Len Wiseman is the very definition of an "average filmmaker." Over the span of his career, he has directed a bunch of poor to middling action movies, the best of which is probably Live Free And Die Hard, the third (unnecessary) sequel to Die Hard. His worst flicks are those awful Underworld movies. Remember those? Yeah. Also: that almost painfully average Total Recall remake. Um, no thanks, Len. All that is just another way of saying that Len Wiseman would have been a terrible, terrible choice to direct Iron Man - which is totally something that almost happened, by the way. Yep: before Marvel Studios decided on Jon Favreau (great shout), they were toying with the idea of hiring Len Wiseman. He'd even been working pre-production for 7 months! Ultimately, Wiseman lost the gig because the studio were adamant that they wanted to make family-aligned movies; Wiseman's style was deemed to be a bit too dark. As a result of their hiring Favreau instead, it's safe to say that everyone dodged a huge bullet.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
