. Some may not be perfect, and there is more than a couple of examples on this list of movies that could have done with a trimmed runtime. Fincher's films always have a purpose though, and never fall into the trap of being too pretentious.
So prepare to see 'what's in the box' of Fincher's films, as we rank each of his Directorial features from best to worst.
10. Alien 3
While many have come to this movie's defence upon future viewings, there is little doubt that this is Fincher's weakest directorial effort. Only brought in to the director's chair after first choice Vincent Ward was sacked, Fincher did his best to create and implement his own style, and does manage to get another strong performance from Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3. Unfortunately Fincher's nihilistic ways sat quite poorly within the Alien franchise, leaving us for the first time in the franchise with no-one to cheer for.
The movie starts off in poor fashion with the dud call to kill off Newt and Hicks off screen, in the process cheapening all that happened in the brilliant Aliens. Had Newt or Hicks been killed by the roaming Xenomorph early on in this film then their characters would have at least received some justice, but having them die off screen only managed to kick events off on a bad footing that the film could never truly recover from.
The move back to a singular Alien and removing the access to weaponry that made for a fair(er) fight in the second entry wasn't necessarily a bad call, with the 'catch and bait' scene climactic scene delivering the goods. The problem comes with the company we are forced to keep, a series of prisoners without a redeeming trait between them. Having Ripley engage and even sleep with these people just felt completely out of place, especially when all we wanted was her taking on another Xenomorph or two.